THE FIRES THIS TIME
the hate that la haine made
I've been following the Paris riots in the news for close to two weeks now and am frankly, incredulous. Not around the the roots of the rioting (angry youth of color? You don't say) or the contradictions of its costs (local communities suffer the most since rampant arson, by nature, tends to be rather indiscriminate). What I'm amazed at is the fact that they've gone on now for almost two weeks. From an American p.o.v., you'd think the French government would have rounded up their equivalent of the National Guard (if there is a French equivalent) and had folks out there gassing and shooting folks within the first three days (or as one of my friends put it, "the first three hours"). It says a lot about how pummeled into submission Americans are when any riot lasting longer than a day makes it sound like a country is on the verge of collapse.
Maybe American youth just need to watch The Battle of Algiers more. Anyways...
The blog Black Looks has been running excellent analysis on the roots and evolution of the rioting (thanks to hiphopmusic for the recommendation). One thing that cannot be stressed enough though is that one has to be very wary of any news report trying to explain the riots as a result of religious beliefs - that's a red herring so big you could feed a small city with it. The issue here isn't over religious fundamentalism any more than the Civil Rights Movement was lead by "Baptist extremists."
As with Katrina and a host of other unfortunate examples 2005 has offered up, this seems to be about race, class, and second-class citizenship. After all, when you have a population of youth facing years of entrenched racism, then add chronic unemployment, the volatility practically ignites itself (of course, the belief that two youth died while running from the police doesn't hurt either).
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