The Rebellion of France’s Poor: An Act of Anger, Not of Hatred

By Samah Jabr


	French gendarmes talk with youths at Venissieux Nov. 12, 2005, on the third night of curfew for minors in Lyons and 10 other towns in the Rhone following 15 nights of unrest in French cities and suburbs, during which more than 8,000 vehicles were torched. Over 2,500 people were arrested, the youngest aged 10 (AFP Photo/Jean-Philippe Ksiazek).

OVER A period of three weeks, depressed French suburbs with large immigrant Arab and African populations were the scene of intense riots. Although car-burning and civil unrest have been a normal, though little-reported, occurrence in the banlieues of France, the duration, intensity and extent of the recent violence was unparalleled since the 1968 demonstrations by French students and workers.

The clashes were triggered by a tragic event in Clichy-sous-Bois. Two boys, Bouna Traore, 15, and Ziad Benna, 17, while fleeing from police, clambered over the wall of an electricity station and were electrocuted, dying immediately. Hearing of their deaths, youths in the suburb went on a rampage, burning vehicles and vandalizing public buildings. Riots and clashes spread from Clichy-sous-Bois to several other suburbs—of Dijon, Marseille, Lille, Rouen, Rennes, Toulouse and Normandy—and inside the capital itself. The young protesters used mobile telephones to relay police movements, and created Internet web logs urging youth in other regions of France to join the uprising. The nationwide crisis was marked by extensive arson and clashes with police, setting ablaze schools and shops, ransacking police stations and vandalizing shopping and business centers. The government had waived taxes and fees for companies setting up in deprived areas if they hired at least one-third of their work forces locally. Because they failed to do that, some were targeted by the youths.

Just before the unrest broke out, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy—known for his media-accompanied visits to poor neighborhoods to encourage police action against rebellious youths—declared a “war without mercy” on violence in the suburbs. “I’ve said they have to be cleaned—we’re going to make them as clean as a whistle,” he told regional police chiefs. In Argenteuil, a suburb northwest of Paris, Sarkozy was pelted with stones and bottles for describing rebellious youths in such districts as “rabble” and vowing to clean their districts “with a power-hose.”

Sarkozy’s inflammatory vocabulary has fanned anger among young citizens of France’s banlieues, where they live in horrible conditions in ugly high-rise housing projects, and where education is substandard, job opportunities lacking and social services decreasing. Even the few who beat the odds by obtaining a vocational certificate or a university education are five times more likely to end up unemployed than their white counterparts. All their lives these French-born youths have been excluded from mainstream society, torn between who they really are and the otherness the society imposes on them.

The neighborhoods in which they live are constantly targeted in police crackdowns on criminal gangs, while the media systematically stereotypes and stigmatizes their culture and religion. It is not uncommon to see police chasing an Arab- or African-looking fellow in the Métro, searching his pockets, making him stand with arms raised. Frequently insulted in public by the police, many naturally return the insult and end up in prison. It is no surprise that 60 percent of prisoners in France are of a foreign origin.

A physician friend of mine, while searching for a room to rent in mainly French neighborhoods, had people hang up on her as soon as they heard her Arab name. Not even President Jacques Chirac denies that employers refuse to consider job applicants who have a non-French name, a suburban zip code or a darker skin color.

In fact, however, although it does not perceive itself as a multicultural nation, France is a land of immigrants—with more than 20 percent of its residents being immigrants or born in France to immigrant parents. Instead, its national identity is founded on the demand for unconditional assimilation and cultural uniformity, rendering immigrant cultures almost invisible.

Another factor contributing to this crisis is France’s colonial history and the Algerian war, which is still alive in the hearts of many French. Promises of equality and integration ring hollow for the republic’s colonial victims, who, instead of being compensated for their wartime suffering, continue to endure such post-colonial afflictions as racism, alienation, and economic and political exploitation.

Unlike their parents, who, as immigrants, accepted a lower social status, members of the younger, native-born generation are raising their fists in anger against a society that is pushing them to the edge.

Although the rioting has ended—with some 4,700 youth imprisoned, amid vows to “throw out” foreigners caught rioting—the national crisis is is not over.

The French parliament’s approval of extending the state of emergency until mid-February indicates that the government fears the riots could flare up again at any moment. The state of emergency gives regional authorities the power to impose curfews, conduct day-and-night searches of homes and monitor phone calls. Forty French towns enacted an overnight curfew barring youths under the age of 18 from being outside between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. without adult supervision, and Paris police took the exceptional step of banning all public gatherings that could “provoke or encourage disorder.” These measures, however, could instead stoke the frustration of those living in the troubled areas.

The government’s response to minorities’ complaints was limited to encouraging business leaders to implement workforce diversity, creating a voluntary task force to help youths find work, and developing plans to lower from 18 to 14 the age for failing pupils to start technical training. It rejected calls for “positive [reverse] discrimination” to help minorities find jobs, on the grounds that “positive discrimination or setting quotas for hiring minorities has no place in a state built on the belief that everyone should have equal opportunities.” This despite the fact that, compared to sons of “les vrais Français” (“real French people,” as many white French refer to themselves,) sons of immigrants enter the competition for life opportunities at a great disadvantage, due to their parents’ inferior education and lower socioeconomic status, not to mention their skin color and underprivileged neighborhoods.

Nor are the sexist, racist, Islamophobic attitudes limited to the unofficial level. Recently a Moroccan woman, Chetouani El Khamsa, who for eight years has lived legally in France, where her four children were born, has been refused a long-term residence card because she covers her hair with an Islamic headscarf, according to her lawyer, Pascale Torgemen. The sub-prefect in the Paris suburb of Raincy noted that, during her interview, El Khamsa wore a headscarf “entirely covering [her] neck and the roots of [her] hair, comparable to a hijab, sign of belonging to a fundamentalist Islam.” But the law issued last year banning religious symbols does not apply outside of classrooms, and Al Khamsa complied with Sarkozy’s order that women should not wear head coverings for official identity photos.

Although the young people involved in the recent unrest are French by birth, language, education and culture, the French media refer to them as “Arabo-Mosulman.” But this crisis is not racial in origin, nor are these sons of immigrants traitors who detest their country. Instead, as indicated by their noticeable avoidance of targeting civilians, the rioting youth were acting out of anger, not hatred.

Because they have no political voice, they expressed their anger at the state’s nullification of their rights, lack of recognition, and disrespect in a manner wrong enough, unfortunately, to gain the attention of their government, the media and the world.

Although France is home to Europe's largest Muslim community, estimated as 10 percent of the population, the riots had little, if any, religious dimension, with those taking part speaking more of protesting the misery of their lives.

Some commentators continued to warn of a “global jihad,” citing incidents in Belgium and Germany which also have large Arab and Muslim immigrant communities. Islamophobic voices grew louder, referring to French Muslims as “barbarians” and linking the riots with a worldwide anti-Western crusade by Muslim fundamentalists. Ironically, many of these voices identify themselves with the events of 1968, when rioting students also vandalized public and private property and caused civil unrest. At that time, communist student-worker protesters forced the country to confront their anger stemming from a lack of social liberties. In an effort to further distance recent events from France’s historic reality, some media described the the unrest as an “intifada,” the Arab word referring to the Palestinian popular resistance to Israeli occupation. The events in France were not about occupation, however, but about social equality.

While some candidates for office might use the crisis to increase their chances for election, the riots were not simply a passing event or isolated antisocial acts by mobs, as the rightists would have us believe. Instead they were a reaction to France’s inept social system, exposing the dark side of the glamorous French civilization. No one brags about equality more than the French—and no one practices what they preach less. The remedy to this situation cannot be limited to the question of security; the causes of this absence of integration must be tackled—and must transcend personal political aspiration. There is no question that the French model needs reforms—or that it will take time and patience to resolve the country’s long-standing cultural and human disparities.

Samah Jabr, a native Jerusalemite, is a physician currently studying in France.