Shaun Kenney | Politics and Religion in Virginia's Public Square


Saturday, November 12, 2005 The French ideal goes up in flames Interesting article from the UK Tablet: However, less well understood are the complex long-term causes. All stem from poverty and isolation from the mainstream of French life. The crucial date is 1975, when it was decided to allow immigrants to be joined by their families, from their country of origin. Before that date, immigrant workers would often marry French women who brought up the children and integrated the family into French society, aided by the compulsory, secular school system. Since the law on r?groupement familial (family reunion), foreign extended families now bring up the children according to their culture. Unemployment means that these families, who often do not speak French, live solely on state aid, completely cut off from society. When the children go to school, they are torn between the two cultures and feel at home in neither. If they drop out of school, as many do, they have no hope of finding a job or founding a family and often resort to petty theft or drug dealing. Poverty and poor housing in the "ghettos" of the banlieue are at the root of the unrest. Unemployment is three times higher (30 per cent) than the national level (9.9 per cent) and racial discrimination, when seeking work or renting accommodation, makes a mockery of the proud national slogan adorning all public buildings: "Liberte Egalite Fraternite". The fiction of the equality of all French citizens is fostered by the ban placed on opinion pollsters to publish the ethnic or religious origin of those being canvassed. The largely specious reason given for this is to respect the secular nature of the French state. In reality, it simply masks the true makeup of society, which is segregated and fragmented on racial and religious lines. Which is also one of the reasons why the American experiment works. A government unconcerned with equality, but deeply concerned about equality of opportunity is what has made America great. Americans deal less in the trade of culture, and more in the trade of commerce. True, this has created some of the more shameful episodes of our own history (slavery, the treatment of Native Americans, and economic enslavement of the Irish come to mind), but it could very well be argued that these chapters in our history are merely shades of the Old World imposing upon the New. The French vision of representative governance is failing, and with it the ideas the European Union is based upon. Perhaps this is a portent of a new way of approaching culture? Anyone who reads Pope John Paul II's attempts to bridge the gap between cultures certainly understand what the alternative could promise. posted by Shaun Kenney \| 11/12/2005 12:35:00 PM \| 0 comments 0 Comments: Post a Comment Home
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