perfidy

For several months, some of my compatriots have been kicking around a discussion on ethnic problems in France. Bad Thoughts, who has actually spent time in France, and is an actual historian of French history and therefore knows many things I don't about the field, had some interesting insights. Follow the link and scroll down. He's a thoughtful and unique thinker anyway. 

Namely, he argues that France's foreign policy toward the Middle East is shaped by how the government thinks the large Muslim population would react. Fair enough. He also provides evidence for a parallel argument, that US foreign policy toward Africa is shaped by how the government thinks the African-American population would act. 

Excerpt: 

There is an article that has been making the rounds for several months that attempts to explain the degeneration (yes, that is the appropriate word) of the French nation by pointing out its problems with North African immigrants. In a nutshell, it explains that these immigrants are a major source of social problems in France that the government has no ability to solve. Instead, the government concedes. Whole neighborhoods go without proper policing, and law and order are effectively nullified. This reality extends into foreign policy, where the Quai d'Orsay cannot make moves that would anger the Muslim population of France. 

As I pointed out in my original response, this is hardly unique to France. The United States has been saddled with a racial problem that it has been unwilling to solve for several decades. There has been little help for the black America, whole sections of cities are under-policed as priorities are still shifting to protect property rather than to deal with crime, people are concentrating themselves in gated communities to keep out (racially-based) crime, and a major income gap is developing between whites and blacks.

This is an interesting point, but this section of the argument has a couple problems that don't necessarily affect the rest. Mainly, I think comparing France to the US on this issue doesn't quite work for three reasons. 

First among these is although the US has had a racial problem for several centuries, I'm not sure that the policing problem is endemic - that is, that across the board the emphasis has shifted to policing the property of the rich at the expense of entire minority neighborhoods. It undeniably happens, in California most notably. But this trend is balanced by efforts in other major cities to return policing to the neighborhood level. This brings up another struggle between competing philosophies of social order, that I have no expertise in whatsoever, so I shall digress. 

Second, the income gap that is developing so quickly in France has existed since the beginning in the USA. Obviously, I'm not saying this is a good thing! But, it hurts more acutely when the gap first opens than when it's been there a while. Therefore my sense is that the rapidly growing inequality in France is more dangerous to public order than the entrenched inequality in the USA. 

The third major difference between French racial troubles and US racial troubles is the question of dual allegiances. African-American families can generally trace their lineage in the US back for many generations. Now, the legacy of slavery and the reconstruction of a shared African past that has resulted in the African Consciousness movement does give the African American community as a whole an identity apart from others in the US. But despite that, most African-Americans were born here, are US citizens, and carry within them an ideal United States that, though it may be wildly different from the reality they see around them, is still a United States that includes them. They are Americans. Partly this is the result of time. But it is also the result of 150 years of concerted efforts to mend the abuses wrought by slavery. 

France, on the other hand, has yet to adequately address the needs of their immigrant population. The current tensions (please correct me if I'm wrong) arose fairly recently when enclaves of Islamic immigrants collect in council estates, and remained there without jobs to apply for and without mechanisms for integrating into the larger fabric of French culture. As a result, these immigrant populations remain closely identified with their enclave rather than with France as a whole. They self-identify as Muslims and as Pakistanis (for example). 

This situation is deepened by a high crime rate, organized youth gangs, massive unemployment, and the policing tactics in these areas used by the French authorities. Ultimately, rather than being/becoming French citizens with a sense of ownership in the place where they live, they identify themselves as strangers in a strange land. In this day and age, a population of highly dissatisfied and alienated young male Muslims with strong ties to the nations from which they came is a worrying proposition. It is not merely a domestic issue but a potentially international problem as well, and one that the French approach is not currently solving. Not that the USA could necessarily do any better, but France is having a bit of a rough go, there. 

It does seem that France is reluctant to act in the Middle East due to these internal pressures. I'm not sure the same is true for the US and Africa - I'm going to have to look into this further. 

I would argue that major US involvement in Africa is guided less by what various administrations think it will do for their political prospects among black voters, and more by when there's huge political capital to be gained among all voters. That is, Bad Thoughts is arguing a positive correlation between pleasing black voters and not libervading African nations, and I am arguing a positive correlation between pleasing all voters and not libervading African nations. I can't remember the last time I heard a policy speech about Africa. It's not in too many peoples' consciousnesses, and the first step toward building approval for a military action is to start cultivating outrage. 

I notice that I'm wandering into all kinds of thickets I don't have maps to, so I'm going to leave it for now and return to my usual bitching about free speech and privacy rights. And rock music. Rock music is good.