November 14, 2005--"Frere Jacques [Chirac], Frere Jacques [Chirac]. Dormez Vous? Dormez Vous?"
OK, the Devil made me do this—I’m blogging again about The French even though I took the vow here not to.
But when they say, as they are now, that they don’t want to keep track of how millions of French citizens are faring, especially immigrants and the children of immigrants, because people in France, “have it in their heads that surveying by race or religion is bad [because] it’s something reserved for Americans and [therefore] we shouldn’t do it here,” well, that makes me crazy and thus here I go again.
This quote is from Yazid Sabeg, the only prominent Frenchman of Arab descent to head a publicly owned company. It was part of a story that appeared in the NY Times (link below), appropriately titled, “What Makes Someone French?” It was one in a series of stories seeking to understand what is behind the current “unrest” sweeping France.
It is by now pretty obvious what’s behind that unrest—Arab and African folks, even third generation “immigrants,” feel isolated and rejected by traditional French society. They may be citoyens and have all the rights that derive from the Revolution, but they are largely confined to suburban ghettos (don’t be thinking Scarsdale), undereducated, and substantially un- and underemployed.
At the heart of the matter is the French secular ideal that does not acknowledge the existence of religious or ethnic minorities: if you live in France and are a French citizen, you are, well French. There is no concept equivalent to ours where you can be Italian-American, Polish-American, African-American, Islamic-American. There are no hyphenated French, no Algerian-French or Senegalese-French. Just French.
Guess what—this noble, secular, non-racialist ideal isn’t working. Maybe we should regard it to be more of a social fiction that helps French elites and others of “French Stock” believe that if they do not allow kids to wear head scarves in schools they will thereby become French. Just impose this and voila, egalite!
The concept behind this ideal is that by officially ignoring ethnic differences the country will avoid the kind of social stratification that one finds in places such as, shall I say it, America. We in contrast do in fact acknowledge these differences and at times even pay attention to them. For the French to see this as a cause of instability and inequality surely misses the larger point—if the problems that are the result of racism are understood then it is possible to think about ways to perhaps ameliorate them. For example, we had a Civil Rights Movement and a Women’s Movement and Affirmative Action. Far from ideal, far from perfect, far from assuring egalite, but at least we at our best are on the case and there have been some improvements.
So what we find in France are all those cars ablaze. And what are we hearing from the leaders? Essentially, “Behave yourself.”
Quoted in another Times piece (linked), President Chirac said he would “wait until order is restored before reflecting on the causes of the violence” and, “When the time comes, I will share with you my reflections on the entirety of the problem.”
Dormez vous?
But when they say, as they are now, that they don’t want to keep track of how millions of French citizens are faring, especially immigrants and the children of immigrants, because people in France, “have it in their heads that surveying by race or religion is bad [because] it’s something reserved for Americans and [therefore] we shouldn’t do it here,” well, that makes me crazy and thus here I go again.
This quote is from Yazid Sabeg, the only prominent Frenchman of Arab descent to head a publicly owned company. It was part of a story that appeared in the NY Times (link below), appropriately titled, “What Makes Someone French?” It was one in a series of stories seeking to understand what is behind the current “unrest” sweeping France.
It is by now pretty obvious what’s behind that unrest—Arab and African folks, even third generation “immigrants,” feel isolated and rejected by traditional French society. They may be citoyens and have all the rights that derive from the Revolution, but they are largely confined to suburban ghettos (don’t be thinking Scarsdale), undereducated, and substantially un- and underemployed.
At the heart of the matter is the French secular ideal that does not acknowledge the existence of religious or ethnic minorities: if you live in France and are a French citizen, you are, well French. There is no concept equivalent to ours where you can be Italian-American, Polish-American, African-American, Islamic-American. There are no hyphenated French, no Algerian-French or Senegalese-French. Just French.
Guess what—this noble, secular, non-racialist ideal isn’t working. Maybe we should regard it to be more of a social fiction that helps French elites and others of “French Stock” believe that if they do not allow kids to wear head scarves in schools they will thereby become French. Just impose this and voila, egalite!
The concept behind this ideal is that by officially ignoring ethnic differences the country will avoid the kind of social stratification that one finds in places such as, shall I say it, America. We in contrast do in fact acknowledge these differences and at times even pay attention to them. For the French to see this as a cause of instability and inequality surely misses the larger point—if the problems that are the result of racism are understood then it is possible to think about ways to perhaps ameliorate them. For example, we had a Civil Rights Movement and a Women’s Movement and Affirmative Action. Far from ideal, far from perfect, far from assuring egalite, but at least we at our best are on the case and there have been some improvements.
So what we find in France are all those cars ablaze. And what are we hearing from the leaders? Essentially, “Behave yourself.”
Quoted in another Times piece (linked), President Chirac said he would “wait until order is restored before reflecting on the causes of the violence” and, “When the time comes, I will share with you my reflections on the entirety of the problem.”
Dormez vous?
posted by Steven Zwerling at
4:06 PM
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