A study break

Just wrapped up a 5 page primary document paper en Francais on colonial assimilation policies, and celebrated by watching the last five minutes of "Two Weeks Notice" (I'm not even going to get into the whole grammar issue raised by the title by Lynne Truss) dubbed in french (Sandra Bullock sounded awful, Hugh Grant's voice double worked).

Jsut today, I got an email from my dear friend Rachel called "Europe's Angry Young Muslims" which is also part of the BBC's excellently put-together page on Muslims in Europe(yes, I am a total BBC News fanboy, get over it. And no, American media doesn't measure up.). Rachel sent me the article because she was interested, given the fact that I'm here in Paris, what I'd seen or heard about what's going on.

Honestly, I think it's more telling as to what I don't hear/see in some ways. Paris is an interesting city in that it's one of the littlest big cities I've ever been in. Real Paris (aka inside the Peripherique) is chock full of monuments, museums, chic cafes, couturiers, and everything else de la mode. This is an expensive Paris (as I've found out. Thank you weak dollar.), this is a Paris that's eminently walkable and easy to get around thanks to reliable public transport if you're pressed for time and can't promenade down boulevard Haussman.

What I mean by that is that Paris central is different from many American cities (Philly, Detroit, etc) in that you don't see much white flight. Quite the contrary, in that the projects and poorer areas that were where the riots started are far removed from the city center, and honestly out of sight, out of mind for many of the richer folk in the center. The only time you see the projects if you choose not to live out there (as if it's a choice of residence...) is from the highway, or on semi-brave excursions to tourist attractions such as St. Denis. Even most of the homeless people (or, as the french say, S.D.F. = "sans domicile fixe" - gotta love french politically correct names for the disadvantaged) in the center are white.

These young angry muslims, as they're caracterized in the article, are far-removed from the city of lights that a tourist sees. Their city (actually, "cite" in french refers to the projects) is lacking public services, police protection, and general interest from the larger population (of course, lest they make themselves heard). Me, on the other hand, I'm here, living a life of cafes and museusms, something that isn't possible for so many of these young people who are more far-removed from society.

Another part of the problem, from what I've seen is that the public perception (ie: french perception) of the muslim population here is so multilayered. On one hand, you have the inevitable culture clash epitomized in battles such as the banning of headscarves, and on the other you have the problems of the "racailles" (loosely, thugs) such as Sarkozy famously declared when he was talking about the 2 young men who died and helped precipitate the Paris riots. I live in an area that can be described as having a brisk nightlife, since I'm not far from Pigalle (the "sex" district, ie: the Moulin Rouge and discotheques), and you can clearly see on a saturday night here the problems the french have with the muslim and immigrant youth. They come down in packs, talk to women, go around yelling and screaming, and in general abstain from acting "discret" (which, if you talk to the French, is one of their most prized character traits). Of course, this is a visible minority, and it poses a lot of problems in terms of public perception. Does anybody remember this summer when Oprah was turned away from the Hermes store? Their line was that they "were having trouble with North Africans lately."

The tricky part, as always, is finding middle ground in such a stratified social situations. I think of Washington DC, and how I never, ever, go down to the real Southeast for obvious reasons of bodily safety. We're talking about a city (DC) that has 12 times the national HIV prevalence rate. Am I guilty of the same errors, with the consequences being different only insofar as poor black youth in DC don't decide to blow themselves up on the metro? Ultimately, I'm not surprised that the muslim youth in Paris are upset (sorry to kind of use muslim/immigrant interchangeably, I know I'm a little lax with keeping the terminology 100% correct), and I'm not surprised that they're turning to radical methods. It's easy for a white american kid to stand back and act indignant, but I'm not going to spend any more time doing that. All of us have to get past that and start looking for solutions that aren't so superficial, whatever that may mean.

PS - I've been watching french tv while I'm writing this post, and Kristin Scott Thomas, the English actress, is on. She speaks amazing french, and it totally rekindled my English Patient-era crush.