I am simply astounded by what is happening in France right now. I simply cannot reconcile this violence with that country. Granted, I was never in the ZUPs (zone urbane publique or something like that -- the projects), though when I did pass them on the train they were depressing as heck, but still. This is France.
When I was there in 1999, not long after Columbine, my students were dumbfounded by the violence in America. You could write that off as the naievete of small-town kids, but the riots have reached Lens, not 15 minutes by train from my town, Bethune. And that's just according to a map of the 20 or so most serious riots -- there were riots in 300 towns yesterday. And while Bethune wasn't a hotbed of immigrant unrest -- or of many immigrants period -- it was certainly an economically depressed area in its own right. I tend to think of that region as the West Virginia of France, lots of closed coal mines. There certainly could have been small skirmishes there. Hooded thugs and fires in the Grand'Place -- I can't even picture it.
Of course, I had heard of the racism in France. I only had one first-generation French student, but I had known a man of Algerian descent in 1997 (Dex may remember him, the guy that was dating that rather ditsy girl Jenny in Lyon), and he had talked about the difficulties he faced. And I had met a fellow teaching assistant who had been placed in the Lille suburb of Roubaix. That place was known to be dangerous, you just didn't voluntarily go to Roubaix. Students regularly threatened that teacher, and he'd even had chairs thrown at him. I think he was teaching middle school -- and we were just the conversational English teachers, with no real grading power.
(Time for a sidenote with a completely different tone: In Bethune, the Grand'Place is dominated by a medieval bell tower, Le Beffroi. It was one of the few things to survive a 1918 bombardment [the rest of the square was rebuilt]. And apparently, it just became a UNESCO world history site! Go little Bethune!)
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Welcome to my odditorium, a collection of curiosities made up of snippets about my life and occasional machinations on deeper subjects.
1 comment:
Virtually any country is capable of having riots. Lord knows we've had some. I'm surprised it has lasted this long as well, but mob psychology is a strange thing. The US has been lucky because most recent events have burnt themselves out quickly. France has been unlucky because the initial spark is no longer what is fueling the conflagration. I’m not sure how long it will take them to get this under control, or what might happen in the mean time.
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