Chirac Should Look 40 Years Back
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in History, The WorldWhat would he see?
Well, this was the story in 1965:
…Lee Minikus, a white California Highway Patrol officer on a motorcycle, pulled over African American Marquette Frye, who someone reported was driving erratically. While police questioned Frye and his brother Ronald Frye, a group of people began to gather. A struggle ensued shortly after Frye’s mother Rena arrived on the scene, resulting in the arrest of all three family members. Police used their batons on Frye and his brother during questioning, angering the growing crowd. Someone threw a bottle which hit a police car fender. Shortly after the police left, tensions boiled over and the rioting began. Through five days, $200 million dollars in destruction of property occurred, even though the Voting Rights act had been signed five days earlier guaranteeing Blacks equal voting rights.
While the arson is more common than in the past, it has become a feature of life in the working-class suburbs, peopled primarily by North African and West African immigrants and their French-born children. Unemployment in the neighborhoods is double and sometimes triple the 10 percent national average, while incomes are about 40 percent lower.
And let’s not forget what happens when you have that type of emotional climate:
Young people in the poor neighborhoods incubating the violence have consistently complained that police harassment is mainly to blame. “If you’re treated like a dog, you react like a dog,” said Mr. Diallo of Clichy-sous-Bois, whose parents came to France from Mali decades ago.The youths have singled out the French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, complaining about his zero-tolerance anticrime drive and dismissive talk. (He famously called troublemakers in the poor neighborhoods dregs, using a French slur that offended many people.)
These paragraphs could have just as easily been written in 1965 to describe the emotions and political climate in America at the time. Maybe that’s partly the reason why France is finding itself in its present situation.
So then, does that mean they can look to our history to figure out how to get themselves out of this mess? Obviously order needs to be restored immediately, but in the long run they’re going to need to have a smarter way of addressing the desperation, anger and poverty within their own borders.
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