Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Riots in France
I posted the following as a reply to a friend's blog. I can't think of any better (read: easier) way to express my thoughts so God bless 'copy and paste.'
For my two cents, France's problems with immigrants is that while France in theory is a leading democratic nation, in reality the French are fiercely nationalistic and racist. Let's not forget that Ho Chi Minh learned the principles he revolted for while a college student in Paris...perfect example of France's ideology not matching what the country practiced abroad. Tension between immigrants and natives has been brewing for a long time. Give any Frenchman a bottle of wine and he'll say to get the foreigners out. But such thinking doesn't bode well with sober thoughts of liberte, egalite, fraternite, which I think explains the slow-paced reaction. Stopping the riots means a lot more to the government than simply arresting people - it means addressing the underlying tensions so that similar riots don't happen in the future.
For my two cents, France's problems with immigrants is that while France in theory is a leading democratic nation, in reality the French are fiercely nationalistic and racist. Let's not forget that Ho Chi Minh learned the principles he revolted for while a college student in Paris...perfect example of France's ideology not matching what the country practiced abroad. Tension between immigrants and natives has been brewing for a long time. Give any Frenchman a bottle of wine and he'll say to get the foreigners out. But such thinking doesn't bode well with sober thoughts of liberte, egalite, fraternite, which I think explains the slow-paced reaction. Stopping the riots means a lot more to the government than simply arresting people - it means addressing the underlying tensions so that similar riots don't happen in the future.
