Riots in France, this should sound familiar

On Saturday I had a post on how the Germans are reacting to the riots in France with some observations of my own based on the nearly 3 years I lived there. I returned to to the German press today and found this in Der Spiegel, SNAPSHOTS OF PARIS. The following should sound familiar to anyone who is familiar with the racial disturbances of the late 60' and early 70's in the United States.

La Courneuve

In the 1980s, the French government began an ambitious urban renewal program. The idea was to get rid of the largest and most visually offensive concrete housing projects on the outskirts of the nation's capital in favor of smaller, cosier structures. The city of La Courneuve, crammed between the noisy, polluted Périphérique and a large industrial zone, was taken as the project's starting point. Specifically, an area called "La Cité des 4,000."

Once a visually offensive mass of concrete, "Les 4,000," was supposed to become the symbol of a new start. Instead, it has become a symbol of failed hopes and a failed immigration policy. Now, some 15,000 people live in the neighborhood -- most of them in gray tenements hastily built in the early 1960s to house Northern African immigrants. The area's unemployment rate has risen to 24 percent -- and it's even higher among the La Courneuve youth. Frustration and anger are not in short supply.

Nadia, a 53-year-old Algerian, is nervously standing in front of the police precinct with a group of friends and relatives. Her 16-year-old daughter has just been arrested and is being held for assaulting a woman on the street. "Witnesses told the cops she didn't do anything," Nadia claims. "But they just said they couldn't trust people like us. Cops enforce their own law here."

It's an attitude shared by many in the neighborhood. Police, they complain, have made harassment a daily occurrence. Younger residents are routinely stopped and asked for their identification without even the slightest pretence. Some will even say that the deaths of the two Northern African teenagers in Clichy-sous-Bois two weeks ago -- which sparked the current rioting -- was the result of just such harassment. The two teenagers, according to one explanation, were simply tired of being stopped, ran from the police and attempted to hide in an electrical substation where they were electrocuted.

"Don't worry," a passer-by tells Nadia with a smile when he overhears her comments. "I'll burn 200 more cars for you tonight." The group bursts out laughing. The riot policemen standing 15 meters away do not seem to notice.

Much of the anger centers on French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. He infamously referred to the rioters as scum and riffraff, a comment he reiterated on Thursday. After the death of an 11-year-old boy last June after he was hit by a stray bullet, Sarkozy announced he would "clean up Les 4,000 with a pressure washer." These words, says Nadia's 40-year-old cousin, Said, fueled the inhabitants' anger and were directly responsible for the riots.

"We're not all delinquents," he says. "We want security and we need cops. But when you go out on the street, they ask for your ID. When you come back from work in the evening, they ask again. What do they need my ID for? They've been working here long enough to know who I am and where I live!"

Said came to France from Algeria at the age of two but, he says, he has never thought of himself as an Algerian. "I go to Algeria on vacation in the summer but I will never be able to live there. People like me are 100 percent French," he says. "But our skin color is still a problem -- except for (professional soccer star) Zinedine Zidane. If that means you need to be a soccer star to be considered as French, it's pretty sad."

La Courneuve has been the scene of some of the most violent clashes between rioters and police. Dozens of cars have been torched and early in the rioting, police battling rioters there were met by shot gun fire. On Thursday, eight police officers were suspended for beating a La Courneuve resident.

But even before the rioting, the quarter had a reputation. Mounir, 23, waits patiently for Said to finish before launching into his own story. "I quit school when I was 16 and, like everybody else my age here, I just stayed home and slept all day" he says. "When I searched for jobs and told employers I lived at La Courneuve, they said they'd call me back. Of course, they never did."

As I mentioned on Saturday, many of us Americans who have spent time in Europe questioned how Europeans could be critical of the United States as we witnessed many of the same conditions in Europe. I'll repeat some observations I had on the Saturday post.

In the late 60's and early 70's when the US was experiencing racial turmoil I lived in Munich for three years. Munich had a 10 to 20 percent Turkish minority. Rather than hang out at the American establishments in Munich I frequented a blue collar tavern. I had many conversations over many beers with the blue collar Bavarians who were there nightly. What I found was a great deal of prejudice towards the Turks and a sympathy with the Americans who were fighting integration and civil rights.

As you read the history and conditions in La Courneuve above you should recognize the similarities to the actions and results of poor minority neighborhoods in the United States. It didn't work here and it didn't work in France. You probably also noted that Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy sounds a lot like a sheriff from the deep south of the US in the 60's.

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