From the Ground in France

Forwarded from a Mr. D. Vaillant:

Very kind of you to inquire about my welfare--I and my family are
well. There have been isolated incidents of vandalism, car torching
around Bordeaux, but this city is known for its somnolence relative
to the country at large.

We rely on French media and e-mail for news of what's going on across
France. My sense is that CNN et. al. have been making it sound like
World War III has broken out. I don't know how well you remember the
1992 LA rebellion, but it was a media circus and suggested imminent
race wars when the truth was rather different.

That said, it's disturbing to see how angry and nihilistic working-
class youth are in France. Unemployment is very high here and has
been disproportionately high in these troubled suburbs. The policy
of the French republic is not to acknowledge ethno-cultural
differences in keeping social statistics making it hard to find
reliable data, but I wager the Maghreb population and their
descendants aren't' doing too well.

What's shocking is unlike major American cities where you see people
of all colors and cultures in professional occupations, on the
streets of the business district and in politics, you just don't see
anything but white faces in positions of power and authority here.
That's a stark difference, but one that France's republican ideology
has deliberately played down.

The quick fix that an American would offer is to have affirmative
action--but to do so is to open a can of worms for basic ideas of
"French" identity that will be painful indeed for a country that has
avoided in some ways the worst kinds of racism that we associate with
American history, even as it has pursued a neo-colonial/republican
ideology that insists on denying that race matters. I'm no expert on
French history, but that's my sense.

Hope your having a good fall despite the stress of applications.

cheers,
Derek
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As far as I know, France has very little civil rights legislation, because they insist that all Frenchmen are equals. I think the latest riots have proven without a shadow of a doubt that a second-class citizenry does exist in France. Comments?