France Riots: Fuelled By Everyday Discrimination

The riots which spread countrywide after the killing by police of Nahel M, a 17-year-old boy of Algerian origin, have shaken French society to its very core. The unrest has been described as unprecedented in terms of scale and intensity.

In Marseille, a city that I’ve called home over the past year, an absurd routine settled into place.

Afternoons were for rushing to finish errands before shops and public transport prematurely shut down ahead of the impending chaos.

Evenings were characterised by a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse between police and rioters, set to the pulsating soundtrack of car sirens, helicopters and fireworks.

Mornings were for French talk-shows and the one-sided analysis they often platformed.

The same carousel of police union spokespersons, law analysts and politicians repeatedly attempted to explain the who, what, and – most notably – why the riots were taking place.

While there was almost unanimous condemnation of the police killing of Nahel, after the riots many were quick to raise the same-old question regarding immigration into France.

There was the ever-present: “How have third- and fourth-generation French citizens of immigrant descent failed to integrate into French society?”

And my personal favourite: “Don’t rioters understand that they are ruining their own property?”

That such questions have yet to be answered decades after they were first raised makes me question whether those asking them were sincerely searching for answers.
In his famed commencement speech at Kenyon College in the US in 2005, late American novelist David Foster Wallace put forth the parable of two young fish swimming past an older fish, who says to them: “Morning, boys. How’s the water?”

The two continue on their way and then one asks the other: “What the hell is water?”

“The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about,” Wallace noted.

As a young, Algerian, Muslim man who grew up in Canada, my observation of day-to-day life in France over the past few months is that the water reeks of latent, banalised racism and Islamophobia.

In the weeks leading up to the shooting, there were several examples of major media outlets and political elites making highly provocative statements about Muslims and Algerians in France.

At the start of June, former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe gave a wide-ranging interview in which he called for immigration reform. He said that some French people don’t consider second- or third-generation immigrants French for purposes of “integration, education, civic-mindedness” – and that these views should be heard.

Mr Philippe went on to say that another problem many French people have with immigration is Islam.

“It is a central subject, a disturbing subject, a haunting subject,” he said.

Finally, he advocated revoking a bilateral treaty that makes it easier for Algerians to immigrate to France.

BBC/Jide Johnson.