{"id":913,"date":"2005-11-17T19:52:02","date_gmt":"2005-11-17T19:52:02","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:09:27","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:09:27","slug":"dirigisme_and_r","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=913","title":{"rendered":"Dirigisme and Rioting"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> looked kinda cool in French dorm rooms as well.<\/p>\n

The French are politically progressive, officially antiracist, and yet somehow a sullen underclass has grown in the suburbs. How did that happen?<\/p>\n

Well, let me tell you a personal story that may cast some light on the subject.
\nAfter 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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

And she decided to leave France because she didn’t think she could get a good job.<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Take a look at this story<\/a> in the BBC about the only Arab to head a French public company, Yazid Sabeg.<\/p>\n

Yazid Sabeg is a rarity among France’s business elite. He is North African. And those two facts, he believes, are not unconnected.<\/p>\n

\n“A lot of people don’t like my face,” says the 55-year-old industrialist.<\/p>\n

\nWhether or not corporate France is “viscerally racist”, as Mr Sabeg contends, it certainly lacks diversity.<\/p>\n

\nThe chief executive of CS, a big communications group, he is the only person of North African origin to head a leading French company.<\/p>\n

\nHis 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.<\/p>\n

\nIn the early 1990s Mr Sabeg took over CS, a contractor in the sensitive field of secure communications for defense and aerospace.<\/p>\n

\nThe takeover met with fierce resistance. “The establishment, notably the military establishment, did not like it,” he recalls.<\/p>\n

\nIn 1991 intelligence services wrote a scathing report about Mr Sabeg, based on false rumours that he was financing Algerian militants. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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<\/i>.<\/p>\n

One advantage of the American model is our openness; it matters who you know, but a whole lot less than anywhere else.<\/p>\n

That’s a feature, not a bug.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}