Quand La Banlieue Brule

8/8/2019 Quand La Banlieue Brule

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Dear Colleagues

Having lived for a year in the middle of a medium-cost housing estate in the Paris banlieue, and having many close friends among Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisianstudents in Paris, I have been watching the riots unfolding with distress over the lastweek. I was in Paris researching the history of the Arabic population, which gave me a

rather different perspective on cultural and ethnic divisions in France. I hope that thefollowing observations may be of interest - they are the result of a great deal of (sometimes heated) conversation with friends and colleagues in France, observation of the French media responses, and my own experience as a temporary banlieusard.

Quand la banlieue brule...

From one perspective, Paris is a vibrant and multiethnic city, which often celebrates itsdiversity: during the Fête de la Musique I saw Egyptian dancers near the MetroLuxembourg, Sufi drummers in the Virgin Megastore near Barbès and young Franco-Algerian DJs performing to happy crowds in the streets of the Goutte d’Or. This is theproud face of what some French academics have called “pluriculturalism” – analternative to the multiculturalism which has been the model in the Anglophone world.

It celebrates diversity on the basis of a unified national culture and a strong sense of identity, encouraging assimilation as a model of coexistence. One language, one culture,one flag.

But this public celebration masks deep problems with this model, problems which haverecently spilled over into the streets of the Paris suburbs, and are spreading out into theurban conglomerations of provincial France. All at once, the French media are askingquestions about a failure of “integration” which has been obvious for a decade or moreto those prepared to listen.

The current crisis is only the culmination of a long series of confrontations between thestate and underprivileged populations living in increasingly ghetto-style environments.

Municipal authorities have set out to ameliorate these physical conditions – all tooslowly – but without facing up to the cultural exclusion into which whole categories of French citizens have been trapped by the stark choices offered in contemporary France.

In Australia, and elsewhere in the Anglophone world at present, questions are beingraised by serious commentators about the so-called “failure of multiculturalism.” Thesecritics are calling for a strict model of assimilation to national values. The current crisisin France is an indication of where this thinking can lead. There is little doubt that themajority of French people have an intense and passionate attachment to their nationalculture, and a deep interest in other cultures – something I feel that others can admireand learn from. In 2003, all of France celebrated the “Week of Foreign Cultures,” anexpression of cosmopolitanism and tolerance. The festival’s slogan was “I love you…from afar.” This, for me, sums up the limits of this cosmopolitan idea, the need for a

clear separation between “French” and “foreign”. French people have had greaterdifficulty loving these “foreign” cultures when they are in the apartment above theirown, in the streets of Saint-Denis, in the “wall” apartment blocks of the outer suburbs, orin the high-schools of provincial France.

The major groups of immigrants in France today are a consequence of France’s colonialempire: Algerians, Vietnamese, Senegalese and Congolais. Unlike other colonial powers,France had a shortage rather than a surplus of population at the beginning of thetwentieth century, and imported hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers from the



colonies both before and after decolonisation. But North African workers in particularwere viewed as a threat. Exposed to “French” ideas of liberty and equality, they beganto demand these things in France and Algeria. From the 1920s onwards a special policeforce was created, using the state institutions including the hospitals and the mosques,for surveillance and control of North African immigrants, leaving many with a deep-rooted suspicion of the state.

Hundreds of thousands of colonial soldiers fought and died for France from theCrimean War to World War Two. Many of those who liberated Paris in 1945 were Northand West African soldiers. They suffered particularly heavy casualties as general deGaulle threw his Free French forces into devastating confrontations in order to assurethat France took a central role in the liberation. I have seen little evidence that this Araband African role in French history has been celebrated alongside that of Clovis, Joan of Arc and Napoleon.

Algerians, Moroccans, Senegalese and other former colonial subjects have as much rightto be considered the makers of modern France as any other French men and women.Some have never lived anywhere but France, as far back as 1848 when Algeria wasdeclared an integral part of the French nation. Their culture - for most, a Muslim culture

- is also French culture: their history is also French history.

This is the collective experience of many of the young men and women of the suburbstoday. Certainly, as elsewhere in the world, there are individuals among them who forvarious reasons take readily to violence as a solution or as an end in itself. But when thisoccurs, the response of many “Franco-French” people (to use a bizarre but very commonterm) is to suggest that they should “go back where they came from.”

This is racism. Yet many French people will not admit that racism exists in France.France is the land of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. To suggest otherwise is an attack on the Republic. Those who do so with stones and petrol cans are called “racailles”(thugs). Those who do so with words and arguments are told that they are playing a

“double game,” that they are the pawns of Islamic fundamentalists or Leftist radicals.The problem was crystallized for me in the televized debate presented on the program“Mots Croisés” on Monday 31 October. The program opened with an interview withAzouz Begag, the first government minister of North African background, responsiblefor the “ascenseur sociale” or upward mobility for underprivileged groups. Theinterviewer, Yves Calvi, asked him if he was a “beur alibi” (a “Token Arab”), and whyhe did not think about resigning. Begag’s suggestion that he would try to speak to thefamilies of the boys who were killed, “in Arabic if necessary” provoked outragedreactions on the on-line forum after the program. The tone was one of incredulity that a“French Minister” should speak Arabic to “French citizens.” For many outside France, itis simply not obvious at all what is so outrageous about this proposition. Americanministers have spoken in Spanish to their citizens, and in Australia government

brochures are printed in at least five languages (including Arabic).

In the panel discussion which followed it was clear what Calvi meant by a “TokenArab,” since the panel contained only one member from North African background, alocal educator and youth worker from Clichy-sous-Bois, Samir Mihi, who had been verymuch in evidence in the news stories as a leader encouraging dialogue rather thanviolence, working in close contact with the youths on the street. When he began toexplain the anger felt by the communities in the cites at the death of the two boys, andthe particular anger felt by Muslims when a police tear-gas canister was fired into a



crowded mosque, Calvi simply cut him off and demanded “Will you make a statementnow that these youths should go back to their homes?” When Mihi replied that he wasworking for this result every day, the interviewer began to insist over and over that hemake a direct imperative statement to the rioters to go home. (Again, there is nosensitivity here about the meanings of “Rentrez chez-vous!”) This confrontation, to me,is quite representative of the crisis as a whole. It was not sufficient that this young man

should be engaged in the “mediation” between rioters and the authorities, he mustdeclare himself - through an enunciative act - as a representative of ‘order’, of Frenchculture.

The implication made immediately by another panel member, the UMP deputy-mayorManuel Aeschlimann, was that Mihi and other mediators were using a “doublelanguage,” secretly encouraging attacks against the police while claiming to be workingtoward calm. Mihi was then ignored for the rest of the program while a group of “French” politicians and intellectuals discussed the restoration of order. At no point inthis discussion was Mihi respected as an equal voice in the debate: he was hounded, toldwhat statement to make, and implicitly accused of “treachery” toward the French state.

This is fairly indicative of how North Africans and other immigrants have been viewed

across the French Republican establishment. They have been discussed as a “problem”, a“challenge” or a “failure,” but rarely as a constitutive part of French society and history.There is only one solution to these “problems” – become French. But they must becomeFrench in a way defined by the Republican consensus built since the 1880s (notcoincidentally the era of massive colonial expansion) and not by their ownunderstanding of what “French” might mean.

The recent riots in Clichy were sparked by a tragic incident which bore an extraordinarysimilarity to events which took place last year in Redfern, one of Sydney’s poorestsuburbs, where indigenous Australians are concentrated in shocking poverty and

joblessness. In that case also, a young boy allegedly under pursuit by the police waskilled in an accident, sparking riots which lasted several days. The power of these

incidents seems to lie in its symbolic force: whatever the circumstances, the majority of people of all ages in these communities saw it as an act of aggression by the state,harrying the underprivileged to their death. Almost every member of the community(judging by the interviews I’ve seen) experiences these deaths as a symbol of deepinjustice and neglect by the society in which they live.

The failure of the French government and the media to deal effectively with this angerand the violence which followed arises from a deeper failure to listen, to comprehend,and to admit that the "universal" values which are constantly trumpeted have failed insignificant ways. The current government consciously reversed all the socialist attemptsat solution through community action, in its attempt to impose order through “zerotolerance,” an absolute stress on “public order” (santé public?), and the restriction of thepolice to the role of investigation and arrest rather than community involvement, closing

down the “police de proximité”.

Perhaps because of the votes attracted by the Front National in 2002, the government isnervous about confronting racism as a reality in contemporary France. Instead, it isconcerned to bring the racists on board with the mainstream Republican right, byoffering a hard-line stance which may attract those voting for the Front National. Thisstance has been most aggressively exploited by the Minister of the Interior, NicolasSarkozy (a clear Presidential contender for 2007) who has repeatedly spoken of “racaille”, “voyous” and “caïds” (an Arabic word for a local leader); of “nettoyage”



using a “kärcher”– language which can be best understood in English as referring to“scum” who need to be “hosed out” of the urban communities. It was after Sarkozyused such language during a visit to Argenteuil immediately after the first riots inClichy, that the violence spread to other suburbs on the outskirts of Paris. Young meninterviewed on camera made it clear that they were incensed by Sarkozy’s language,whose effects they felt every day in a sharpening of the colour and cultural divide, and

in the actions of police.

The problems in the suburbs of French cities are real, and affect all their inhabitants,regardless of how recently they or their ancestors arrived in France. The underlyingeconomic and environmental problems have to be solved in order to turn around thisworsening situation. But the cultural question is one that also needs urgently to be

broached. The “values” to which the children of immigrants are expected to adherecannot take root unless these values are open to recognition of the diversity of Frenchsociety today, its new forms of connectedness with Africa and Asia as well as Europe,and a new sense of history. It is worth remembering that after the failure of Republicanism in 1848, and the fires of the Paris Commune, the republican project of the1870s was built on painstaking work in the rural communes of France – what DanielHalévy called “the revolution of the town halls.”

French “pluriculturalism” has failed, but needs to be rebuilt painstakingly from theground upwards. A new and more inclusive Arabo- African- Indochinese- Frenchhistory of modern France needs to be written, against the immobile and conservativeRevolutionary-Napoleonic-Third Republic version which dominates at present. It musttalk about the slave trade, colonialism, Islam, the Algerian War - in Algeria and inFrance - the Holocaust, the role of immigration in France, and develop new perspectiveson the customary landmarks of French history. It must teach other languages and othercultures, respect the rights of individuals to choose their cultural expression, while stilldefending them from abuses.

It must stop trying to choose for them, demanding that they speak only in one language

and one discourse, demanding that they abandon their roots and identifications. It willnot be the same as the multiculturalism of Canada or Britain or India, and nor should it be. These societies, like my own, have their own fractures, wrongs and exclusions to dealwith. But all of these models need to enter into dialogue with one another in order to

bring the best elements of these different approaches together.

It will be difficult to turn around the momentum of a government committed torepression as an answer to social injustice, and the groups of young men caught in acycle of violence and destruction. These riots are an appalling waste of badly-neededresources, and a terrible infliction of fear and injury on all concerned. Simply repeating"C'est inacceptable!" (How many times have I heard this phrase in the last week?) anddecrying the "racaille" will not make this problem go away.

But standing in the middle of the concourse at Châtelet-Les Halles Metro station, it ispossible to feel what France is and can be – a society pulsating with energy andmovement, colour and life... but also with a powerful undercurrent of exclusion andinjustice.

A minister in the National Assembly shouted a few days ago "This is not a Revolution!"If it is not, it should be - but a peaceful revolution which will tear down the walls of exclusion, injustice and mutual incomprehension.



Ian Coller is completing a doctorate on the history of the Arabic populations in Parisduring the nineteenth century, at the University of Melbourne, Australia. [email protected]

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Quand La Banlieue Brule