The Roma and burqa issues have tarnished the image of France as a welcoming and lovely country, but you had George W. Bush, so you can’t judge French people. However, everyone in France is not a potential Nazi and/or a Stalinist trying to ban foreigners and Muslims.
These laws have raised a huge controversy in France. According to left-wing politicians, these topics are used as a diversion by Nicolas Sarkozy not to deal with the true issues. According to right-wing politicians, these topics dealing with “safety” are a priority for French people and had to be solved by the government. As a journalism student trying to learn how to make opinion distinct from facts, I may refer to a poll published earlier this month, saying that safety was a priority for 26% of the polled people. But 74% of them talked about unemployment, 54% evoked retirement, 50% considered the quality of cure you can be provided in hospitals, and 47% feel concerned about purchasing power. I’m still wondering in which way these topics deal with safety, and not with immigration or religion, which don’t even appear among French people’s preoccupations.
The other day, I was listening to the radio, and the journalist was talking about the crisis going on in the US and the unemployment rate so close to 10%, which was alarming. Alar—what? Watchoo talkin’ about (I ♥ Gary Coleman)? That’s the normal rate for unemployment in France since the ’70s. And then I remembered. I remembered that during his presidential campaign, Nicolas Sarkozy promised to decrease the unemployment rate to under 5%. Partly because of the economic crisis, he has not achieved his goal so far. That may explain why he is so concerned about the estimated 2,000 women wearing burqas in France (representing 0,003% of the population) and the 15,000 Roma living in France (representing 0,023% of the population).
Furthermore, Nicolas Sarkozy’s government has been involved in many scandalous affairs: public money wasted, a minister offering fiscal gifts to the wealthiest French woman, and nominations of people with uncertain skills just because of their acquaintances to government’s members. The media coverage was focused on these topics in June and early July.
At the end of this same month, in a speech in Grenoble, the President came back to the basics that made him so popular in 2007. He said he would show no mercy against offenders, either thieves or drug dealers, but also illegal immigrants such as Roma. Hence started the removal of Roma illegal camps in France. The common—and yet to be proven—belief is that living close to a Roma camp may threat the safety of your goods. By promoting the expulsion of Roma people, Nicolas Sarkozy wishes to convince a part of his voters that he has not forgotten about his big security mottos.
His speech also targeted the failure of the French integration system when it comes to immigrant minorities. Even if the law banning burqas in public spaces had been designed a long time before this speech, the 2,000 women wearing this clothing were concerned by this reference to integration.
As a laical society, there is no reference to religion in public spaces, buildings, and institutions in France. Contrary to the US, we do not back the freedom of religion principle, since our national history has been pretty messy with churches. Religion is highly private and is not usually displayed in public. Most of French people agree with the principle that women should not wear burqas, for it is considered to diminish the dignity of women, making them underclass citizens not worthy of showing their face to men. In that sense, the ban on burqas shall not be considered as an infringement to freedom of religion but as a tool to promote equality between genders.
Still, there is a controversy about the how. Left-wing politicians did not agree with the principle of a law that would only stigmatize women wearing burqas and make them outlaws. The politicians who wrote the bill rely on the “pedagogical phase” that will last for six months before the law is strictly applied. During this phase, police officers and Muslim leaders are supposed to talk to women who disrespect this law in order to make them change their decision.
The President has not openly declared if he will run again in 2012, but these laws look like signs that he will, while attempting to make people forget his economical promises.
The Turkish government pulled a similar stunt a few years ago when they lifted the ban on headscarves at universities. It was really just a red herring used to distract the public from other, more insidious erosions of secularism and various infringements on freedom of the press and the independence of the judicial branch.
Bush utilized similar tactics during his 2004 campaign. Gay marriage initiatives on the ballots in several swing states and swift boat defamation ads were employed to improve turnout among the rabid right and keep independent voters away from the polls.
Anyway, you’re right, this is what Sarkozy is up to.
You do know Gary Coleman died, right?
This is why I laugh when Europeans try and lecture us on race relations.
Being unemployed in France is just slightly different from being unemployed in the USA.
Yeah we had Bush, and the Vichy government deported 75000 Jews to the death camps.
Try not to start your next post with the attitude.
Part of the problem is that the official unemployment numbers in the US are a total political fiction, since they don’t count the formerly self-employed whose businesses have failed and people who’ve given up looking for work due to a lack of jobs. The real numbers are almost double.
@6 No one counts those and they have never been counted in what we call the unemployment rate. However, you can get those numbers, official ones, if you read the labor reports. Look at U4, U5, and U6.
@3 – Except Julien’s a black French guy. I’ve always viewed race relations in France as a two-sided coin. On one side the French sympathized with the minorities in the US and were always welcoming of American Blacks affected by the damages of American racism. On the other hand, they treat blacks from Africa, especially the former colonies, and Arabs from the former colonies like shit for “not wanting to be French.” Basically the Americans, who move to France, want to assimilate and acquire the “French identity” while immigrants from Africa want to maintain their identity, which pisses off the French.
Leave it to France to pass a law forcing women to wear LESS clothing.
Secularism (note: laïque = secular) in France means that everyone is supposed to hide any sign of religion in public; secularism in America means that everyone is supposed to tolerant of everyone else’s signs of religion in public. In France, everyone is supposed to act the same to be equal; in America, everyone can act differently and still be equal. Except in Arizona.
A key difference between France and the US is that the latter doesn’t really have a dominant national identity or culture. The American WASPs had a go of it for a while, but they have pretty much died off. These days, US culture consists of dozens of completely different subcultures, many of whom hate each other. Whenever I hear a European trying to generalize about Americans, it’s a giveaway that he doesn’t really understand our balkanized country.
The truth is that most of us here on SLOG have much more in common with your average Frenchman than we do with, say, white southern baptists, ghetto thugs, or cowboy hicks in the rural west.
P.S. Thank you for writing about something else besides bread.
Lovely coverage! Even with no photos of you! I enjoyed a recent piece in the Global Post about Mariame Tighanimine’s website “Hijab and the City” (odd title but lovely concept – she and her sisters decided to try to make money with an online venture, since nobody would hire them unless they removed the headscarves).
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/franc…
@10, Ha, visit America sometime, Pay attention to the news.
I am all for France being a little bitch about immigrants. France is small so I think its ok for it to be selective, the USA is huge and has an established reputation for taking in immigrants. I think France should outlaw the burqas, but only for citizens. A tourist shouldn’t be told that they can’t be who they are while visiting.
I LOVE the idea of people in America not being able to outwardly show religion, It makes sense like not being publicly intoxicated, or not being allowed to drive 120 down a residential street. All these things are fine for the person doing it, but can seriously hurt and kill others who aren’t involved.
@10 Exactly. The ability to wear a head covering is celebrated in America. It means we are free.
Assimilation.
C’est juste, c’est propre, c’est le definition de la France.
Si on n’est pas d’accord avec ca, on doit partir.
@14 no, it means we live in a desert country. And were forced to wear it by the Turks before they became Muslim, and we’re too stupid to realize it has nothing to do with our religion.
Did you run out of bakeries?
Fuck the burqa ban, seriously. Fuck Sarkozy, too.