Perspectives on the French violence

I've kept from commenting this far because I've felt so ignorant about the whole situation. The amount of damage to property in France over the last week seems pretty appalling, but so too does the oppressive segregation that ethnic minorities must endure there; while the physical violence is certainly terrible, I have a hard time finding it worse than the structural violence committed against the "immigrant" population. It is as if one tragedy brings another to light.

Two pieces I've read have been particularly moving. In Tikkun, Doug Ireland goes into some detail of the historical circumstances leading up to the current violence:

To understand the origins of this profound crisis for France, it is important to step back and remember that the ghettos where festering resentment has now burst into flames were created as a matter of industrial policy by the French state.

If France's population of immigrant origin -- mostly Arab, some black -- is today quite large (more than 10% of the total population), it is because there was a government and industrial policy during the post-World War II boom years of reconstruction and economic expansion which the French call "les trentes glorieuses" -- the 30 glorious years -- to recruit from France's foreign colonies laborers and factory and menial workers for jobs which there were no Frenchmen to fill. These immigrant workers were desperately needed to allow the French economy to expand due to the shortage of male manpower caused by two World Wars, which killed many Frenchmen, and slashed the native French birth-rates too. Moreover, these immigrant workers were considered passive and unlikely to strike (unlike the highly political French working class and its Communist-led unions.)

While Ireland's piece is a fairly stinging rebuke of French policy, I found a perhaps more important argument in Historian Juan Cole's excellent rebuttal to all the trash talking points floating out of the nebulous right. Go read the whole thing. Really. You have time for this. In case you won't follow the link, though, I have to share this:

The French youth who are burning automobiles are as French as Jennifer Lopez and Christopher Walken are American...

...A lot of the persons living in the urban outer cities (a better translation of cite than "suburb") are from subsaharan Africa. And there are lots of Eastern European immigrants. The riots were sparked by the deaths of African youths, not Muslims. Singling out the persons of Muslim heritage is just a form of bigotry. Moreover, French youth of European heritage rioted quite extensively in 1968. As they had in 1789. Rioting in the streets is not a foreign custom. It has a French genealogy and context.

...There are no pure "nations" folks. I mean, first of all, what is now France had a lot of different populations in it even in the 18th century-- Bretons (Gaelic speakers), Basques, Alsatians (German speakers), Provencale people in the south, Jews, etc., etc. "Multi-culturalism" is not something new in Europe. What was new was the Romantic nationalist conviction that there are "pure" "nations" based on "blood." It was among the more monstrous mistakes in history. Of course if, according to this essentially racist way of thinking, there are "pure" nations that have Gypsies, Jews and others living among them, then the others might have to be "cleansed" to restore the "purity."

Reading just that won't do the argument justice, though. Go to the site, spend a few minutes.