France’s Riots Were Not Merely Due To Cultural Heterogeneity

To the editors:



Mark A. Adomanis’ comment (“The Beginning of the End?” Nov. 15) has the merit of bringing to the fore important issues related to the riots which recently occurred in France. We read the editorial with great interest, but were very surprised, and occasionally disheartened, by some of Adomanis’ assumptions and statements. The goal of these remarks is to present a different perspective on the riots and to add the factual information that may be useful to readers of The Crimson.

The “urban warfare that erupted throughout the French Republic” happened in about 300 neighborhoods, which are mostly suburban. It is an appalling number; this is unquestionable. But how many more neighborhoods did not burn? Thirteen million people live in these suburban projects, which represent 4.5 million apartments or houses. As of Nov. 17, 597 persons have been arrested throughout the whole country. Among those, 108 are under the age of 18. France is not at “war” with its younger population from African origins. It clearly has serious problems of social integration and economic inequality. Yet these issues, which no one in France would ever characterize as purely American phenomena, have long been the subject of intense debate and the focus of numerous government programs and policies.

France is not at all threatened by “massive immigration from countries of the Third world,” as Adomanis states, unreflectively parroting one of French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen’s pet arguments. There is no “invasion” of foreigners in France at the moment. French immigration laws are extremely strict. Most of the rioters come from families who have been in France for 30 or 40 years and have full French citizenship. Why are some French citizens called “foreigners” when they are not? This kind of misinformation is part of the problem.

As Adomanis rightly states, “[A] lessening of France’s now-infamous racism would probably do a lot to help,” but this sentence unfortunately follows his praise of Le Pen’s “wisdom.” No one has contributed more to the spread of racism in France than Jean-Marie Le Pen during his long political career. To describe Le Pen as a “tactless and sometimes foolish old man” would strike the majority of French citizens—of all possible heritages, backgrounds, faiths, and political tendencies—as, at the very least, a very bad joke.

Finally, to describe French society as “a society formerly of one cultural, linguistic, and ethnic mode” is to take the utopian aspiration of the Jacobin revolutionaries for an eternal truth. In 1790, Father Henri Gregoire pointed out that most French citizens did not speak French, and he made a long list of the various regional dialects and languages spoken in France. During the 19th and 20th centuries, many immigrants settled in France. Among the 10 most common family names in France today, one can find “Garcia.”

The crisis France is going through now is serious; it needs to be addressed and analyzed; but it has a history reaching much further back than the last 40 years, and to ignore that history will certainly not help solve the crisis. It is not the first time in France that a “significant number of citizens don’t accept or even [...] attack the societal norms.” It will not be the first (or last) time that the French people have been forced to confront a major crisis of identity amid issues of economic inequality and multicultural cohabitation. There is no easy and quick solution, but there is throughout France a real hope and a real desire to move things forward, and not backwards, with the likes of Le Pen and his followers.



VIRGINIE GREENE

ALICE A. JARDINE

Cambridge, Mass.

November 21, 2005



The writers are professors of Romance Languages and Literatures. In addition, this letter was signed by 13 preceptors, professors, and visiting professors in the department.