Why France Fries

It is with surreal fascination that we watch France set aflame. As with all abnormalities we naturally ask—or SHOULD ask—“why?”

Already there are those French haters who relate this conflagration to “Islamic terrorism” and loosely to the Iraqi war and France’s refusal to join it. Yet the reasons for the current inferno have absolutely nothing to do with either of these shallow and self-serving rationales.

As this excellent article http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5328931-103390,00.html from the Guardian details, the angry young French of North African descent are rioting for much the same reasons as American blacks did in the 60’s: a dynamite stick of poverty, discrimination and indifference lit by an emotionally-charged event.

In 1968 it was the King assassination, today it was the electrocution (apparently accidental) of youths evading French police.

That the impoverished immigrants--most brought over 50 years ago from to do much of France’s dirty work--are Muslim is of no consequence. They were long ago sequestered in suburban ghettoes, treated like third-class citizens and recently made to suffer 20% cuts in social programs.

France’s official non-discrimination law, a well-intentioned ideal born of the Revolution, tragically gave cover to the very real and human discrimination that permeates French society.

Hopefully, the recent events will breed positive change in French culture. Ideally it will cause their leaders to accurately assess root causes and effective, just solutions to them.

Or they may ignore the “why?” and focus solely on punishing the perpetrators. But like cutting weeds at the surface, those riotous roots will grow ever stronger.

And they won’t stop at the French border.


Rfd 11/11/05