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Jewish World Review Nov. 7, 2005 / 5 Mar-Cheshvan, 5766 Some things that Americans can teach the French By Froma Harrop
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Has anyone in the United States noticed that the Paris suburbs
have been racked by race riots for a week? That youths in these ghettos are
opening fire on police?
You'd never know it from American media coverage. There's very
little of it on TV, despite the dramatic footage of burning cars. On CNN
Headline News, the French riots were given 20 seconds, wedged between an
item about Scooter Libby and one about how a musicians' strike at Radio City
wouldn't affect the Rockettes.
What's more astounding is that Americans, despite their frequent
delight in France-bashing, have not used the mayhem to turn a bright
spotlight onto the failings of French society. Here we have nine towns in
France consumed in what one French union leader called a "civil war," and
few American commentators are wagging their fingers over what's wrong with
France.
Compare that with 13 years ago, when the world's cameras trained
on the violence in Los Angeles. The L.A. riots became the No. 1 story across
the globe. The instant analysis from Europe was that the chickens of racial
injustice had come home to roost. And there was much self-satisfied clucking
about America being a messed-up place and Europe having gotten things right.
French President Francois Mitterrand used the L.A. riots to
defend France's generous welfare programs. The chaos in America, he said,
showed "that the social needs of any country must not be neglected."
The welfare benefits in France are still pretty nifty, and yet
the immigrant neighborhoods around Paris are exploding in fury. Something
else must be going on. The popular explanation from official France is that
the rioters are mostly impoverished Muslims, whipped up by an extremist
clergy. There's truth in that, but there's a deeper root cause, which is
harder to fix: racism. The immigrants and their children feel like
foreigners in a country that will never accept them as truly its own. The
French want them to quietly clean their toilets, and then disappear at night.
A similar story unfolded after this summer's London bombings.
The perpetrators were Muslim radicals, but the real shock was that the
bombers were not immigrants. They were their British-born children, who had
received all the public benefits of being British, but felt only rage toward
their country. All the bennies in the world won't cover a sense of being
reviled.
Americans may have something to teach their European friends.
The United States absorbs immigrants by the millions. The immigrants don't
riot. They work, and they assimilate. It could be that Americans' devotion
to working — often ridiculed by leisure-loving Europeans — translates into
greater respect for people who work. Ours is a more open society.
Perhaps Americans haven't applied a sharp cultural critique
because what little coverage they see from Europe tends skip over the ugly
parts. In his book "The United States of Europe," Washington Post writer
T.R. Reid portrays a continent of unending pleasure and comfort. His Europe
is about young people taking their bullet trains from Madrid to weekend
skiing in the Alps; first-class health coverage; pure food; and secure
pensions. But the 300-page book devotes only two sentences to Islamic
immigrants, mainly a dry reference to the growth in their numbers.
Eerily, the sparks that ignited the violence in Los Angeles and
the Paris suburbs were virtually identical: resentment over perceived abuse
by police. In Los Angeles, the trigger was the jury acquittal of the
officers caught beating Rodney King, a black man, on film. In France, it was
the death of two North African youths, electrocuted when they touched a
power transformer. The rioters say police were chasing the young men. The
police say that was not the case.
In 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton went to South
Central Los Angeles and appealed for calm. This week, French President
Jacques Chirac is appealing for calm, though from the safety of the
government offices in Paris.
The two conflicts reflect very different political and cultural
histories, but both stem from a deep sense of disenfranchisement by people
of color. When it comes to matters of race, Americans have come quite a
distance in 13 years. The French really haven't started the journey yet.
Perhaps Americans do have something to teach them.
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© 2005 Creators Syndicate |
Mitch Albom | |||||||||||
