Riots in France

Re: Riots in France

Finn d'Abuzz wrote:

It was, I suppose, easy to dismiss the ritualistic murder of Theo Van Gough at the hands of a European Muslim. Afterall, that was but one looney fanatic, and he was white to boot!

Pst - the murderer of Van Gogh actually was an Arab, btw ... Mohammed B.

Perhaps you were confused with the murderer of Fortuyn (a white environmentalist) or the two men with terrorist plans who were later smoked out of their Hague hideout in a gunfight (non-Arabs born of American parents), or the 17-year old who made a bomb that he wanted to kill Geert Wilders with (a converted white Dutchman), or the Muslim extremist who sent death threats to Belgian Senator Mimount Bousakla (a white Flemish convert).

0 Replies

It's perhaps inevitable that comparisons are made when a shocking event or even tragedy occurs in one country. It's probably even reflex, and we're probably all guilty of it to some extent.

And perhaps it's even beneficial if, as nimh says, there are lessons to be learned from the past and its attending mistakes.

I think, though, that Finn opened this thread to discuss the riots and rioters in France, who they are, why they are rioting and the events and policies of that country that led up to those riots.

The U.S. also has large pockets of Muslim immigrants spread throughout the country and our immigrants do quite well here. So if comparisons are to be made, perhaps the focus should be on more closely examining the economic/social/cultural differences between France and the U.S.

I read the following article a week or so ago and will post it here as a start.

Quote:

PARIS BURNING

Why Immigrrants Don't Riot Here
France's rigid economic system sustains privilege and inspires resentment.

BY JOEL KOTKIN
Tuesday, November 8, 2005 12:01 a.m.

The French political response to the continuing riots has focused most on the need for more multicultural "understanding" of, and public spending on, the disenchanted mass in the country's grim banlieues (suburbs). What has been largely ignored has been the role of France's economic system in contributing to the current crisis. State-directed capitalism may seem ideal for American admirers such as Jeremy Rifkin, author of "The European Dream," and others on the left. Yet it is precisely this highly structured and increasingly infracted economic system that has so limited opportunities for immigrants and their children. In a country where short workweeks and early retirement are sacred, there is little emphasis on creating new jobs and even less on grass-roots entrepreneurial activity.Since the '70s, America has created 57 million new jobs, compared with just four million in Europe (with most of those jobs in government). In France and much of Western Europe, the economic system is weighted toward the already employed (the overwhelming majority native-born whites) and the growing mass of retirees. Those ensconced in state and corporate employment enjoy short weeks, early and well-funded retirement and first dibs on the public purse. So although the retirement of large numbers of workers should be opening up new job opportunities, unemployment among the young has been rising: In France, joblessness among workers in their 20s exceeds 20%, twice the overall national rate. In immigrant banlieues, where the population is much younger, average unemployment reaches 40%, and higher among the young.

To make matters worse, the elaborate French welfare state--government spending accounts for roughly half of GDP compared with 36% in the U.S.--also forces high tax burdens on younger workers lucky enough to have a job, largely to pay for an escalating number of pensioners and benefit recipients. In this system, the incentives are to take it easy, live well and then retire. The bloat of privileged aging blocks out opportunity for the young.

Luckily, better-educated young Frenchmen and other Continental Europeans can opt out of the system by emigrating to more open economies in Ireland, the U.K. and, particularly, the U.S. This is clearly true in technological fields, where Europe's best brains leave in droves. Some 400,000 European Union science graduates currently reside in the U.S. Barely one in seven, according to a recent poll, intends to return. Driven by the ambitious young, European immigration to the U.S. jumped by 16% during the '90s. Visa applications dropped after 9/11, but then increased last year by 10%. The total number of Europe-born immigrants increased by roughly 700,000 during the last three years, with a heavy inflow from the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, and Romania--as well as France. These new immigrants have been particularly drawn to the metropolitan centers of California, Florida and New York.

The Big Apple offers a lesson for France. An analysis of recent census numbers indicates that immigrants to New York are the biggest contributors to the net growth of educated young people in the city. Without the disproportionate contributions of young European immigrants, New York would have suffered a net outflow of educated people under 35 in the late '90s. Overall, there are now 500,000 New York residents who were born in Europe (not to mention the numerous non-European immigrants who live, and prosper, in the city).

Contrast this with Paris, where the central city is largely off-limits to immigrants, in some ways due to the dirigiste planning that so many professional American urbanists find appealing. Since Napoleon III rebuilt Paris, uprooting many existing working-class communities, the intention of the French elites has been to preserve the central parts of the city--often with massive public investment--for the affluent. This has consigned the proletariat, first white and now increasingly Muslim, to the proximate suburbs--into what some French sociologists call "territorial stigma." In these communities, immigrants are effectively isolated from the overpriced, elegant central core and the ever-expanding outer suburban grand couronne. The outer suburbs, usually not on the maps of tourists and new urbanist sojourners, now are home to a growing percentage of French middle-class families, and are the locale for many high-tech companies and business service firms.

The contrast with America's immigrants, including those from developing countries, could not be more dramatic, both in geographic and economic terms. The U.S. still faces great problems with a portion of blacks and American Indians. But for the most part immigrants, white and nonwhite, have been making considerable progress. Particularly telling, immigrant business ownership has been surging far faster than among native-born Americans. Ironically, some of the highest rates for ethnic entrepreneurship in the U.S. belong to Muslim immigrants, along with Russians, Indians, Israelis and Koreans.

Perhaps nothing confirms immigrant upward mobility more than the fact that the majority have joined the white middle class in the suburbs--a geography properly associated here mostly with upward mobility. These newcomers and their businesses have carved out a powerful presence in suburban areas that now count among the nation's most diverse regions. Prime examples include what demographer Bill Frey calls "melting pot suburbs": the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles; Arlington County, Va.; Essex County, N.J.; and Fort Bend County in suburban Houston. The connection between this spreading geography and immigrant opportunity is not coincidental. Like other Americans, immigrants often dramatically improve their quality of life and economic prospects by moving out to less dense, faster growing areas. They can also take advantage of more business-friendly government. Perhaps the most extreme case is Houston, a low-cost, low-tax haven where immigrant entrepreneurship has exploded in recent decades. Much of this has taken place in the city itself. Looser regulations and a lack of zoning lower land and rental costs, providing opportunities to build businesses and acquire property.

It is almost inconceivable to see such flowerings of ethnic entrepreneurship in Continental Europe. Economic and regulatory policy plays a central role in stifling enterprise. Heavy-handed central planning tends to make property markets expensive and difficult to penetrate. Add to this an overall regulatory regime that makes it hard for small business to start or expand, and you have a recipe for economic stagnation and social turmoil. What would help France most now would be to stimulate economic growth and lessen onerous regulation. Most critically, this would also open up entrepreneurial and employment opportunity for those now suffering more of a nightmare of closed options than anything resembling a European dream.

0 Replies

Re: Riots in France

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Finn d'Abuzz wrote:
The issues are:

What do these riots say about France now, and what do they portend for the future of France, and by extension Europe?

Do I understand you correct: you want to leave the USA out, but the other European countries included?

Walter you are perfectly welcome to include America in the discussion as it applies to the impact of immigrants on the cultural, political, and day-to-day life of the host country.

Latino riots (of which there have been none in the US) would be far more relevant to this discussion that those involving African-Americans.

Numerous A2K threads have been devoted to the shafting African-Americans have gotten and continue to get in the US. It is inaccurate, however, to consider the African-American experience as one of modern day immigration.

Please excuse my redundancy but while there are all sorts of terrible aspects of African-American riots in the US, one of them is not that such riots have the potential of growing into something even more terrible. The French riots do.

0 Replies

CalamityJane wrote:

Yes Walter.

nimn, quite a bold statement to say that French immigrants,
who are mostly second and third generation immigrants by
now, are where blacks in the US were in the late sixties.

My point exactly.

0 Replies

Re: Riots in France

nimh wrote:

Finn d'Abuzz wrote:
It was, I suppose, easy to dismiss the ritualistic murder of Theo Van Gough at the hands of a European Muslim. Afterall, that was but one looney fanatic, and he was white to boot!

Pst - the murderer of Van Gogh actually was an Arab, btw ... Mohammed B.

Perhaps you were confused with the murderer of Fortuyn (a white environmentalist) or the two men with terrorist plans who were later smoked out of their Hague hideout in a gunfight (non-Arabs born of American parents), or the 17-year old who made a bomb that he wanted to kill Geert Wilders with (a converted white Dutchman), or the Muslim extremist who sent death threats to Belgian Senator Mimount Bousakla (a white Flemish convert).

Thank you for the correction. While I was not confused with Pym's murderer, the fact that Van Gogh's murderer was an Arab only adds to my argument. Europe (and particularly the Netherlands) has a real problem with immigrant Muslims and their progeny.

0 Replies

Re: Riots in France

Finn d'Abuzz wrote:

Walter you are perfectly welcome to include America in the discussion as it applies to the impact of immigrants on the cultural, political, and day-to-day life of the host country.

Latino riots (of which there have been none in the US) would be far more relevant to this discussion that those involving African-Americans.

I don't agree.

Yes, there is the obvious fact that Latinos are immigrants (or children thereof) and the rioters in France mostly are too, whereas African-Americans are not.

But that's hardly the only relevant criterium.

For example, I don't think the level of fear and exclusion North-African immigrants, especially, face in France (and other West-European countries too) is at all comparable to what American Latinos face. It is more similar to what blacks have faced.

Similarly, within especially North-African immigrant communities we see a number of things that remind me a lot of what was going on in the black community in the US, and doesnt seem to have occurred much among Latinos. A certain cultivation of victimhood, justified by the fear and exclusion encountered. Resulting anger. The attitude that, "they only expect us to be thugs anyway, so OK - we can do that, if thats all they think we're good for anyway!". A kind of political militantism, which is not so much - in spite of popular opinion among whites - of the pious Islamist variety, but of a more Malcolm X-type. Thats what Abou Jahjah's Arab-European League put forward: they, the majority, dont want us anyway, so lets do things for ourselves, make our own power, resist. (The Belgian political list Jahjah ended up spearheading was called RESIST).

None of this seems particularly similar to the US Latino community, but much of it is familar from American (and British) blacks. They've even adopted its cultural expressions: whereas ten years ago, young Dutch Moroccans could mostly be found at Rai concerts (Algerian pop), now its Moroccan-Dutch hip-hoppers like Raymzter, Ali B, etc who are dominant.

So, if the similarities are more with American blacks than with Latinos, perhaps the immigrant identity is not all that counts, here? Perhaps the experience of being outsiders within, being expected to conform and be loyal, but never taken for full, perhaps the experience of discrimination and (depending on the country) police violence - all things that American blacks have had to face (even) more than Latinos - characterise the resulting resentment at least as much?

Now the question why Latinos have not faced quite that level of exclusion and fear is interesting, because it does mean that we have a lot to learn from Americans when it comes to dealing with immigration.

0 Replies

JustWonders wrote:

The U.S. also has large pockets of Muslim immigrants spread throughout the country and our immigrants do quite well here. So if comparisons are to be made, perhaps the focus should be on more closely examining the economic/social/cultural differences between France and the U.S.

Absolutely, and here's a hint of the differences involved between countries:

Quote:

A white man with a French first and last name is five times more likely to be called in for a job interview than a man with a Northern African name with a similar resume, according to a 2004 study by sociologist Jean-Francois Amadieu and Adia, a Paris- based human resources consultant and temporary job company. [..]

National Police Chief Michel Gaudin said yesterday that measures will be taken to change recruitment patterns in the police and hire more people from ethnic minorities, as in countries such as the U.K.

(from Bloomberg)

0 Replies

Quote:

Now the question why Latinos have not faced quite that level of exclusion and fear is interesting, because it does mean that we have a lot to learn from Americans when it comes to dealing with immigration.

Latinos, as well as other immigrants in the United States
very often live - like in Europe - in small communities outside of larger cities (except LA). They feel more comfortable living among their nationalities, however, most immigrants desire to become American citizens and be part
of society. In a land of immigrants, they don't see themselves necessarily as minorities, they don't feel the exclusion from society either. Second generation Latinos are to a larger extend integrated, they are born in the US, they are trying to get a decent education, and they become economically productive citizens.

Very few immigrants rely on the welfare system, they
want to work, and they want a better life for themselves and
their offspring.

0 Replies

It's not quite correct to say that most Latinos in the USA are either immigrants or the children (or grandchildren) of immigrants. In the Southwest (including California) quite a number of Mexican-American families were here long before those lands became a part of the United States. We forget that the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Texas were all part of Mexico before 1848 when we simply appropriated the real estate with all the folk on it. Similarly, all Puerto Ricans are US citizens because we took that island from Spain after a very, very short war in 1898 and decided to keep it.

The whole Anglo-Latino relationship is quite different from the host-guest relationships in Europe or even the black/white problems in the USA.

0 Replies

That's true Andrew, Mexicans still portray it as "their" land,
without having the benefit of being US citizens, however,
I specfically used the term Latino as the influx of other
South American countries is so prevalent today, especially
int the southern States of CA, AZ and NM, that we cannot
speak of Mexicans only, resp. think they are Mexicans when
in fact they're from Peru, Colombia, Argentina etc.

0 Replies

Andrew, I didn't forget, I tried to write a few posts to that effect and edited myself, not for general import but for some of my wording.

0 Replies

The great influx of anglos to the CA area was from an actual advertising coup, in the early 1880's. Pasadena was a prime target site but the influx fanned out.

The spanish were here long before and long before statehood, for better or worse.

The reason I keep editing myself is that I can't help saying friends are..
and we all know what a lame argument, a turnabout re prejudice, some of my best friends are is.

So - I'll give a particular pov.

I suspect my father's family got here around 1904, from Idaho, my grandfather being an attorney, I gather. I have Sacramento photos and have seen the house.

Around that time or within a decade, my friend Linda's grandmother sold tamales in downtown LA streets.

I was born in LA in late '41.
For most of my life, actually being born in California was not the norm for adults. Or if that is wrong statistically, true in the common perception.

Los Angeles is a giant construct - I don't want to go dig up research - I dealt with a landuse exhibit for the region, and just say it was a balloon construct.

To some extent, people from baja mexico will always be coming home in California, no matter what the law says.

Alternately, what is this land possession that also shuts me out of various places? I both understand and don't.

Thinking, it might have been Linda's great grandmother..

0 Replies

I could -- and would -- add a whole lot more to that, Osso and C. Jane. But I fear we've already derailed the subject of this thread.

0 Replies

I've kind of enjoyed your input, though!

In France, opinions are divided on what to do next - on what the solution to the problems betrayed by rioting is. This article has a neat summary of takes, under a misleading title:

A loud 'non' to quotas based on race(International Herald Tribune)

Here's an 'executive summary' ...

Quote:

A loud 'non' to quotas based on race

France appears to have brought three weeks of rioting under control, but it remains divided on where to go from here.

Supporters of positive discrimination, as affirmative action is known in France, include interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy.

But he was effectively overruled Monday by President Chirac, who derided the "logic of quotas" in a nationally televised speech.

Employment minister Larcher said the government did not believe it was the job of French companies to fix the country's social problems by hiring people from France's troubled suburbs.

"Companies are not the Salvation Army," he said.

A Socialist MP said recently that France needed positive discrimination, but only on "social and geographical grounds, not religious or ethnic ones."

But Sarkozy has said he supports programs like scholarships for bright minority youths and more recruiting efforts in areas with minorities.

"There are regions and categories of French people that have so many handicaps that if we don't help them they will never make it."

In many ways positive discrimination programs already exist but they are directed at poverty instead of ethnic groups. The government has implemented "tax-free zones" near housing projects, and the Mitterrand government instituted Priority Education Zones for underprivileged children, which still exist.

Chirac on Monday proposed a voluntary civil service to help train young people. In all, 50,000 slots would be available in the civil service, starting in 2007.

0 Replies

Re: Riots in France

nimh wrote:

Finn d'Abuzz wrote:
Walter you are perfectly welcome to include America in the discussion as it applies to the impact of immigrants on the cultural, political, and day-to-day life of the host country.

Latino riots (of which there have been none in the US) would be far more relevant to this discussion that those involving African-Americans.

I don't agree.

Yes, there is the obvious fact that Latinos are immigrants (or children thereof) and the rioters in France mostly are too, whereas African-Americans are not.

But that's hardly the only relevant criterium.

For example, I don't think the level of fear and exclusion North-African immigrants, especially, face in France (and other West-European countries too) is at all comparable to what American Latinos face. It is more similar to what blacks have faced.

Similarly, within especially North-African immigrant communities we see a number of things that remind me a lot of what was going on in the black community in the US, and doesn't seem to have occurred much among Latinos. A certain cultivation of victimhood, justified by the fear and exclusion encountered. Resulting anger. The attitude that, "they only expect us to be thugs anyway, so OK - we can do that, if thats all they think we're good for anyway!". A kind of political militantism, which is not so much - in spite of popular opinion among whites - of the pious Islamist variety, but of a more Malcolm X-type. Thats what Abou Jahjah's Arab-European League put forward: they, the majority, dont want us anyway, so lets do things for ourselves, make our own power, resist. (The Belgian political list Jahjah ended up spearheading was called RESIST).

None of this seems particularly similar to the US Latino community, but much of it is familar from American (and British) blacks. They've even adopted its cultural expressions: whereas ten years ago, young Dutch Moroccans could mostly be found at Rai concerts (Algerian pop), now its Moroccan-Dutch hip-hoppers like Raymzter, Ali B, etc who are dominant.

So, if the similarities are more with American blacks than with Latinos, perhaps the immigrant identity is not all that counts, here? Perhaps the experience of being outsiders within, being expected to conform and be loyal, but never taken for full, perhaps the experience of discrimination and (depending on the country) police violence - all things that American blacks have had to face (even) more than Latinos - characterise the resulting resentment at least as much?

Now the question why Latinos have not faced quite that level of exclusion and fear is interesting, because it does mean that we have a lot to learn from Americans when it comes to dealing with immigration.

While there is, of course, a similarity between African-Americans and France's North African rioters in terms of their being/feeling disenfranchised, the African-American experience, in total, is not relevant to the discussion of the broader implications of these riots.

The ancestors of African-Americans were brought here as slaves. Considerable effort was made to strip them of their native culture, and so they were forced to create an entirely new one (An undeserved but sizeable benefit for the greater American culture). Generations of African-Americans (greater in number than all of France's North Africans) wanted nothing more than to assimilate within the greater American culture. As poorly as they have been treated over history, African-Americans are Americans. There has never (even in the days of the Black Panthers and Malcom X) been a time when there was any reasonable possibility that African-Americans would be anything but Americans. They have always, in the overwhelming main, sought integration, not segregation, and they have never been subject to the influence of external political forces.

French North Africans came to France voluntarily, and rather than any real or sustained effort being made to strip them of their culture, they were encouraged to preserve it. The goal of North African immigrants in France is not to assimilate, it is to enjoy the same benefits of French society as the Gauls. While the French rioters do not, at present, represent the greater North African immigrant population in France, I suspect that their calls for autonomy resonate with their fellows. This notion of autonomous Islamic presences within European nations, seems to be quite popular throughout Western Europe. Rioting African-Americans were never succeptible to foreign influence, while the rioting North African immigrants of France are ripe for it.

Just about the only similarities between the current French riots and past American riots are that the rioters are members of an underclass, they are expressing a mounting sense of rage, and they are burning cars.

America has never had to deal with a major wave of immigration by a people of a significantly different culture.

Differences in language abounded during the heyday of American immigration, but the people who arrived at the shores of the US were all of the same general European culture, and with the minor exception of Jews, of the same religious faith.

The Irish and Italians who first came to America, were treated just as poorly as the North Africans who have come to France. The odds, though, of the North African immigrants of France assimilating as well as the Irish and Italians of America, are quite slim.

The odds of North African immigrants in France assimilating as well as Latino immigrants in America are also quite slim.

While there is most certainly an aspect of Indian culture woven through that of Latino immigrants to America, they have long ago been Europeanized, and it can easily be argued that Christianity has as great, if not greater, hold on their culture than that of America in general.

Indian guerillas from Mexico or Peru have no hope of influencing even a tiny segment of the population of Latino immigrants in America.

People generally riot around the world for the same basic reasons.

The difference between American riots and French riots is their capacity as predictors for the future.

No riot can be a herald of good times to come, but it seems to me that the French riots have all the ingredients for a very big future problem in France and in Europe.

0 Replies

Pretty pithy on the subject -

In this week's New Yorker, DIFFERENCE by Jane Kramer

0 Replies

Interesting ...

Quote:

Riot coverage 'excessive', says French TV boss

One of France's leading TV news executives has admitted censoring his coverage of the riots in the country for fear of encouraging support for far-right politicians. Jean-Claude Dassier, the director general of the rolling news service TCI, said the prominence given to the rioters on international news networks had been 'excessive' and could even be fanning the flames of the violence.

Dassier said his own channel, which is owned by the private broadcaster TF1, recently decided not to show footage of burning cars. 'Journalism is not simply a matter of switching on the cameras and letting them roll. You have to think about what you're broadcasting,' Dassier yesterday told an audience of broadcasters at the News Xchange conference in Amsterdam .

French broadcasters have faced criticism for their lack of coverage of the country's worst civil unrest in decades. Public television station France 3 has stopped broadcasting the numbers of torched cars while other TV stations are considering following suit. 'Do we send teams of journalists because cars are burning, or are the cars burning because we sent teams of journalists?' asked Patrick Lecocq, editor-in-chief of France 2.

Source: http://media.guardian.co.uk - Media Guardian

I suppose one can see the "excessive" media coverage of the riots and violence as sensationalist and irresponsible, contributing to the copycat effect that the reported violence exerts.

One can even see it - I'm sure some of my former colleagues do - as the typical sensationalisation of everything dangerous about Muslims/Arabs/minorities, once more highlighting the extremes of those population groups, and therewith contributing to existing stereotypes - whereas in reality, most Arabs/Muslims/minority citizens of course did not take part in the riots.

In response to that one, of course, is the observation that all news media is by definition sensation-oriented: the more hefty any event (or dimension of any group of people, activity), the greater the chance it gets on the news, in close-up.

But I'm on the other side of the argument, this time, altogether. I dont see the way that the riots have crashed through into news media reality as just another nail in the entrenchment of fears and stereotypes re: minorities; I see it as finally, attention, acknowledgement, of the fierce realities many of them live in. Better sensationalist reporting on the conditions in those neighbourhoods than no reporting at all, then its sheer invisibility. For too long do the mainstream French media seem to have kept smugly uninterested in what was going on in those wretched suburbs, since thats not where their readers lived anyway, and its unpleasant to think about.

Just like the LA riots led, not just, admittedly, to the reinforcement of existing stereotypes about violence-prone, gangsta-type blacks, but also to a serious overhaul of the city's and police department's policies, the French riots too can finally force the establishment to pay attention. Of course there shouldn't be any panic-mongering, but to go back to just kind of shoving it under the carpet is no alternative.

0 Replies

nimh wrote:

Interesting ...

Quote:
Riot coverage 'excessive', says French TV boss

One of France's leading TV news executives has admitted censoring his coverage of the riots in the country for fear of encouraging support for far-right politicians. Jean-Claude Dassier, the director general of the rolling news service TCI, said the prominence given to the rioters on international news networks had been 'excessive' and could even be fanning the flames of the violence.

Dassier said his own channel, which is owned by the private broadcaster TF1, recently decided not to show footage of burning cars.

Interesting when they say it--wrong and racist when I said they did exactly what they now admit they did.

They played it down. Who doubts they ALSO played down the number of rioters who expressed religious reasons for their rioting?

0 Replies

I just watched French tv via TV5 (which [mostly] shows only reports public TV networks). At least there, no-one could say that it was played down.

Same about the print media - I've followed the coverage in the Liberation, Le Figaro and Le Parisien as printed versions and various others online.

TF1 (that's the tv channel of LCI) is a privately-owned, commercial television networks, funded only by advertising revenues.

0 Replies

Lash wrote:

Interesting when they say it--wrong and racist when I said they did exactly what they now admit they did.

They played it down. Who doubts they ALSO played down the number of rioters who expressed religious reasons for their rioting?

The second paragraph shows that you do actually get the difference between the two propositions, despite your rhetorical claim in the first paragraph that you had been talking about the very same thing.

Yes, I doubt that they ALSO played down the purported role of religious ardor in the rioting. Why? Simple enough. The extent of the rioting can easily be verified in non-French media reports. The religious fervour of the rioters that you assert, I have not seen evidenced in non-French media reports. And unlike you (apparently), I don't myself believe in a global media conspiracy to play that aspect down.

0 Replies

Riots in France

Related Topics