A Parisian's Take on French Riots

As an American, I never quite got the dissonance that prevailed during the riots in October. What would push people to set cars aflame on a nightly basis? I couldn't see it, certainly not the Paris I visited -- a seemingly stately pinnacle of civilization and culture. Eric Francis, a native Parisian gives his account of why and it's a bit shocking the kind of underlying racism that spurred these events (see below). Kinda reminiscent of the L.A. riots, carried to a different extreme when the interior minister fanned the flames. Craziness.

IN 1954, ALGERIA, one of France's North African experiments in colonialism, took a turn for the worse, and what began as a guerilla war against the French killed as many as 1.5 million people on both sides through 1962. Terrorism against civilians on both sides, rioting, and many fierce battles characterized the era, and touched French society so deeply that the government was dissolved and a new one begun -- something called the Fifth Republic, under Charles De Gaulle.

Skip ahead half a century to the ghettoes outside Paris, theoretically a housing solution for Algerian and other North African immigrants begun in the 1960s. Called the Cités, these prison like housing projects were created as low- and moderate-income housing for the immigrants, but in reality also as a way to get them out of the inner city, so that could be kept secure for the massive tourism industry that is the basis of the Paris economy.

These Cités were the same communities that erupted in flames in late October, set off by the electrocution deaths of two teenage boys who feared they were being chased by police -- a typical scene. Every night for weeks, up to 1,500 cars were burned, there were hundreds of arrests, and thousands of police were commandeered in an attempt to hold down the outrage of young men born in France but never included in French society.

France's tough-guy interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, referred to the youth of the Cités as racaille, which translates to rabble or human scum, and said he would eliminate them with Kärcher, a German air-pressure powered cleaning system, akin to sand blasting. This is the system one would rent if faced with the need to clean a few decades of pigeon shit off of one's house. Sarko's comments had the expected results of firing up anger, sparking more riots, and polarizing the country. (Note: He is expected to run for president in 2007 and widely expected to win.)

While his words may seem like so much nasty rhetoric, there is a subtext. As Village Voice writer Doug Ireland pointed out in his blog, the people to whom the words referred are for the most part Muslims, who are considered ethnic outsiders in France. So by Kärcherize, was Sarkozy making a reference to ethnic cleansing? It's not a big stretch.

France does need to ponder this possibility. The apartment I am writing this article in was once Nazi-occupied territory, and all over Paris are memorials to Jews who were arrested, deported, and killed for nothing other than being born.

Here's what's interesting: Despite this degree of animosity, the French youth riots have largely been a revolt against property, not life. There is no way to classify the burning of cars with a suicide bomber like the one who blew up a wedding in Jordan last month. As of mid-November, only one shot had been fired in the course of the entire situation.

As a result of the prolonged protests, the government has restored budgets for social programs in the Cités. This is a minor conciliatory gesture; in many ways, it is beyond the power of French society to heal the deep wounds of the Cités.