One thing that is failing right now with regards to the integration of people of African immigrants is indeed a way to have their voices heard ; most anti-racist groups with a reasonable immigrant membership have been coopted by the PS as a way to raise a few "Arabe de service" politicians, to the point that one of them has been hired by Sarkozy...
Compare with the jewish community, which had the advantage of being well organised before the 1905 laws ; and of retaining a certain unity (despite the facts that many of its members are very thoroughly integrated in French society). It was able to mount a very impressive campaign showing that indeed, antisemite violence was on the rise. Many jews aren't actually active participants in the community, except in such cases.
There is no such path to reach the media for the African or Maghrebian communities, or, more pointedly, the banlieues community, that would be able to create the kind of media storm against, say, police racism and police violence that is sorely needed.
One thing that wasn't noticed enough in the riots is that the participants were very young. Teenagers. I am quite optimist in that many of them will find a way into membership of society. Imprisonment rates remain well below those of African Americans, for example. We don't hear much about these youth when they reach their thirties. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
Yes, they lack channels, as their members get co opted... and the PS, supposedly the party that is ready to do the most, has been quite blind to the consequences of making 'politics' a dead end for minorities. They have neither people to talk to or political incentives to do anything... paving the way for a police answer.
There is one thing that makes me feel uncomfortable about universality though: literally, it shouldn't connote any set of rights, just the idea that demands for rights should be justified by pertaining to all (applicable to whomever) but also furthering, or at least not endangering, the cohesiveness of 'all'. But even by defining universality so broadly, it remains a specific vantage point on what creates societies (granted maintaining them is an objective at all, which can be doubted these days) and what strengthens them. In a way, universality can be applied, ironically, only because it is enforced. It doesn't take into account the voices of those whose ways it rejects... and rejects only because they are on French soil. That the limits to universality would be the Alps or the Mediterranean is ironic at best.
I didn't know about the imprisonment rates, but indeed it's a good thing, along with exogamy. Pied noir racism will also diminish soon... Rien n'est gratuit en ce bas monde. Tout s'expie, le bien comme le mal, se paie tot ou tard. Le bien c'est beaucoup plus cher, forcement. Celine
The PS is way too bourgeois and power oriented to successfully cater to the banlieues.
Universality is indeed a specific vantage point, but it seems required if societies are to last ; Canada, the poster child for multiculturalism, still has Quebec not that far from voting for independence ; and I won't get into Lebanon, which is an example of what happens when community bonds become stronger than the bonds to the State.
As for the geographical limits of the French universalism, weren't the limits of Europe supposed to be the Urals and Tamanrasset, according to De Gaulle ?
I don't have particular ethnic statistics on imprisonment rate, but it would require way more people in jails to reach the statistic that between a third and half of adult African American will end up in jail at some point - I suppose drug trafficking, etc... may indeed be run partly by the thirty something, but I bet many more have found some kind of place in French society - they are not rioting...
Also, yes, the pied noir and Algerian soldiers are moving into retirement, which should diminish their contribution to institutional racism. They'll still vote for Sarkozy for quite some time though. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
The state appears after the group, not before: so in the case of Lebanon, we see the story of a state which fails for whatever reason to break down communal and religious bonds. This is why I'm slightly worried about the US. Bonds to a state can be of different natures, but in practice two are really important. Either one identifies with it, and sees no difference between the nation and himself, or one sees the state as a provider of goods and services, with a feeling of belonging to a subgroup of the citizenry. In the US -- I don't know about canada -- Multiculturalism does smoothen integration, but whether it breaks down communal bonds is doubtful. A lot of the success in American integration might be due to the state's success in providing job and social climbing. The main consequence, in that light, of an economic crisis becomes an ethnic crisis... with, say, latinos and blacks competing for the same jobs.
All I mean with the limits to universalism was that it required a bigger group which has already internalized these values -- not to say that all french think like that -- and that group is in france, no? Rien n'est gratuit en ce bas monde. Tout s'expie, le bien comme le mal, se paie tot ou tard. Le bien c'est beaucoup plus cher, forcement. Celine
As usual, the "richer" part of that population didn't have too much problems !
On another set of thought, we started to get used to "terrorist bombing" at that time with the OAS, a bit like the Irish's... We tackled it without having to impose laws on foreigner's identity laid bare ! "What can I do, What can I write, Against the fall of Night". A.E. Housman
