Time magazine forgoes the usual gushy French valentine.
PARIS October 29, 2006 (Time) - [Presidential candidate Rachid Nekkaz, 34, from the Parisian banlieue of Choisy-le-Roi] is trying to address one of the most glaring failings of the French political system: the systematic underrepresentation of visible minorities. Nekkaz and his organization, Club des Elus [sic] Allez France, have registered 63,000 new voters in the last six months... By his reckoning, 15-25% of potential voters in the poor suburbs around Paris aren't registered.There is not a single member of France's National Assembly of Arab or black origin; nor is a single mayor in France, even in the suburban communities ringing Paris and other French cities where descendants of post-war immigrants are concentrated.
It's a problem that political parties are grappling with only gingerly in a country that won't even gather statistics on ethnic origin. No one disputes the need for more diversity among political representatives. But politicians across the spectrum frequently declare that France's republican ideals are at odds with what they derisively call "communitarism," or basing politics in religion, ethnicity or anything else less universal than the classic French virtues of equality, liberty and fraternity. The notion that minorities may be best suited to represent minorities is simple ethnic politics anywhere else, but in France that's seen as the first step toward reducing the state to an arbiter among warring factions rather than something that treats all French people equally. It's a handsome concept, but in practice, it often makes the disenfranchized feel even more excluded.
In practice phony republicanism does more than make the disenfranchised feel more excluded -- it out-and-out excludes them. Republican values have not forestalled civil unrest in France, a massive police presence has.
... Louis-Mohamed Seye is the only black among the 45 members of the municipal council of Fontenay-sous-Bois, a community east of Paris where 47% of housing is in projects and the Franco-African population is substantial. ... For next June's legislative elections, the Socialist Party has selected more than 40 people of Arab or African origin as candidates for the 577 National Assembly seats at issue. But the vast majority of them have been given slots in conservative constituencies where they are bound to lose.... The Socialists can at least claim more support among minorities than the conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). [Algerian descendant] Jeannette Bougrab, 33, is the UMP's national secretary, charged with attracting new party members. She has also been accorded a candidacy in Paris' mixed 18th arrondissement — a Socialist sinecure that she calls "unwinnable."
... [She] thinks the UMP has abandoned the banlieues and can only start winning there if she assumes the burden of her origins. "If people like me don't get interested in the situation of minorities, it's hard to expect others in the party to," she says.
Pretend equality is not equality. It is plain enough that in France racial and social barriers are institutional, prevasive, and effective. French minorities remain less equal than their equal but privileged nativist compatriots. That is not an opinion. It is France's banlieues.
Today is the 207th anniversary of Brumaire (18 Brumaire Year VIII on the French Republican Calendar), when Napoleon trashed the Republic. Republicanism has since been restored, trashed, restored, trashed, and is today folded into a presidential imperium. A different time, a different Napoleon -- a socialist boogie Napoleon -- rewrites Republican values again:
TOUS LES ANIMAUX SONT ÉGAUX
MAIS CERTAINS SONT PLUS ÉGAUX QUE D’AUTRES[ALL FRENCH ARE EQUAL,
BUT SOME FRENCH ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.]
PFFT (What is this?): Phony Republicanism 4 | Racism dressed up in nice notions 4½ | Rayonnement français 0
Bonjour,
On disait les Yanks PRAGMATIQUES ...
Bush et les USA en entier sont en pleine déconfiture du fait de l' échec que leur avait prédit Villepin en Irak...
Et vous continuez le "french bashing" ???
Vous êtes c*** ou quoi ??
J 'avais prévu des excuses à la France de la part des Yanks.
Il se pourrait que le temps en soit venu.
Messieurs les Démocrates , Bush est cuit : la France attend vos excuses maintenant que vous êtes au pouvoir !!!!
Good luck to your country in Irak , dear Milton !!
Je vois bien que les vidéos des Yanks victimes des tireurs d' élite sont particulièrement abjectes , mais tout mensonge se paye un jour ...
Remember Kosovo !
Bonjour,
Les Bushiens défenseur des musulmans EN FRANCE , c'est à crever de rire !!!!!
Rappel:les Bushiens ont assassiné plus de 200 000 civils musulmans qui étaient CHEZ EUX en Irak.
Et ils ont le culot de faire la leçon à la France sur sa minorité musulmane qui n'est pas CHEZ ELLE en France.
Good luck to your country in Irak ,dear Milton !!!!!
i've seen a nice comment of a random middle / lower high class in a center us state saying to the french journalist :
"how do you feel beeing a christian in a muslim dominated country?"
well that says it for me :)
btw : how do you like borat ? ^^
