France burns as unresolved racial tensions boil over
Tom Rogan
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The Fifth Republic is preparing for a weekend of rioting following days of the same. The immediate cause of France’s nationwide violence was the police shooting of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk on Tuesday.
Merzouk was stopped at a traffic checkpoint by two police officers and was killed while trying to escape. The police officer responsible originally stated that he had fired only as Nahel’s car accelerated toward him. This version of events was undermined by video showing the incident in a different light. While Marzouk had an extensive juvenile record of criminality, there seems little question that his death was avoidable and the use of force employed unlawful. The officer responsible has now been charged with voluntary manslaughter and has also apologized.
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This has not quelled the anger on the part of France’s minority population, however.
While numerous peaceful marches have been held since Tuesday, major outbreaks of violence have also occurred across France. Thousands of cars, shops, and buildings have been burned, dozens of police officers have been injured, some very seriously, and hundreds have been arrested. Paris train and bus services have been suspended, and a curfew on large public gatherings after dark has been introduced. Looting has been rife, and attacks on public buildings, signifying the rioters’ disgust for the French establishment, have been rampant. Demonstrating the scale of disorder, even France’s elite GIGN counterterrorism unit has been deployed in response.
Yet, while the rioting is utterly unacceptable, it underlines the enduring sense of disenfranchisement by young French Arabs and other minorities. These citizens embrace the psychological scars of France’s colonial past, most notably the Algerian civil war, and find associated anger toward the state. They feel successive French governments and other French citizens have treated them as second-class citizens. Saturated in improving but still rundown city suburbs, or banlieues, these citizens suffer youth unemployment rates more than double that in the United States. They also lament what they regard as frequent, racially motivated identity and traffic checks by police officers. As one sociologist told Le Monde on Friday, “[Their] relationship with the State has been painful, and the Republican promise [of equality of rights and opportunity to all French] has not been kept.”
This speaks to a broader problem.
While it is a common refrain of Europeans to criticize U.S. race relations as a uniquely American injustice, the reality is that much of Western Europe grapples with a far deeper and more insidious racism than that which exists in the U.S.
This is not to say that American racism is not a problem. It is. But where social mobility and meritocracy in America are generally defined by work ethic and the energetic pursuit of opportunity, in much of Western Europe, it’s racial identity and social class that matter most. Accents and skin color matter more for the wrong reason in Europe than they do in America. For other simple examples, consider that black soccer players in Spain are still regularly subjected to racist chanting (and sometimes even have bananas thrown at them). Similarly, immigrants are openly and publicly detested in much of Italy.
There is a far greater representation of minorities in high levels of business, government, and the military in the U.S. than in Europe (I challenge you to find me a population comparative number of black senior military officers in Europe, for example.)
Top line: While France will eventually restore order on the streets, likely via attaining a critical mass of arrests, the broader social problems driving this instability will remain unresolved.