November 11, 2005

French Introspection? Ooh La La!

Hatched by Dafydd

As if the New York Times has been reading blogs, they have started examining the question of France and whether or how much the French lack of a national identity is in part responsible for the non-assimilation of their Moslem immigrants.

Some choice quotations, all emphasis added by moi:

"I was born in Senegal when it was part of France," [Semou Diouf] said before putting the pipe in his mouth. "I speak French, my wife is French and I was educated in France." The problem, he added after pulling the pipe out of his mouth again, "is the French don't think I'm French."

That, in a nutshell, is what lies at the heart of the unrest that has swept France in the past two weeks: millions of French citizens, whether immigrants or the offspring of immigrants, feel rejected by traditional French society, which has resisted adjusting a vision of itself forged in fires of the French Revolution....

"People have it in their head that surveying by race or religion is bad, it's dirty, it's something reserved for Americans and that we shouldn't do it here," said Yazid Sabeg, the only prominent Frenchman of Arab descent at the head of a publicly listed French company. "But without statistics to look at, how can we measure the problem?"....

The idea behind France's republican ideal was that by officially ignoring ethnic differences in favor of a transcendent French identity, the country would avoid the stratification of society that existed before the French Revolution or the fragmentation that it now sees in multicultural models like the United States. But the French model, never updated, has failed, critics say. "France always talks about avoiding ghettoization, but it has already happened," Mr. Sabeg said, adding that people are separated in the housing projects, in their schools and in their heads [Yeah, well this "fragmented" United States ain't having no Moslem riots at the moment! -- the Mgt.]....

Most second-generation Muslim immigrants are generally no more observant than young French Catholics. But the legacy of discrimination [or the lack of any specifically French identity -- the Mgt.] creates the conditions for young people who feel neither French nor North African to seek an identity in Islam - often anti-Western, political Islam.

I don't know what to make of that last assertion. It's classic Times: vast, sweeping, unsourced. But it strikes me as more or less true, or at least verisimilitudinous: if true, doesn't this mean that the French antipathy towards non-European culture and especially against religion is, in fact, driving young Arab French into the arms of a particularly violent and primitive religion, militant Islamism?

The real problem, as I see it, is that this "transcendent French identity" they seek is one founded in the French revolution of 218 years ago and, as the Times notes, "never updated." It cannot function as a specifically French identity today because it is so inextricably bound up in the social milieu of eighteenth-century Europe. Unlike the American "organic laws" -- the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 -- which actually do transcend their eighteenth-century origins by avoiding too close an embrace with the petty questions of the day, the French Revolution degenerated into "the Terror" and became thoroughly and horrifically tied to a particular place and time (especially after its inauspicious end at the hands of one of its own, the "Emperor" Napoleon Bonaparte.

At least some of the French private sector is starting to understand the true solution:

Karim Zeribi, a former soccer player and political adviser, said a study he carried out earlier this year found that résumés sent out with traditionally French names got responses 50 times higher than those with North African or African names. In the wake of the study, Mr. Zeribi established an agency in April called Act for Citizenship, which canvasses minority neighborhoods for qualified job candidates and markets them to corporations.

"We want to create a network for these people where there is none," Mr. Zeribi said. Still, he said, his young candidates are regularly asked if they are practicing Muslims when they are interviewed for jobs.

This clearly is the way to go... apart from whatever the French government has to do to reassure the immigrants that they are not confined to particular ghettos in France -- "mosquitos trapped in amber," as Sachi put it in a previous post -- the best step is for business and private interests to seek out, on their own franc, qualified Moslem employees and students.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 11, 2005, at the time of 2:02 AM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: reliapundit - the astute blogger

FRANCE'S SO-CALLED "IMMIGRANT" PROBLEM
Many in France, and on the Left elsewhere - (and in the MSM the Left still dominates), are blaming the recent Paris Intifada on entrenched poverty, discrimination and unemployment within the IMMIGRANT community. They say this in spite of the fact that MOST of the youths rioting are 2nd-3rd GENERATION FRENCHMEN! And in spite of the fact that many - if not most - of the great "Frenchmen" of recent times - true contributors of French culture, if not ICONS of France - were IMMIGRANTS or 1st generation French! IN OTHER WORDS: France DOESN'T have an "immigrant problem"; the "immigrants in the banlieues" (most of whom were BORN IN FRANCE) have a France problem! Here are a few of the icons of French culture who were NOT ETHNICALLY FRENCH:

Jean Luc Godard is Swiss.
Jacques Tati was Ukrainian/Jewish.
Yves Montand was Italian.
Charles Aznavour was Armenian.
Albert Camus was Algerian.
Jacques Brel was Belgian.
Napoleon was Italian. Le Corbusier was Swiss. Sarah Bernhardt was Dutch-Jewish.
Josephine Baker was African-American.
Isabelle Adjani is German-Turkish/Algerian.
Irene Jacob is Swiss.
Paul Gaugin was Peruvian.
Eugène Ionesco was Romanian.
Zinedine Zidane - is a French-ALGERIAN, a man who led the French "soccer" team to victory in the World Cup in 1998, (when I was studying in Paris) - a team IDOLIZED AND CELEBRATED for its multi-ethnicity.

NICHOLAS SARKOZY - chief of the UMP (Chirac's party) and Interior Minister IS THE SON OF HUNGARIAN IMMIGRANTS - his parents were refugees from communist Hungary.

And this list is incomplete!

So what does this list prove?

That assimilation HAS BEEN A BIG part of French culture - recent culture, too.

And that immigrants (and the children of immigrants) have made HUGE contributions to what Frenchmen call "French Culture."

This reinforces my view that the problem is NOT with France, French culture or the French bureaucracy.

The problem IS NOT that France doesn't want immigrants or mistreats immigrants, or that it doesn't lavish enough welfare on immigrants.

The problem is with these particular immigrants. REPEAT: The problem is with THESE immigrants - the problem is that the islamothugs of the banlieues DON'T WANT TO ASSIMILATE.

If they did then they would - AT THE VERY LEAST - attend and graduate from highschool, and they wouldn't terrorize their sisters for NOT wearing hijabs.

What these islamothugs DO want is to carve out a private fiefdom - PARISTAN - for themselves and their islamogangs. A fiefdom where THEY are the authority and French cops are not allowed.

These islamothugs of France must be defeated - and with them, the idea that immigrants ANYWHERE and EVERYWHERE (from England to Denmark to Sweden to Italy --- EVERYWHERE!) don't have to assimilate. IOW: My motto is: "No immigration without assimilation!" Not here. Not in France. Not anywhere.

And if they don't like it, then they can GO HOME!

The above hissed in response by: reliapundit - the astute blogger [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 11, 2005 6:45 AM

The following hissed in response by: Dirty Dingus

I absolutely agree that getting the "racaille" jobs would help enormously. It would help even more if the jobs they got were ones where they worked next to "real" French people. Unfortunately as I have noted at my blog the government's solution to this seems to be
1) throw money at it
2) scale back a little regulation for companies based in "troubled" zones

It would also help if the welfare system stopped paying them if they remained unemployed. But that would need to apply to all Frenchmen and I really can't see the trades unions standing for that

The above hissed in response by: Dirty Dingus [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 11, 2005 7:08 AM

The following hissed in response by: RBMN

I think all the neighborhood church groups in France should get together and reach out ... ooops, I forgot ... it's France. Oh well, nevermind.

The above hissed in response by: RBMN [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 11, 2005 10:19 AM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Reliapundit:

So what does this list prove?

Well, aside from the bottom two -- Zidane and Sarkozy -- I note that everyone else you listed became successful and well known many decades ago (centuries, in Napoleon's case). The claim is not that France has always treated its African immigrants as indentured servants; the claim is that they began doing so in the 1960s and still do so today.

As to Sarkozy... dude, he's European. Using him as a counterexample to the claim above is like saying the Ku Klux Klan wasn't racist because they allowed Italian Americans as members.

That leaves us only Zinedine Zidane. So evidently what this list proves is that all an Algerian or Senegalese need do is become a star athlete, and the French might even treat him as an equal.

I don't think you're helping your case much.

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 11, 2005 11:42 AM

The following hissed in response by: Scott

When I read the first paragraph of the quote I thought it won't be too long before they start saying how racist America is...I didn't have to wait too long though, only another sentence or two. This is a great opportunity for Jesse Jackson!

The above hissed in response by: Scott [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 11, 2005 2:55 PM

The following hissed in response by: KarmiCommunist

...creates the conditions for young people who feel neither French nor North African to seek an identity in Islam - often anti-Western, political Islam.

Dafydd quoted the above and then added the below opinion:

I don't know what to make of that last assertion. It's classic Times: vast, sweeping, unsourced.

It is "vast, sweeping, unsourced"...on that i can agree; however, North Africa had been Islamic centuries before the French moved in, so i shall move to Dafydd's next thought:

The real problem, as I see it, is that this "transcendent French identity" they seek is one founded in the French revolution of 218 years ago and, as the Times notes, "never updated." It cannot function as a specifically French identity today because it is so inextricably bound up in the social milieu of eighteenth-century Europe.

STRATFOR put it this way:

If being French or German is rooted in birth, being an American, Canadian or Australian is rooted in choice. The nation can choose who it wants as a citizen, and the immigrant can choose to become a citizen. Citizenship connotes nationality.

The problem in France goes way beyond being slow at 'updating', and that central point is Imperialistic France having to deal with the Nationalistic pre-Imperialistic France (left point) whilst trying to save face at having embarrassingly lost their former-Imperialistic French Empire (right point) so embarrassingly. The infamous "French Revolution" happened around 1798, but the French didn't invade Algiers until around 1830 (during the "second French colonial empire"). The "second"?!? Er, OK, then there must've been a "first French colonial empire", huh. Yes, "The story of France's colonial empire truly began on July 27, 1605". The French have a clear "MO" or Modus Operandi...so to speak.

reliapundit - the astute blogger...you and the NYT are clearly wrong, but the NYT was closer than you. You provided a rather short list of France's immigrates, and i only saw a couple on it from nations that were actually stuck under French Imperialism.

STRATFOR makes another good point:

...from the fact that it is one thing to become a French citizen and quite another to become a Frenchman.

In my opinion, the "islamothugs" are not the problem, the Frenchman mentality of France is the problem.

Another *GREAT* Thread at Big Lizards...

Karmi

The above hissed in response by: KarmiCommunist [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 11, 2005 3:22 PM

The following hissed in response by: RonC

The following email is from Tarek Abdel Hamid, an Arab supporter of Israel and the US – unedited, as sent. He essentially agrees with 'reliapundit' - in that they don't want to assimilate. They have an agenda that precludes assimilation - we see the same here in the US. They are not part of the social, political, or any other arena of public life - except business. That should give American's who think well of our 'assimilation' - frankly, I don't see it with Muslims, or illegal immigrants from the south.


From: "TH" - - -
To: - - -
Subject: It dose not take a rocket scientist to understand it!
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:44:51 +1300

It does'nt need a rocket scientist to understand !

Till now I cannot understand why many people in the world are still having debates about the main cause of the riots in France.

All what it needs to know the cause is to do a simple statistical analysis to compare the percentage of Muslim rioters/ number of Muslims who live in these suburbs to Non-Muslims rioters/number of Non-Muslims who live in the same suburbs and live under the same situation of unemployment, poverty, cultural change, or discrimination (as some say).

If the percentage of the former (Muslims rioters per total number of Muslims in these suburbs) is equal to the latter (Non-Muslims rioters per total number of Non-Muslims in the same suburbs) then the problem is in the common factors namely: unemployment, poverty, cultural change, or discrimination.

If the percentage of the former is higher than the latter then the problem is obviously in the ISLAMIC TEACHING.

All what is needed is to unify the other variables and do simple statistics and the answer will glow like light in the darkness.

It dos not need a rocket scientist to understand the main cause of the problem in France!


Much love to you all

Tarek

The above hissed in response by: RonC [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 11, 2005 4:55 PM

The following hissed in response by: RonC

The following email is from Tarek Abdel Hamid, an Arab supporter of Israel and the US – unedited, as sent. He essentially agrees with 'reliapundit' - in that they don't want to assimilate. They have an agenda that precludes assimilation - we see the same here in the US. They are not part of the social, political, or any other arena of public life - except business. That should give American's who think well of our 'assimilation' - frankly, I don't see it with Muslims, or illegal immigrants from the south.


From: "TH" - - -
To: - - -
Subject: It dose not take a rocket scientist to understand it!
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:44:51 +1300

It does'nt need a rocket scientist to understand !

Till now I cannot understand why many people in the world are still having debates about the main cause of the riots in France.

All what it needs to know the cause is to do a simple statistical analysis to compare the percentage of Muslim rioters/ number of Muslims who live in these suburbs to Non-Muslims rioters/number of Non-Muslims who live in the same suburbs and live under the same situation of unemployment, poverty, cultural change, or discrimination (as some say).

If the percentage of the former (Muslims rioters per total number of Muslims in these suburbs) is equal to the latter (Non-Muslims rioters per total number of Non-Muslims in the same suburbs) then the problem is in the common factors namely: unemployment, poverty, cultural change, or discrimination.

If the percentage of the former is higher than the latter then the problem is obviously in the ISLAMIC TEACHING.

All what is needed is to unify the other variables and do simple statistics and the answer will glow like light in the darkness.

It dos not need a rocket scientist to understand the main cause of the problem in France!


Much love to you all

Tarek

The above hissed in response by: RonC [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 11, 2005 5:00 PM

The following hissed in response by: KarmiCommunist

Tarek,

i was banned from Little Green Footballs because i did not think that all Arabs/Muslims/Islamists were bad. The owner or owners probably didn't want to ban me, but the members kept at him or them until...

Clearly, membership and comments are a problem on Conservative boards, and i understand why some don't allow comments.

Here is a simple fact...not all Arabs/Muslims/Islamists are bad.If it were left up to me, i would've Nuked Afghanistan, just before i Nuked Mecca. At that point, i would've gave a news cast, and warned Saddam, Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Libya, North Korea, and a few others that i was going to Nuke them. If Kuwait had complained, i would've Nuked them right away. If things settled down at that point, i would've went to the UN, and told them to pack their bags, because i was thinking about Nuking France next.

At that point, i would've Nuked the Middle East, and told Americans that we needed to start using our own oil, or do without cars and electricity.

i would then tell Americans that i was going to send our Troops into China, and then warn the Chinese. China would surrender or die with the Troops that i sent, or be Nuked into dust.

i don't play silly games...you and 'reliapundit' do.

The above hissed in response by: KarmiCommunist [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 11, 2005 7:26 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

RonC:

If the percentage of the former is higher than the latter then the problem is obviously in the ISLAMIC TEACHING.

The percent of black marchers in the Civil Rights movement was certainly higher than the percent of blacks in some of the states in which they protested; that does not mean that the marches were caused by "negro teaching" or some element distinct to black culture... it means they saw themselves as personally affected by Jim Crow to a much greater extent than did whites, so they were more likely to protest.

I conclude that Tarek Abdel Hamid was not a math major at university.

For his other point, I don't doubt for a moment that many Moslems in France are uninterested in assimilating. That is my point: you must offer something for that assimilation.

In America, we have a national creed; to become an American is to embrace freedom, liberty, democracy, capitalism and private property, individualism, and self-reliance, at least to a much greater degree than nearly any other country on the planet (except maybe Israel, but to move to Israel typically means embacing Judaism, a very different but also effective national identity).

When an immigrant becomes an American, as my wife did, she loses something -- her previous national identity -- but she gains something that is more valuable. That gives immigrants an incentive to assimilate.

What is the incentive for immigrants or their children to assimilate into French culture? What do they gain? Not really even less discrimination, as it's based on ancestral national origin, not what's printed on a passport.

Unless France can offer something to replace the North African Moslem identity that the immigrants left behind, they will be more and more likely to try to reclaim what they lost than to embrace a French national identity.

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 11, 2005 7:40 PM

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