"Youths" riot, loot, burn Paris

You don't need to act dumb.

In this instance, the riots largely involved black people. Past riots in France have sometimes involved black people, sometimes white, sometimes a mixture of both.

Why were they the ones rioting this time? That's already been explained to you. See earlier in the thread. Refresh your memory.

I don't know whether it is hard or not. But neither do you.

So, some people can't afford sizeable sums. Duh!

Students do not have to pay off their HECS debts until their income exceeds a certain threshhold. Didn't you know that?

I have made no excuses for bad behaviour. You're reading things into my posts that aren't there, to match your racist expectations.

 

Here are a few opinions on these riots, from different sources. For more, see here:

http://www.signandsight.com/features/491.html

I have emphasised certain parts in bold.

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Süddeutsche Zeitung, 07.11.2005

Clemens Pornschlegel looks to the rap world for answers. For him the burning banlieues are not just a French phenomenon. "The hatred in the immigrant ghettos is aimed at the Western world which, as rapper Akhenaton from Marseille puts it, is "abastion of absurdity" into which it is impossible to integrate. "Only gangsta as identification / yields a million / stinking jackals, and the darky / is the mangy / product of racists / from countries with profit lusts". (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

Daniel Geiselhart lets French rapper Fofo Adom'Megaa aka Rost explain the situation. "The older kids all went to school, some even went onto college, but still none of them can find work. The big brothers can no longer convince the younger ones that there's any point going to school. After all it hasn't done them any good. Now these teenagers are setting the cars on fire." (Süddeutsche Zeitung)


Die Welt, 07.11.2005

Alex Capus, an author living in Paris, puts things in perspective: "When the suburbs of Paris burn, you don't notice a thing in the chic districts of the inner city." If you see someone with dark skin in Saint Germain or Auteuil, he writes, you know it's the street sweeper. "You don't have to tell the youth in the suburbs that they have no place in the inner city. Wherever they go, the police show up. For white people state violence is invisible, for black people it's everywhere. The children of immigrants should go to school in the banlieues, and think about their future. Many do exactly that. But it doesn't help. Because whether they drop out of high school at 15 or leave with top marks, they're going to be unemployed anyway. And if one of them does manage to have a career as graphic designer or tax collector, he still remains a second-class citizen. If he wants to go to a disco in Saint Germain on Friday night, the bouncers still won't let him in."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 08.11.2005

Author Francois Bon, who has done considerable work with young people in the suburbs, voices his depression at the violence in France. "For years people have been struggling against the general disdain, and gained only centimetres at a time. The suburb of Pantin, where I'm now giving writing workshops, has a community youth centre where a dozen people, often locals, help out. But in the end you come up against a wall – and all that's left is fear. It strikes me that my years of work here are at a dead end. Last June, when I was doing a series of portraits for arte with two trade apprentices, a gang of 10- and 11-year-olds forced us to turn around in our tracks. They were still children, not even young men. And three weeks ago in Pantin I was about to give a workshop in the library for young hairdressing students. At first five, then ten youths physically prevented me from teaching literature to their sisters and girlfriends. Suddenly the sweat shirts and hoods were there, and showed me, the 'white' guy, what it was like to be disdained. It's appalling."


Berliner Zeitung, 09.11.2005

"The French will have to make time to consider why they are so ill-prepared to understand the current crisis and why therefore they are threatening to exacerbate it," writes French sociologist Alain Touraine. "It is not just the 'under-privileged' who need to change their attitude to society. French society can also become a threat in itself if it fails to combine integration and cultural differences, universalism and individual cultural rights, if it can't break down the walls between a republicanism riddled with prejudices and group identities based on aggression. ... We can no longer pretend that France is the protector of universal values, and that in this mission it has the right to make second-class citizens of anyone who doesn't fit the bill of this ideal 'national ego'".


die tageszeitung, 12.11.2005

In another interview French sociologist Michel Pialoux makes an interesting differentiation between the sexes: "Girls from the immigrant milieu are more successful at school and at entering the job market. Unemployment is higher among young men. This feeds the youths' despair, and it also feeds their machismo. Another factor is that street culture is typical male territory."


Die Tageszeitung, 08.12.2005

Dorthea Hahn interviews French sociologist Dounia Bouzar (more here) on the unrest in the French banlieues. Dounia contests any explanations for the riots based on ethnic or religious motives: "It's simply young people who grew up without a culture. Because there is no culture whose values include burning cars. For the most part, those who set cars alight come from families that have been here for three or four generations. Only a few of them were petty criminals. But it's true that we are facing a major problem. Never before have children in France set their schools on fire."


Le Monde, 09.11.2005

According to Tariq Ramadam, the multicultural British and the republican French model of integration have both failed and the riots are a social rather than religious or ethnic issue. "People seem to be obsessed by the idea that Islam causes problems, that it represents a threat to social order. We are witnessing a case of political brinkmanship, a dangerous strategy that attempts to turn fears of Islam into short-term electoral advantage, using arguments that were once restricted to parties of the extreme right: security discourse, national preferences and discrimination are all being thrown together with the issue of immigration. The obsession with integration and identity is symptomatic of a dual phenomenon: on one hand the inability to hear those Muslim voices that for years have been saying Islam is not the problem and that millions of Muslims have embraced their identities as Europeans. And on the other the lack of political resolve to address the pressing social issues."


Polish voices

Plus - Minus, 12.11.2005

In the weekend edition of the Polish paper Rzeczpospolita, Dariusz Rosiak analyses the spectacular collapse of French integration policy. "After 15 years of smouldering conflict, the French still don't know – or don't want to know – what lies behind the immigrants' hatred for France. The reasons can be found in the republican tradition, and how it is implemented in the French suburbs. The noble principle of equality of all, which among other things leads to there being no statistics taken about ethnic or religious minorities, is unfortunately a fiction. Poles may well soon face the same problem: "No matter what we think of ourselves, from the perspective of a Vietnamese, Kenyan or Chechnian we are among the richest countries in the world. Their work, their culture, could be an enrichment to us, but can we convince them of the advantages of integration?"

 

Like your huge chip about foreign students who are more successful, hard working and intelligent than you?

If you don't understand a concept, educate yourself.

When do you plan to begin?

All I see from you is dismissal of the opinions of other people. You don't actually have any views of your own that you are able to express.