The true land of the individual?
One would think that the stereotypical land of John Wayne and Ronald Reagan would be the land of individuals. Some would argue differently. While researching examples of views of U.S. irrelevance, I came across this comparison of the United States and France:
Throughout the 1990s, the "rhetoric of America" was constantly invoked in French public discourse, especially in debates regarding minority issues‹ethnicity, as well as gender and sexuality. Today as much as ever, America is indeed good to think, as a model, or (more frequently) a countermodel for French identity politics....
In France, the contrast between the two models of the nation gained prominence in public debates around 1989. This rhetorical contrast was then developed around immigration issues...and later extended to other minority issues with the revival of feminist as well as gay and lesbian politics. The French model of the nation is called républicain, as it claims to prolong a political tradition formulated by the Third Republic (in reference to the principles of the 1789 Revolution). This ideal of national integration does not acknowledge group identities of any kind: the universalist model of citizenship is based on abstract individuals. Regional, religious, and ethnic differences are not to be taken into account by the state. Citizens are all supposed to be equivalent: as a consequence, such differences belong to the private sphere, rather than to the public realm of politics. At the end of the nineteenth century, this ideology was meant to unify the nation by transforming "peasants into Frenchmen."...
According to this updated rhetoric, the American model of citizenship is based on group identities. Individuals belong to "communities," who find their political voices through "lobbies." Both terms (and both realities) are said to be fundamentally foreign to the French tradition: it is assumed that political representation is always "color-blind" in France, while in the United States it could only be "color-conscious"....
American-style fragmentation (ethnic and otherwise) appears as the ultimate threat when a differentialist ideology replaces universalist principles: this is how multiculturalism has been depicted in French debates throughout the 1990s. The rhetoric of the Republic thus functions as a warning against "the disuniting of France"....
This explains the French move against Muslim headscarves - basically, any group is threatening to Frenchness:
France is in the process of passing a law that would ban "signs and dress that ostensibly denote the religious belonging of students" in public elementary and high schools beginning in the 2004-2005 school year....
The law was officially proposed by President Jacques Chirac in a December 17, 2003 speech and submitted for constitutional review by the Ministry of Education on January 5, 2004. It follows in part the recommendations of two commissions, one headed by president of the National Assembly Jean-Louis Debré, the other by immigration expert and former minister Bernard Stasi, each charged with evaluating the state of laïcité laïcité(state secularism) in France....
The Stasi committee's 77-page published report subtly traced the history of and present challenges to laïcité, and recommended a series of 26 measures to better enhance its mission of providing freedom of belief, the legal equality of religious groups and the neutrality of the state vis-à-vis religion....
The Stasi report and the current debates revolve around the future of laïcité in a context marked by the rise of Islam as the second religion of France and fears over the growth of "communitarianism," particularly in the "urban ghettos" where many immigrants and their children reside. laïcité is considered by supporters of the law proposal to be a fundamental, immutable pillar of the French republic. Enthroned in the present constitution, it is variously cited in the Stasi report as the "cornerstone (pierre angulaire) of national unity," the "guarantee of individual freedom," the "founding value of the republican pact," and, most colorfully, the "leavening (levain) of integration." For the authors of the report, hijabs worn in school -- as clear markers of "communitarianism" -- threaten laïcité, and hence the "social pact" of "living together" (vivre-ensemble) that maintains the republic as an integral unit.
So does this relate to the current riots in France?
Walid was born in France and went to a French high school. He will show you his French driving license and even his French identity card. But ask him what his identity is and he will say "93."
"Nine Three" - the two first two digits of the postal code spanning the roughest suburbs on Paris's northeastern fringe - stands for unemployment and endless rows of housing projects. It stands for chronically high crime rates, teenage gang wars and a large immigrant community.
Since Oct. 27, when the accidental death of two teenagers set off nightly riots across the region, "93" also stands for angry youths burning hundreds of cars, setting fire to shops and attacking the police with anything from rocks to real bullets.
Theirs is a defensive identity, an identity by default that has sprouted in a vacuum of any real sense of belonging....
According to Mamadou, 24, who like most youths here declined to give his last name for fear, he said, of being pursued by the police, everyday reality in the suburbs belies the noble idea of equality before the law....
Leaving the afternoon prayer at a makeshift outdoor mosque, Hocine, 23, a soft-spoken young man of Algerian descent in religious attire, said he was resigned to never having his culture and his religion truly accepted in France.
"How many times have I gone into Paris and have been shouted at 'Go home!" he said. "Home is here," he added. "But it doesn't really feel like home."...
After quitting school early, Mamadou recently found a job in a supermarket in La Courneuve, one of the suburbs at the heart of the recent rioting, stacking boxes.
But it took two years, scores of applications and several humiliating moments of being sent away after interviewers caught a glimpse of his African features....
The man, who would only identify himself as Awax, said looking Arab in France was more than just having darker skin: It was also a ticket to a societal pigeon hole from which there was no escape.
"Looking Arab means you either spend all day at the mosque or you are criminal scum," he said. "People generalize all the time, but you can't. Nobody talks about white French people as Christian."
In few places is the separation of religion and state as strict as it is in France, where all conspicuous religious garb like the Muslim head scarf is banned from schools.
The law has intermittently prompted some Muslim groups to complain, and last year many cases of Muslim girls refusing to take their scarves off made headlines.
While sociologists and immigration specialists say that the religiousness of immigrants is often exaggerated, they say it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"Many of these guys are no more Muslim than other French people are practicing Christian," said Christophe Bertossi at the French Institute of International Relations in Paris.
"But if they are given no other identity the Muslim label risks becoming the thing they fall back on."
It's interesting to compare the American and French ways of dealing with this. The standard American way is to make sure that all groups are represented - even baby seal clubbers do this (remember that baby seal clubbers nominated the first woman to the Supreme Court, and the second black). The standard French way appears to be to officially deny that differences exist.
Comments
This is a nice theory, but is not possible in reality. Any nation, republic or otherwise, is made up of groups of people because human nature is to group ourselves according to similarities. We are all equivalent in terms of our value as human beings and the rights we enjoy. But by ignoring our differences, we are in fact devaluing them. The law against Muslim headscarves is evidence of this. By not allowing people to express, even through clothing, their beliefs that make them different, France is saying in effect that they are not equivalent. It is further proved in the '93' neighborhood you described, and the riots. Nature abhors a vaccum, human nature will not tolerate an identity vaccum. Thus, youth are filling that void and declaring their identity in a negative way.