|
Banned
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by ObieX
....Thre HAS to be another, REAL, reason for all of this. But i just can't see it. Granted, I'm no expert on the social aspects of France by any measure of the word, but events like these usually have some kind of real cause behind them. This just seems to be a swarm of overly juvenile and ignorant morons.
If anyone can hellp shed some light on this situation for me, it would be much appreciated.
|
It's the usual problem in former colonial powers of Europe. Even when immigrants seem to have a higher standard of living and more opportunity for employment in western countries where they resettle, it seems that loss of cultural identity, a perception of racism and discrimination directed at them, and comparisons of the distribution of wealth, power and opportunity skewed to the ethnic nationals vs. only traces to the immigrants, along with a police presence that has few immigrants in it's ranks, and you get volatility.
They have challenges assimilating, they live in a concentrated ghetto population and they reach a mindset where they feel that they have little to lose by resorting to violent protest. In the case of the French, IMO, they overvalue their "gift" of citizenship to their immigrant population. The religious divide and the contemporary, worldwide movement towards Islamic fundamentalist influenced militancy, and tensions rise....
Quote:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/...ss/france.php#
'We're French,' but not 'real' French
By Katrin Bennhold International Herald Tribune
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2005
.......Like Walid, whose parents came to France from southern Algeria in the 1960s and still have Algerian nationality, many young second- and third-generation immigrants here feel neither North African nor French.
They have spent their whole life in France, but for their whole life they have felt trapped in a cultural no man's land: their experience in 21st-century France clashes with the traditions and history of their parents' countries - mostly former French colonies in Africa. Formal citizenship in France aside, they feel their North African names and their skin color still firmly set them apart.
According to Mamadou, 24, who like most youths here declined to give his last name for fear, he said, of being pursued by the police, everyday reality in the suburbs belies the noble idea of equality before the law.
"We are French, but we also feel like foreigners compared to the real French," said Mamadou, whose father came to France from Mali decades ago and married his mother, a French woman.
Who, according to him, are the "real" French?
The answer comes without hesitation and to vigorous nodding by a groups of his friends: "Those with white skin and blue eyes."
Tales of being treated as "second-class" citizens abound. Many youths feel targeted by a predominantly white police force that conducts regular checks in their neighborhood. As Walid put it bitterly: "If you are black or Arab, chances are you have something to hide."
Leaving the afternoon prayer at a makeshift outdoor mosque, Hocine, 23, a soft-spoken young man of Algerian descent in religious attire, said he was resigned to never having his culture and his religion truly accepted in France.
"How many times have I gone into Paris and have been shouted at 'Go home!" he said. "Home is here," he added. "But it doesn't really feel like home."
Beyond racism and daily routines of hostility with the police, one complaint frequently repeated in interviews in several of the smoldering suburbs north of Paris is that none of the youths in question feel they are given a real chance to leave the ghetto.
After quitting school early, Mamadou recently found a job in a supermarket in La Courneuve, one of the suburbs at the heart of the recent rioting, stacking boxes.
But it took two years, scores of applications and several humiliating moments of being sent away after interviewers caught a glimpse of his African features.
Near a tall wall of graffiti in La Courneuve, telling the government and police to stay away, a group of young men pass their Friday afternoon talking, laughing and occasionally shouting at passers-by.
They all of Arab or African origin and they are all either unemployed or working in low-skilled maintenance jobs.
"We are all janitors here," said one young man, who appeared to be the leader of the group. "It's our destiny."
The man, who would only identify himself as Awax, said looking Arab in France was more than just having darker skin: It was also a ticket to a societal pigeon hole from which there was no escape.
"Looking Arab means you either spend all day at the mosque or you are criminal scum," he said. "People generalize all the time, but you can't. Nobody talks about white French people as Christian."
In few places is the separation of religion and state as strict as it is in France, where all conspicuous religious garb like the Muslim head scarf is banned from schools.
The law has intermittently prompted some Muslim groups to complain, and last year many cases of Muslim girls refusing to take their scarves off made headlines.
While sociologists and immigration specialists say that the religiousness of immigrants is often exaggerated, they say it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"Many of these guys are no more Muslim than other French people are practicing Christian," said Christophe Bertossi at the French Institute of International Relations in Paris.
"But if they are given no other identity the Muslim label risks becoming the thing they fall back on."
|
|