Piwin -> RE: RIP Jo Cox (Jun. 19 2016 13:26:06)
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Dudnote. Interesting. I couldn't tell you how they compare to Hope not Hate, but the two main anti-racism NGOs in France would LICRA (technically an international league, but de facto centered on French affairs) and SOS Racism. I am not well versed in everything they do. Usually when you hear about them in the press, it is because they have sued someone for incitement to racial hatred. This makes it difficult for me to side with them, as I personally do not believe that infringement on free speech is the way to solve these problems. If you take the example of the stand-up "comic" Dieudonné, all of the court cases against him seem to have done is strengthen is core audience and give them the chance to pass off as the "victims" (muzzled by the government blablabla). I do get the intention behind the laws against incitement to racial hatred, but the side effects are pretty bad IMHO. As for the French overseas territories, it is of course quite different in each case, quite simply because the history of those regions is very different than in mainland France. Racial integration in mainland France is also an issue of immigration, whereas this is not at all the case in the overseas territories, where the so-called "minorities" are in fact not minorities and are the native population of the area. I think of all the overseas territories, the tensions are highest in French Polynesia, or so I've been told. The way I see it, the white population in these territories was (and perhaps still is) behaving like many rich expat communities in developing countries very close to being (or actually being) gated communities in every sense of the term (there was even a study about a decade ago about the genetic impact of inner breeding among the white population of la Reunion...). In France, these issues are closely related to immigration. And, as you mentioned, there are striking generational differences here. I am myself what has since been called "third culture child", i.e. children brought up between different cultures (studies on military brats and missionary kids led to defining similar problems that children raised up in this fashion face). And I personally believe that this is an important factor in the radicalisation of second-generation Muslim immigrants we see today. France is not nearly as "welcoming" as say the US. The outsider, no matter how well treated, always remains an outsider and little to no opportunity is given to him to feel like he "belongs". And I don't simply mean economically. It goes all the way up into the way people think. I'll give you one example. I happen to be non-descript Caucasian (let's put it that way [:D]). I was born in France, raised through the French educational system, etc. etc. But I happen to have an English-sounding name since my parents are American. It has happened to me on several occasions that, when meeting someone new, I'd talk for a while and they'd be none the wiser. But as soon as I said what my name was, they'd say "I thought you had an accent!" (and trust me I don't, French is my "mother" tongue. I'm much more awkward in English as you've probably noticed by now[;)]). This desire to pin-point the stranger is so strong that they have the ability of imagining an accent when there is none... A friend of mine from Senegal told me that in France, whenever someone asked him where he was from, the subtext was "you're not from here are you?", but when in the US he got the impression that that same question expressed genuine interest in his story, not a way to single him out from the in-group.) As for the link to radicalisation, well simply put it has to do with how individuals cope to build an identity when they are reject both by their host community and their community of origin. A good read on this issue is Amin Maalouf's "Les identités meurtrières" (translated into English as "In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong"). As for Sadiq Khan, I get what your friend was saying, but at the same time I'm not sure I fully agree (as a side note, the starting point of the discussion is not his race, but his religion, pas d'amalgame [8D]). If it were about his race, then of course in an ideal society we would de facto be color-blind. And of course we should strive to be. If you look at the progression over Obama's two-terms, I think the general debate did move more towards his policies, as the issue of color little by little lost ground (it's still very present, but less so I think than when he was first elected). Nonetheless, there is some significance that for the first time, someone from Sadiq Khan's beliefs (and color in this case) was elected to such a high-position. I see it as two separate planes. The historical precedent on the one hand, and the individual on the other and what he is actually trying to achieve. Of course, this is only one strand of a much larger issue (Obama president didn't prevent the events that led to Black Lives Matter and such, so the issue of race is still very real), but I do think it is telling. Let's put it this way. Until it actually happens (having a Muslim mayor), you'll be left with the doubt that it's simply not possible and perhaps the reason is anti-Muslim bigotry. Once it's happened, they you can at the very least cast that doubt aside and have some grounds to believe that if no Muslims have been elected to that position, it's simply because they weren't any Muslim candidates with the right qualifications or enough impetus to get elected (of course then that brings the debate down to whether minorities have equal opportunities to get the education and tools to be competitive for those positions...and endless debate...). So I'm stuck with this lingering doubt that a French equivalent to Sadiq Khan wouldn't be possible at this point, not because there aren't any suitable candidates but because of the overall anti-Muslim sentiment in the country.
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