One thing about having a blog is that now I feel required to comment whenever something big happens around me.

First off for anyone that knows me personally: I’m fine. I feel safe. Nothing has happened in my arrondissement nor in the arrondissements of the universities I attend.

After the jump: An American student’s view of the riots in and around Paris.

You may have heard by now that the rioting has finally entered the city of Paris, specifically the 3rd and 17th arrondissements. I knew it was only a matter of time for the kettle to boil over and for Paris to experience this situation firsthand. How do I feel, with these sorts of events happening within walking distance? frightened? angry at the fact that it happened during my lovely semester abroad? No. Truthfully, I feel like a spectator. The violence isn’t directed at people, really, except for the police. The violence is directed at a society and a state rife with an unspoken sort of racism. This is the same cycle that lots of ethnic groups (though it seems to be blacks above all, since 1945) go through or have gone through in European or European-descended societies (such as the United States). The transition from slave to full citizen was completed a long time ago, but full social acceptance in many places has still not been realized. Racial profiling by police, longer seating times at restaurants, extra airport security checks… it’s the same thing black people deal with in the US. I haven’t done the necessary research to really expound on racism in Europe and the United States, but I can’t help seeing the current riots as a smaller and later version of the race riots in the United States. Luckily for us, we had a strong, nonviolent leader for the civil rights movement in Martin Luther King to focus the frustration and anger of the population.

While the people here aren’t fighting for civil rights legislation, they are, in this humble student’s opinion, motivated by the same factors as those of the American movement. They don’t want to be thrown out into the banlieus [suburbs] to be forgotten in housing projects, just like the poor, black citizens of New Orleans, they want someone to address their problems. Sarkozy isn’t doing that. Villepin might. Now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves: the efforts to restore order are very important, but Sarkozy hasn’t said a word (unless I’ve missed a quote) about really solving the problem. Villepin has. These suburbs face the same problems all of France does, one might argue, but it has been reported that the proportion of these problems is much higher in these areas.

“Immigrants and their offspring make up 10% of France’s population, but many are without French citizenship and the right to vote. They also suffer the highest rate of unemployment, and their relations with the police are generally difficult or hostile…”
(Quoted from a BBC article)

However, despite all the arguments on that side of the issue, violence is violence. I haven’t decided yet whether violence is never the right way for the people to be heard (what if there is repression, state violence, etc?), but I will say that it would require very extreme circumstances to be at all valid. The youth of France could have made itself heard in other, more peaceful ways. There is also something to be said about 14 year-olds being allowed to stay out well into the early morning by their parents. There are faults on all sides of the issue. What needs to happen is that, now that the world is giving attention to the rioters, for the violence to stop and for some real attention be given to their problems. I wish a Martin Luther King would appear from one of these communities and channel the anger and frustration of the rioters in a more constructive way. If this doesn’t happen, I fear any concessions these people will get will be weak tea, while the world’s attention fades, and the problem is only temporarily quieted.

I’ve talked much about finding a “real solution” to the problem. It is very easy to say that, but social ills are especially difficult to combat because they reside in the minds of people. It will be a long, slow process to fix this situation and all the French government can really do at this point is show the people that it’s willing to undertake such a large task in the long run. Public works and beautification projects in the banlieus, afterschool programs for elementary and highschool students, diversity programs in schools not just in the banlieus… this is the direction I see as best suited to a real solution, which I’d estimate to be complete after a two generations. Old ways of thinking die hard. For all this, of course, I give about a .0003563% chance in hell of happening, but it’s nice to dream.

End the violence. Find a real solution. Listen to your people.

-Vic

Note: If any readers do not find the terms “blacks” or “black people” sufficiently politically correct, you have my sincere apology; those terms were simply the easiest to use to maintain a higher level of readability (“peoples of African descent” is a bit bulky).

A similar opinion (that I read after writing this post) can be found at Alternet. Alternet, I find, is rather leftist. Then again, so am I.