For the last three weeks, young men in France have been burning cars, clashing with police, and generally terrorizing poor neighborhoods on the outskirts of Paris and other cities. This has, of course, provoked consternation among Europeans, but my impression is that many Boston College students, like Americans in general, have been confused by the situation. Unfortunately, reading Kevin Boland's editorial in last week's Heights ("France's problems stem from socialist government's refusal to recognize all") would be less than helpful. Some clarifications are in order.
First, some background. Boland refers to an "immigrant" population. In fact, the large majority of rioters were born in France, into families which have lived in France for decades, and were an important and unacknowledged part of France's extraordinary postwar recovery. In short, they are French. They do, however, face significant discrimination because of their origins in Africa and North Africa (not often the Middle East, as Boland claims) and because many of them are Muslim. The second point of confusion for many Americans is the fact that the riots are occurring in suburbs. French cities are, from an American perspective, inside-out. The richest live in the inner cities while the ghettos are on the outskirts.
The larger problem many Americans have when observing European politics is that reactions that are entirely motivated by the need to score political points are almost always wrong. Such is the case with Boland's article.
While many smart Europeans are taking an honest look at the situation and trying to figure out what is to be done, Boland comes up with an entirely predictable answer: Problems in France? Serves those socialists right. But his barely concealed "schadenfreude" blinds him to the irony of his argument.
In fact, and this is the least excusable of Boland's mistakes, France does not have a socialist government. President Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, the two men American conservatives learned to hate during the French opposition to the Iraq war, are both from the center-right Union for a Populat Movement. So is Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who is probably the most prominent French advocate of the economic liberalism that Boland sees as the solution.
In France, as in the United States, it is the right which has difficulty recognizing racial minorities and the poor. The French policy of ignoring ethnic difference is entirely analogous to the Republican party's opposition to affirmative action. Conservative "tough on crime" posturing is what led Sarkozy to refer to the rioters as "scum," and to send hundreds of thuggish riot police to the suburbs, which only added to the tension. (L'Humanité said it best when it referred to him as a a pyromaniac firefighter.)
And the "stratified society" that Boland sees in France is exactly what economic liberalism has done to the United States: the percentage of the American population living under the poverty line is 12 percent, compared to 6.5 percent in France. The lowest 10 percent of French households account for 2.8 percent of the national income, while in America it's only 1.8 percent. (Stats taken from the CIA World Factbook.)
Boland's opinions on economic matters are legitimate and indeed commonplace among free market believers - although they are not as set in stone as I suspect he believes. His mistake is to think they are completely applicable to the current French crisis. It would be ridiculous for me to deny that France faces serious social problems. Boland is right that unemployment is among them. So is racism.
Students who want more enlightening opinions on these matters would do well to follow the European press at the BBC web site or at www.signandsight.com, an excellent English language site from Germany.
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