Seriously. Each wave of immigrants has reached the pinnacle of power in France. Every single fucking one. Just not 30 years after the first generation arrived. It will take another generation or two. If you look at party militants right now, you'll be impressed by the number of Africans in there. They'll go up.
Bleh. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
It is a situation where the right, who play the same ethnic games as in Bush's america (rachida dati et al) have been in power too long. 12years of completely white Chirac (and no, no credit for Balladur, being Armenien is not the same thing) and now Sarkozist tokenism.
I have no doubt we will do better but not if we leave it up to our conservatives. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
Still no big leaders. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
It is a dirty secret that we did a bad job integrating those waves. Jerome will deeply disagree with this, I think, but really, the '80's and especially '90's were really pivotal in locking that failed integration in. We had a period of really sustained unemployment for so-called unskilled workers, first from the reaction to socialist reforms in the 1980's (unfortunately the rest of Europe wasn't ready for socialism) and then from Germany's re-unification that we all paid for via a really nasty recession.
We spent more than a generation under full employment. that's a recipe, in my view, for regression, and this is not an exception for France in the 1990's.
Adding to this,as regards what is happening in Ireland, I always thought that Ireland would somehow escape the downside of the inevitable neo-liberal hangover. After all, in Ireland you have perhaps the smartest people in all of Europe, an ability to deal favorably with the Americans, and the English language which accentuates the first two things. On top of this, Ireland chose to excel, in terms of finance, in back office automation instead of the speculative bullshit which is going to kill the uk.
I know the rest of us were supposed to watch the celtic tiger whose "reforms" we the rest of us were supposed to imitate, starting with the corporate tax cuts. But I think they made a mistake on this in Dublin, and more than a few Haugheys could have done with ten-dollar american shirts instead of hundred punt french hand-tailored ones, for which working irish, like working english, pay the price.
at least here there's a (more or less) progressive tax to pay for the corruption... Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
As did France losing its faith in its so far successful integrationist policies under the Agnlo-Saxon influence, with the persistent narrative that integration is a failure in France. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
We had the superior model, we still do, but we need full employment now to make it work. Not all the time...but now, certainly.
Personally, I make certain ideological compromises precisely because of this point (and perhaps coloured by my own experience with unemployment in the '90's...) Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
Most immigration into Frace in the 50's was of Spanish and Portuguese origins, I think.
Démographie de la France - Wikipédia
Origine 1962 1968 1975 1982 1990 1999 effectifs 1999 Europe 78,7 76,4 67,2 57,3 50,4 44,9 1 934 144 Espagne 18,0 21,0 15,2 11,7 9,5 7,3 316 232 Italie 31,8 23,9 17,2 14,1 11,6 8,8 378 649 Portugal 2,0 8,8 16,9 15,8 14,4 13,3 571 874 Pologne 9,5 6,7 4,8 3,9 3,4 2,3 98 571 Autres Europe 17,5 16,1 13,1 11,7 11,4 13,2 568 818 Afrique 14,9 19,9 28,0 33,2 35,9 39,3 1 691 562 Algérie 11,6 11,7 14,3 14,8 13,3 13,3 574 208 Maroc 1,1 3,3 6,6 9,1 11,0 12,1 522 504 Tunisie 1,5 3,5 4,7 5,0 5,0 4,7 201 561 Afrique subsaharienne 0,7 1,4 2,4 4,3 6,6 9,1 393 289 Asie 2,4 2,5 3,6 8,0 11,4 12,8 549 994 Turquie 1,4 1,3 1,9 3,0 4,0 4,0 174 160 Ex-Indochine 0,4 0,6 0,7 3,0 3,7 3,7 159 750 Autres Asie 0,6 0,6 1,0 1,9 3,6 5,0 216 084 Amérique et Océanie 3,2 1,1 1,3 1,6 2,3 3,0 130 394 Non déclaré 0,8 0,1 - - - - - Total 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 - Effectif 2 861 280 3 281 060 3 887 460 4 037 036 4 165 952 4 306 094 4 306 094
In Europe we've had women leaders since the 70s (even if some of them have been insane) and atheist, or at least secular leaders for at least as long. So it's very self-serving to pretend that Obama is a manifestation of the American Dream, and that Europe is behind and supposed to be playing catch-up.
Just because there's a guy with a black face in charge doesn't mean that ethnic apartheid has disappeared, or that economic apartheid and systemic inequality aren't the foundations of US politics to an extent that would be unthinkable in the more progressive parts of Europe.
A small minority of people clawing their way to the top doesn't mean that 'opportunity' is a reality for the majority. That's not going to be become true until the Senate and House include a solid majority of individuals who came from dirt poor backgrounds without money or family connections, and who can run without needing to pretend that they're either mainstream Jews or Christians.
In Europe we've had women leaders since the 70s
Quite so.
(Sorry, couldn't resist.) Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
North African immigrants started arriving in large numbers since before blacks were allowed to vote in much of the US, or if you prefer, roughly about a decade before Obama was born. IIRC as of just a couple years ago there was not one single non-white parliamentary deputy from metropolitan France. This isn't because the French are more racist than Americans, but because of state policy, or rather the lack thereof. The US legislature shows how this works - in the Senate, blacks are virtually non existent; in the House, with its government imposed racially gerrymandered districts, there are tons of them. The other factor is the embrace of explicitly 'communitarian' politics which are as AMerican as apple pie. For this failure I particularly blame French lefties like yourself. I get that conservatives don't give a shit about racial equality, and have an ideological bias against state intervention, but that fact that the majority of the French left adopts a neo-lib/neocon stance on race and ethnicity is rather galling.
Why the hell it's good for the government to intervene to ameliorate class inequalities and why class based political and social organizations are a good thing, but ethnic ones are some sort of affront against the mythical race blind France and its unity is something I just don't get.
Integration is working in France, even if it's not fashionable to say so, and even if there is a real problem of ghettoisation of a minority. But it IS, at heart, an economic problem rather than a racial one. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
When you do not integrate, people stay 'other,' it's as simple as that. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
As a practical matter, given the realities, I completely fail to see how this can be seen as something positive.
On another level, though, at a really fundamental level, race-blind means just that - a black person is french just like a white person is, there is no differentiation, if you speak french properly, have the standard french general culture, everyone is the same, color no matter. There are problems, clearly with people of north african descent there is job discrimination and general racism, but it isn't having anything to do with color in my opinion, but one of integration, nothing which can't be solved in another generation, like for poles and italians in their waves of immigration before. There are no statistics but I strongly suspect, and observe, much higher levels of marriage between people of different color, and more mixity in the schools, than what I saw in the US, that's for sure, though granted I saw rural Michigan and then Minneapolis.
France needs more equality, via more efficient redistribution, and effective full employment policies. The latter point has been a horrible thorn in the integration story. If these things can be accomplished, that will take care of the problems we have in a generation or less.
None of this takes away from the amazing American accomplishment though. I certainly never thought it possible. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
redstar: ... it isn't having anything to do with color in my opinion ... There are no statistics ...
From an earlier diary:
European Tribune - Racism in French employment
L'âge et l'origine, principales discriminations à l'embauche (2006 November 21) <...> the "first national barometer" carried out by the temporary work agency Adia with Jean-François Amadieu, professor at Paris I University and director of the Observatory of Discriminations. Made public on Tuesday November 21, the study shows that most kinds of employment discrimination, with the exception of that against the handicapped, have gotten worse in comparison to a study from 2004. 6461 CVs were sent over the course of a year in response to 1340 job offers. The results (invitations to a job interview) obtained by a "control" candidate (male, 28-30 years old, having a "stock French" last name and first name, without photo) and by candidates more likely to be discriminated against were compared. The big loser is the "48-50" year old who is selected the least often, regardless of socio-professional group, labor pool, company size, or work sector: among 100 invitations for job interviews that the control candidate received, this category received three times less (32), especially if he is a white-collar professional (14 invitations, while older blue-collar workers get 50). The white-collar professional of North African origin gets 17 positive responses, his blue-collar counterpart 47. Generally, as a consequence of his ethnicity, he only has 36 chances for a job interview, while the "stock French" candidate has 100.
<...> the "first national barometer" carried out by the temporary work agency Adia with Jean-François Amadieu, professor at Paris I University and director of the Observatory of Discriminations. Made public on Tuesday November 21, the study shows that most kinds of employment discrimination, with the exception of that against the handicapped, have gotten worse in comparison to a study from 2004.
6461 CVs were sent over the course of a year in response to 1340 job offers. The results (invitations to a job interview) obtained by a "control" candidate (male, 28-30 years old, having a "stock French" last name and first name, without photo) and by candidates more likely to be discriminated against were compared.
The big loser is the "48-50" year old who is selected the least often, regardless of socio-professional group, labor pool, company size, or work sector: among 100 invitations for job interviews that the control candidate received, this category received three times less (32), especially if he is a white-collar professional (14 invitations, while older blue-collar workers get 50). The white-collar professional of North African origin gets 17 positive responses, his blue-collar counterpart 47. Generally, as a consequence of his ethnicity, he only has 36 chances for a job interview, while the "stock French" candidate has 100.
This may be based on old information. My experience is that the forced integration of schools and the military starting in the 1960s has paid off. Certainly in more cosmopolitan places like Boston and New York there is pretty broad acceptance of all races. But here in arch-conservative Colorado Springs we have so many mixed race military families that it is almost the norm. It is not even commented on to see families with random backgrounds including orientals, blacks, and whites. In malls and stores one might expect such acceptance simply on a practical basis, but surface tolerance at least extends even to cowboy dance halls, nightclubs, and motorcycle bars where one might expect the most racist types to hang out.
Not to say that there isn't still overt racism; we had a hate crime in our neighborhood just a few months ago. But I think that the broad acceptance of Obama reflects specific government anti-discrimination actions taken within the past four decades.
Don't you realize that the two are intrinsically linked?
Integration is working in France, even if it's not fashionable to say so, and even if there is a real problem of ghettoisation of a minority.
Just a hell of a lot slower than if the government and the elites felt that it wasn't somehow taboo to rely on anything else than the invisible hand. I'll give you an example from the political realm: I've read that non-white socialists complain of two factors that prevent them from getting even a minute fraction of the power that their numbers would indicate. The first is that the leadership often worries that putting up a non-white candidate would reduce the party's vote share - something that racial gerrymandering works to counter in the US. The second is that the leaders tend to want to help their friends, and since social networks are definitely not perfectly racially integrated, and the folks at the top are white, that means that the whiteness of the existing power structure tends to replicate itself. Again, same problem in the US, but explicit ethno-racial political organizing works in the other direction.
It's not the French that have a neocon/neolib stance, it's the neocons/neolibs that have adopted the longstanding French position, which has worked to integrate every single wave of immigrants up to now.
ditto for America, in both cases we are talking white immigrants. But that's not what we're talking about here. You still haven't explained to me why it's wrong for the government to take an active role in ameliorating certain social inequalities, but not others.
Affirmative action has other consequences. Gerrymandering creates rentes de situation and fractures society around community lines. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
