Voici un petit texte pour les anglophones (il doit bien y en avoir ici...) que j’ai écris il y a peu pour des forums américains. Il vient compléter et enrichir mon message original. Bonne lecture !!

One year has passed and I’m still shocked to see how american editorialists view and analyse French riots thru the prism of the clash of civilisation thesis which I presume is quite popular here in the US. The fact that the French intelligentsia disregard this opinion is in no way more convincing for they also share shallow insights on these events. How could they ? They might have the brains and the education but they do not live amongst these people ... Such misunderstanding led to a major polical crisis in France with Le Pen facing Chirac in april 2002. Nonetheless American journalists in general show great ignorance of colonial and post-colonial French history and of some of the very complex social realities in the outer urban cities (such as clichy-sous -bois). To understand how such a rampage has come to hurt French clear conscience we have to sort out what is transnational in the causes of the riots and what is specifically French.

There is little more to add to what have been abundantly commented in the press regarding the economic deprivation of some urban area around big cities. Unemployment, social precariousness, bad housing are obviously a perfect breeding ground for a conflagration. So what ? Quite a few people suffer from the same difficulties in the same districts but never torch a single car. Some officials (Sarkozy and police unions) talked about organised “gangs”. Over the 5000 arrests on November 2005 the French department of justice stats point out that only half of the convicted had a police record. Mimicry is a downright fact but fail to explain why you go wild one night et let it all go in flames. We should question the causes of anger and resentment. Doing so is NOT calling for social excuses of any kind. The individual responsibility is indelible. But they acted in a very specific context. They are also the heirs of a painful and tragic history largely veiled in France. It comes down to a searing issue : what identity can you build in a multicultural (1) country as France that does not view itself as such and still live as an ex leading nation plunged into remorse for having betrayed its values ? Our post colonial history were long considered as taboo since the advent of the fifth republic, born on the smoking ruins of our colonial empire. Our immigrant policies were never assumed and it worked towards the rise of the far right in France in the 80’s. Now it has come to maturing and the veil is being torn apart. This is very exciting for me to see how some medias suddenly tackled this crucial issue : what is being French today ? My fellow citizens has been forced to realise how much discrimination is widespread and represents a deadly social poison. When these kids are given the chance to talk they also stress on the lack of job opportunities and the police harassment.

Going back to economic conditions of the rioters families, they make a living out of petty trafic and and welfare subsidies. Most of the fathers of the young arsonists abided and endured even more poverty and discrimination when they came massively to France after world war II and the decolonization. However they had jobs at that time and that made a big difference : they had a past (painful), a present (miserable) but decent hopes for their descendants. Today their grand sons are torching buses and don’t know where they come from (the intergenerational dialogue is dried up), who they are (arab, French, muslim, citizen , scum of the society, all of that ?) and don’t think to have any future (unemployment, delinquency ?). And most of all, whether they’re right or wrong, they do feel a rampant contempt wherever they stand. I know these kids. I taught them fourteen years and lived four years in one of these deprived urban town around Lyon. As a matter of fact I’m amazed to see how few got caught in the spiral of violence. But I still feel we’re sitting on the top of a boiling cauldron. As you see I didn’t talk much about a would be religious conflation because it’s irrelevant although some islamic associations opportunately tried to water off youth anger but with very little success. Yelling at the police “Allah akbar !! ” is an easy posture made up by the kids to scare people if not to hide how spiritually empty they are. However it’s relevant to notice that they burned the symbols of potential emancipation (cars, schools ect...), not religious symbols like churches or sinagogues. Unless they torched them because it’s just there... Who knows ?

(1) Multicultural is improper as it refers to the anglosaxon world. There are not communities leaving side by side but social, economic, geographic and racial markers that defines some categories of persons. When it comes to rioters it calls more specifically for a post colonial fracture.