When does pluralism fail?
That's what I wonder reading the rather amazing story of the Paris riots, now on their ninth consecutive night:
The unrest, which has also spread to other parts of France with large North African and Arab populations, prompted the American and Russian governments to warn citizens visiting Paris to avoid its poor, outlying neighborhoods. France reduced train service to Charles de Gaulle Airport after two trains became targets of rioters earlier in the week.
A handicapped woman riding a bus in the Sevran suburb suffered burns over 20 percent of her body Thursday night after two youths doused the inside of the bus with a flammable liquid and set it on fire. Youths have also burned cars in Dijon, in the east, and in Marseille, in the south.
The woman and the busdriver who rescued her survived. So far, the only actual deaths have been the two African-French kids who initially were electrocuted while hiding from police in an electrical substation. Compared to the Pakistan earthquake whose death toll is going to hit 100,000 and which received similarly muted coverage across the Atlantic, the rioting and the associated property damange in France is pretty tame stuff. The rioters are angry for sure, but they're not characters out of A Clockwork Orange -- and they're not on a jihad. The mayor of one of the towns where the riots are taking place says that "In a few days' time they'll return to normal life ... everyone has now had enough; parents have realised this has to stop. They are starting to keep kids at home."
I would guess that he's probably right. And protests without killing are a big improvement on protests with killing. Still, the sort of frustration that can fuel nine consecutive nights of torching cars in one of the world's biggest cities is unnerving -- not the sort of thing we expect to see these days in the First World. And it's going to present a further challenge to the case for European integration and for pluralism in general. Most of the kids rioting are, according to reports, second or third generation immigrants. They can't find work and feel alientated from French society and descriminated against by a politics that blows warm and cold on immigration and integration, revisits its national migrant policy constantly, and is informed in its rhetoric by the need to accomodate the nationalist far right. But the rioting will embolden the hard right and provoke more legislative wrangling and more anti-immigrant, anti-Muslem editorializing: and that just leads to more alienation, more distrust, worse employment prospects for Muslems and increased hostility between the French and the Algerians, each of whom feels itself the victim of other's needs. It's exactly the kind of lose-lose cycle that always traps opposing groups battling over the same resources (land, jobs) and nursing histoical grudges in a mixed society. Obviously, pluralism is possible. You can't live in Vancouver and not believe that. You can't look at how far African Americans have come in the US in a century and not believe that. Pluralism is possible and beautiful and necessary and maybe even inevitable. But I'm not sure how inevitable it is in a country with a long-run national unemployment rate of over 10%.
Update: The New York Times has a great piece on all these issues and on how the French approach racial integration differently from the Americans.
The unrest, which has also spread to other parts of France with large North African and Arab populations, prompted the American and Russian governments to warn citizens visiting Paris to avoid its poor, outlying neighborhoods. France reduced train service to Charles de Gaulle Airport after two trains became targets of rioters earlier in the week.
A handicapped woman riding a bus in the Sevran suburb suffered burns over 20 percent of her body Thursday night after two youths doused the inside of the bus with a flammable liquid and set it on fire. Youths have also burned cars in Dijon, in the east, and in Marseille, in the south.
The woman and the busdriver who rescued her survived. So far, the only actual deaths have been the two African-French kids who initially were electrocuted while hiding from police in an electrical substation. Compared to the Pakistan earthquake whose death toll is going to hit 100,000 and which received similarly muted coverage across the Atlantic, the rioting and the associated property damange in France is pretty tame stuff. The rioters are angry for sure, but they're not characters out of A Clockwork Orange -- and they're not on a jihad. The mayor of one of the towns where the riots are taking place says that "In a few days' time they'll return to normal life ... everyone has now had enough; parents have realised this has to stop. They are starting to keep kids at home."
I would guess that he's probably right. And protests without killing are a big improvement on protests with killing. Still, the sort of frustration that can fuel nine consecutive nights of torching cars in one of the world's biggest cities is unnerving -- not the sort of thing we expect to see these days in the First World. And it's going to present a further challenge to the case for European integration and for pluralism in general. Most of the kids rioting are, according to reports, second or third generation immigrants. They can't find work and feel alientated from French society and descriminated against by a politics that blows warm and cold on immigration and integration, revisits its national migrant policy constantly, and is informed in its rhetoric by the need to accomodate the nationalist far right. But the rioting will embolden the hard right and provoke more legislative wrangling and more anti-immigrant, anti-Muslem editorializing: and that just leads to more alienation, more distrust, worse employment prospects for Muslems and increased hostility between the French and the Algerians, each of whom feels itself the victim of other's needs. It's exactly the kind of lose-lose cycle that always traps opposing groups battling over the same resources (land, jobs) and nursing histoical grudges in a mixed society. Obviously, pluralism is possible. You can't live in Vancouver and not believe that. You can't look at how far African Americans have come in the US in a century and not believe that. Pluralism is possible and beautiful and necessary and maybe even inevitable. But I'm not sure how inevitable it is in a country with a long-run national unemployment rate of over 10%.
Update: The New York Times has a great piece on all these issues and on how the French approach racial integration differently from the Americans.
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