So why were they rioting in France? I discount the jihadi theory; I tend to think that bored, angsty kids tend to take up the banners of romantic nihilists pretty consistently; those old Huey Newton posters looked kinda cool in French dorm rooms as well.
The French are politically progressive, officially antiracist, and yet somehow a sullen underclass has grown in the suburbs. How did that happen?
Well, let me tell you a personal story that may cast some light on the subject.
After grad school my French then-girlfriend and later first wife and I went and spent some time in France. I was finishing my master’s thesis, and we both had vague notions of coming and living in France. Now she was a smart cookie (not too smart, given that she married me…) who had a degree in Aerospace engineering from ENSAE in Toulouse, and a Master’s in Math from Berkeley. Her dad was a senior executive at a huge French corporation. So she was talented and connected.
And she decided to leave France because she didn’t think she could get a good job.
And as for me getting a good job in France…except with a multinational or a US Corporation, forget it. I wasn’t a member of the ‘club’ – hadn’t gone to the right French schools, wasn’t from a good family (although my in-law family could and would have helped).
The reality is – that like all bureaucratically driven societies (with both public and private bureaucracies) who you know is the be-all and end-all of access and ultimately a good predictor of success.
Take a look at this story in the BBC about the only Arab to head a French public company, Yazid Sabeg.
Yazid Sabeg is a rarity among France’s business elite. He is North African. And those two facts, he believes, are not unconnected.
“A lot of people don’t like my face,” says the 55-year-old industrialist.
Whether or not corporate France is “viscerally racist”, as Mr Sabeg contends, it certainly lacks diversity.
The chief executive of CS, a big communications group, he is the only person of North African origin to head a leading French company.
His father, an Algerian worker, came to France in 1952. Young Yazid studied hard and worked as a civil servant before setting up his own finance company.
In the early 1990s Mr Sabeg took over CS, a contractor in the sensitive field of secure communications for defense and aerospace.
The takeover met with fierce resistance. “The establishment, notably the military establishment, did not like it,” he recalls.
In 1991 intelligence services wrote a scathing report about Mr Sabeg, based on false rumours that he was financing Algerian militants.
Again, who you know. For the smallest business, you need permits, leases, financing – and the reality is that access to those is extremely limited for the African and Arab residents of the cite.
One advantage of the American model is our openness; it matters who you know, but a whole lot less than anywhere else.
That’s a feature, not a bug.
The plural of anecdote is not data.
But still, my knowledge of France’s employment system directly agrees with yours.
My wife’s cousin is married to a French citizen of Moroccan descent, who is considering leaving France because the combination of the social network system and discrimination has essentially condemned him to unemployment.
In my opinion, the cultural variable is at least as important as the economic policy variable for explaining France’s problems.
“The plural of anecdote is not data.”
What a great turn of a phrase!
I think that the Muslims culture many of the rioters embrace (in different forms) has a role in the revolt. But more like a rallying flag than a real ideology.
Your analysis seems to make much more sense, especially for me – also in Italy knowing the right people can get you a lifetime job (I’d never take that road, because the idea of working all my life in higway toll stations is horrific for me).
What you describe is what social scientists call an “ascriptive society” meaning that there isn’t much social mobility (either up or down). Historically the US has generally had much higher social mobility than France, but several current “revisionist” researchers are claiming that the situation has changed (Hutton). I don’t buy it, myself. Ascriptive societies tend to have long periods of calm punctuated by periods of extreme upheaval and violence.
I had very much the same experience in Quebec when I lived there. To practice as an agronomist you needed a licence from the Ordre des Agronomes, who refused even to let me take the test even though I speak French with near-native fluency. Odd, I thought, in a province 15% anglo, that there was not one anglo licenced by the Ordre des Agronomes.
They told me I couldn’t qualify or even take the test because my degrees in agriculture (Alberta and Ontario) were “not relevant” to Quebec. That’s the way they do it with these things.
So I was officially an agronomist in 50 states, 9 provinces and two territories, but not in Quebec. Eventually after ten years of working as an agronomist in Quebec — much of that time _training_ other agronomists in the Quebec ag extension service — (and daring them to prosecute me, which they could do), they offered me _honorary_ membership in the Ordre.
I refused and shortly thereafter moved out of Quebec.
I have seen absolutely the same problem in Haiti, and the contrast even with the DR on the same island is mind-boggling. Compare the former French colonies in Africa with former British ones. Compare Vietnam with India. You get the picture.
There is a profound, congenital, and ultimately fatal defect in the entire French culture that consistently leads to revolution rather than evolution. Dommage.
I buy this theory much easier than others i’ve heard. Bon courage!
The US is indeed still a much more open society; however, the increasing degree-worship (especially the worship of degrees from “elite” institutions) threatens to create the same kind of problems we are now seeing in France.
Well…actually…
It’s not who you know.
It’s not even what you know.
It’s what you know about who you know.
Surely that works as well in France as it does in Washington…dare I say possibly better?
Yes I tend to agree that the jihadi explanation is wide of the mark. There wasn’t any compelling evidence of collusion with Islamist groups, or even pre-planning. Seemed to be a spontaneous uprising triggered by the death of the two teens.
The French have been living in a condition of hypocrisy for decades. They present as socially enlightened and above racism, and yet they practice a form of cultural elitism based on “Frenchness”. They can be extremely exclusionary and clannish, while ironically clinging to the notion that they are egalitarian. A strange form of cultural schizophrenia to be sure.
While I don’t doubt that racism/discrimination played a part in this, there was also a nascent Islamist awareness that helped to unify the rioters identity. Shouts of “Allah Akbar” accompanied much of the carnage. Many of these youths identify with a brand of Islamist chic via the style of hip hop they favor, and have an obscure notion of an Islamic umma. Sure, most of this is derivative and more of a fashion statement than anything else – but it nevertheless helped to give cohesion to the uprising.
Actually, not so much. I could elaborate, but if you’re a conservative or even an “armed liberal” academic, forget it. The Ph.D. isn’t worth squat. Not yet, anyway.
Well, here’s the thing. You have a nascent movement ready to rock and roll, and employment conditions very similar to 1930s Germany and Austria. The ground is well fertilized and the seed is ready. There’s just noting that warrants complacency here. Nothing at all…
I tend to agree that social conditions and the youthfull bravado of rioting may have something to do with the problems but lets not go completely social on the causes.
Several analysts were commenting three months ago on Islamic Terrorist groups promises to bring Jihad to France. The French govrnmen t broke up one such group just before the rioting started. Just because there are other reasons for an even to start does not mean we should discount the most obvious.
Ps:
PS. I have read the same story quoted in the main entry a number of times. Don’t you have any more.
When arab culture was immersed into Islam back in the first millenium, the entire arab culture was frozen in a time loop. Arab culture is permanently stuck in the violent and bloody ancient desert mentality unless Islam is reformed.
France is but a vague premonition of the chaos that is coming to western europe. The civilization of Plato, Newton, and Voltaire, is threatened by the throat slitters from the hot sands of arabia. Which is stronger?
Arab culture is permanently stuck in the violent and bloody ancient desert mentality
Dakslaw,
Arabs also found time to create beautiful architecture and did most of the heavy lifting in the development of algebra, but I guess any culture that condones “honor killing” is pretty violent.
Regarding the French, I am convinced that they could be one of the most racist societies on earth.
Well now that Al Queda may not be calling the shots on those marvelous riots does not mean that Islam has no role in the riots. The burning of so many churches, attacks against jews and the rest of those marvelous indicators of the Religion of Peace at work should give us some pause before we simply go oh well those darn kids.
Lets not forget that this wasn’t some limited attack but full scale around France rioting. Seems like those darn kids sure are organized.
And re: economic factors.
They don’t want to be part of Europe, they want Europe to be part of them, they don’t want people to respect them, they want people to fear them…
Finally now I understand how it was that the Brown Shirts overran Germany. People simply did not take them at their word…denial is a strong force that takes guts to break away from.
A somber Alain Finkielkraut weighs in, in Ha’aretz, no less.
(Actually, he commits professional hari kiri. Again.)
The outburst in France is a nihilistic one, but an understandable one.
One need not have been surprised.
The West with its religions now largely oriented towards materialism, has largely waged war against traditional societies held together by traditional religion.
Today ghettos of several European capitals are filled with masses of young men born and raised between the values of traditional and modern worlds. They see little possibility of living fully in the old way or in the new.
The values of the West has had a free ride. The Modern World is a product of that. It has had zilch imposed on it.
But the West tries to impose foreign ideas worldwide that contradict and destroy fundamental values of non Western Trad. societies.
And worldwide here are now tens of millions of Islamic youth who are ‘thusly’ alienated.
We can safely predict further outbursts, and not only in Paris.