"Do you see what he just did there?” said my professor rapidly with enthusiasm. “He presented the topic through an incredibly multiculturalist approach—one very different from what France commonly offers. It is unquestionably American in style."
I had just finished delivering a 15-minute exposé to a class of some 20 to 25 international students. The subject: Paris' failing suburban areas very correctly contextualized in the syllabus as suburbs in crisis (Les crises de banlieues). The class: Multiculturalism and Equal Opportunity (Multiculturalisme et Légalité des Chances). My professor, whom I later learned is quite literally at the front of an energetic movement fighting to change the status of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities in France, seemed to enjoy my take on the issue. He even appeared to find it refreshing. I simply had presented the situation as I saw it, ultimately concluding after nearly a year and a half of studying the topic in both Georgetown and France that the failure within the banlieues is not a problem of mischievous immigrants reluctant to assimilate to modern, republican values but rather a problem of French republicanism itself. Though, the French often love to argue the contrary. As I have found, if a foreigner (particularly an American) tries to question (even in the most civil of manners) France's approach to diversity while speaking to a French man or woman, more often than not he will receive a very long-winded and dogmatic explanation of republicanism and laïcité (that is, France's deeply entrenched take on separation between church and state).
When I first arrived, I regarded these conversations (which rarely devolved into complete arguments but nonetheless were rooted in clear disagreement) with an air of interest and open-minded curiosity. After all, this is why I had chosen to study in France: to truly observe firsthand the ideology and behavior that I could only read about back in the United States. However, it was not long before frustration had taken hold of me. I continuously found myself dissatisfied by the answers I was getting, and never did I feel that they came close to adequately justifying or even explaining what I simply saw to be racism and xenophobia. Even with earfuls of republican theory, I still could not understand why the people in my building were so alarmed when a previous exchange student (also American) had talked to a couple of Muslims in the neighborhood; why a professor of mine who teaches a class on Laïque theory refused to acknowledge any questions I raised concerning Laïque practice in France and its potential discriminatory tendencies; or why a friend of mine (who is Italian-American but because of his facial hair easily can pass for Franco-Algerian) has twice been stopped in the metro by police officers, shoved up against a wall, frisked, and asked for proof of identity.
Having grown up in the New York metropolitan area, where freedom of diverse expression is taken for granted by most, I have found these particularities of French culture very hard to accept. On May 2, the New York Times ran a story on religious and cultural diversity in Queens that I found to greatly parallel what I have observed while in Paris. Under the headline, "The Melting Pot on High Boil in Flushing," the piece notes that, "Today Flushing is chock-a-block with many Protestant and Roman Catholic churches, a few synagogues, several Hindu temples, a beautiful mosque and a brand new Buddhist temple. The free expression of religious beliefs is a tradition that goes back three and a half centuries, to Flushing's beginnings."
That tradition alludes to a document called the Flushing Remonstrance, which when signed by the residents of Flushing and delivered to Peter Stuyvesant in 1657 demonstrated their refusal to discriminate, banish, or persecute anyone based on individual religious belief or cultural heritage. For me, the article has two points of brilliance: first when city councilman, John C. Liu (who presides over District 20, which includes Flushing, and who is Taiwan-born himself), explains, "You could say that we're kind of like the crusty concentrate at the bottom of that [melting] pot"; second, when Times reporter John Strausbaugh points to a synagogue, a Roman Catholic church, a Korean Presbyterian church, and an Afghan mosque that all share the same neighborhood.
Strausbaugh's article quickly filled me with a sense of nostalgia for New York's rampant cultural diversity. However, it more importantly made me ask myself—as I have many times before—why this sort of cultural tolerance and co-existence has failed to take root in Paris, a city equally as global as the Big Apple? Of course, the answer is a complicated one. The United States and particularly New York are not marred by troubling histories of colonization and decolonization, as is France. Nor do they face the presence of a single, densely concentrated, Muslim minority group; in fact, it would be very interesting to see how a post-9/11 United States and New York would handle such a situation. However, both are blessed with a unique melting pot tradition, which dilutes (at least in theory) any construction of dominant mainstream identity, which France does not share. In the United States and much more so in New York, relativism is the rule by which people live their lives. In France and in Paris, on the other hand, there are two ways to act: the right way, and the wrong way.
That is not say that the United States is without fault. In fact, she may find that she shares many of France's problems, though for profoundly different reasons. Even New York, perhaps the most culturally diverse of all the American major cities, confronts its own serious issues concerning racial profiling, police brutality, and religious/cultural discrimination. The week of the Strausbaugh piece, the Times also had reported on the Sean Bell case and on Debbie Almontaser's failing struggle to open a public school in Brooklyn that teaches Arabic. These are not isolated cases. In 1999 and 2003, there were the Amadou Diallo and Ousmane Zongo cases. Crown Heights, Brooklyn has housed a long history of conflict between African American and Hasidic Jewish residents. And as immigration becomes more of an issue in the United States, Americans may find their politicians using language that resembles the rhetoric that French nationalists have been trumpeting for the past quarter of a century. So, perhaps Americans are in no position to speak of a raising the bar for France as far as tolerance is concerned—though I would like to believe we are.
But even with that said, one thing does remain unique to France, and that is the aspect of denial: denial that racial profiling, aggressive policing tactics, and alienating laws (such as the 2004 act prohibiting religious symbols in public spaces) indeed are violations of civil rights and civil liberties; denial that these violations do not help to settle the growing discontent among France's minorities but instead aggregate it; denial that ghettos are not purely an American phenomena but do indeed exist in France; denial that France is turning into a melting pot society that no longer can reside under a rigid notion of notional republican identity. Denial of this sort does not exist in the United States—though it did take several generations for it not to. Now is the time for France to come to a similar realization, for her to do some soul searching, and for her to recognize her true, diversified, and globalized self. Because she will not resolve her crises of social fragmentation until more multiculturalist understandings—as the one I had presented to my class—become more of the rule than the novel exception.
When I first arrived, I regarded these conversations (which rarely devolved into complete arguments but nonetheless were rooted in clear disagreement) with an air of interest and open-minded curiosity. After all, this is why I had chosen to study in France: to truly observe firsthand the ideology and behavior that I could only read about back in the United States. However, it was not long before frustration had taken hold of me. I continuously found myself dissatisfied by the answers I was getting, and never did I feel that they came close to adequately justifying or even explaining what I simply saw to be racism and xenophobia. Even with earfuls of republican theory, I still could not understand why the people in my building were so alarmed when a previous exchange student (also American) had talked to a couple of Muslims in the neighborhood; why a professor of mine who teaches a class on Laïque theory refused to acknowledge any questions I raised concerning Laïque practice in France and its potential discriminatory tendencies; or why a friend of mine (who is Italian-American but because of his facial hair easily can pass for Franco-Algerian) has twice been stopped in the metro by police officers, shoved up against a wall, frisked, and asked for proof of identity.
Having grown up in the New York metropolitan area, where freedom of diverse expression is taken for granted by most, I have found these particularities of French culture very hard to accept. On May 2, the New York Times ran a story on religious and cultural diversity in Queens that I found to greatly parallel what I have observed while in Paris. Under the headline, "The Melting Pot on High Boil in Flushing," the piece notes that, "Today Flushing is chock-a-block with many Protestant and Roman Catholic churches, a few synagogues, several Hindu temples, a beautiful mosque and a brand new Buddhist temple. The free expression of religious beliefs is a tradition that goes back three and a half centuries, to Flushing's beginnings."
That tradition alludes to a document called the Flushing Remonstrance, which when signed by the residents of Flushing and delivered to Peter Stuyvesant in 1657 demonstrated their refusal to discriminate, banish, or persecute anyone based on individual religious belief or cultural heritage. For me, the article has two points of brilliance: first when city councilman, John C. Liu (who presides over District 20, which includes Flushing, and who is Taiwan-born himself), explains, "You could say that we're kind of like the crusty concentrate at the bottom of that [melting] pot"; second, when Times reporter John Strausbaugh points to a synagogue, a Roman Catholic church, a Korean Presbyterian church, and an Afghan mosque that all share the same neighborhood.
Strausbaugh's article quickly filled me with a sense of nostalgia for New York's rampant cultural diversity. However, it more importantly made me ask myself—as I have many times before—why this sort of cultural tolerance and co-existence has failed to take root in Paris, a city equally as global as the Big Apple? Of course, the answer is a complicated one. The United States and particularly New York are not marred by troubling histories of colonization and decolonization, as is France. Nor do they face the presence of a single, densely concentrated, Muslim minority group; in fact, it would be very interesting to see how a post-9/11 United States and New York would handle such a situation. However, both are blessed with a unique melting pot tradition, which dilutes (at least in theory) any construction of dominant mainstream identity, which France does not share. In the United States and much more so in New York, relativism is the rule by which people live their lives. In France and in Paris, on the other hand, there are two ways to act: the right way, and the wrong way.
That is not say that the United States is without fault. In fact, she may find that she shares many of France's problems, though for profoundly different reasons. Even New York, perhaps the most culturally diverse of all the American major cities, confronts its own serious issues concerning racial profiling, police brutality, and religious/cultural discrimination. The week of the Strausbaugh piece, the Times also had reported on the Sean Bell case and on Debbie Almontaser's failing struggle to open a public school in Brooklyn that teaches Arabic. These are not isolated cases. In 1999 and 2003, there were the Amadou Diallo and Ousmane Zongo cases. Crown Heights, Brooklyn has housed a long history of conflict between African American and Hasidic Jewish residents. And as immigration becomes more of an issue in the United States, Americans may find their politicians using language that resembles the rhetoric that French nationalists have been trumpeting for the past quarter of a century. So, perhaps Americans are in no position to speak of a raising the bar for France as far as tolerance is concerned—though I would like to believe we are.
But even with that said, one thing does remain unique to France, and that is the aspect of denial: denial that racial profiling, aggressive policing tactics, and alienating laws (such as the 2004 act prohibiting religious symbols in public spaces) indeed are violations of civil rights and civil liberties; denial that these violations do not help to settle the growing discontent among France's minorities but instead aggregate it; denial that ghettos are not purely an American phenomena but do indeed exist in France; denial that France is turning into a melting pot society that no longer can reside under a rigid notion of notional republican identity. Denial of this sort does not exist in the United States—though it did take several generations for it not to. Now is the time for France to come to a similar realization, for her to do some soul searching, and for her to recognize her true, diversified, and globalized self. Because she will not resolve her crises of social fragmentation until more multiculturalist understandings—as the one I had presented to my class—become more of the rule than the novel exception.
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