Paris, Rosa Parks & Protests
High unemployment, low moral and even lower expectations from the society, which in most cases passively sympathized with their fight, fueled the flames.
Just 40 years later it seems the same high anxiety and low expectations are sweeping another major city. But this time it’s in Paris, France.
For a week, young minorities, filled with equally tense frustrations and anger, have been rioting in Paris’ poorer disenfranchised suburbs. Since the urban violence ignited October 28th, there have been more than 500 arrests. Police in riot gear have been trying to restore order but right now it seems futile.
In fact, the violence is spreading faster than the fires the young people are setting to cars and buildings. The events started with the death of two teens of African ethnicity, who were electrecuted hiding from the police who many say were chasing the boys. The authorities dispute reports they were chasing them. Nevertheless, whether the urban legend is true or not it has sparked the underlining tensions thousands of these young men have held close to the chest for decades.
Socio-economic experts don’t dismiss the reality in which these young men live. Joblessness in France is 22.2 percent for men under 25 years old, compared with 7.8 percent for men aged 25 to 49, according to the Labor Ministry. France doesn’t include ethnicity in its census nor does it publish poverty or unemployment statistics based on ethnicity or religion. But no country, no matter how they try and hide or not acknowledge the facts – doesn’t mean they don’t exist – particularly in these African-Muslim sects buried in the shadow of the mostly Catholic country.
The most disturbing thing about this week’s long protest seems to be the fact many in the establishment deny there is an underlining problem and suggest it is not the uncovering of isues of race and poverty, but merely the unmasking of islamic militants and fundamentalist of the same vain as those who bombed subways in London or took down the World Trade Center Towers in New York.
While every uprising has an element of individual opportunism for individual causes that oftern are unjust and unfair to the greater problems, it would be foolish to not listen to the echos floating out of these suburban ghettos.
Perhaps, for once, France could actually learn something from their American counterparts.
Just as the Paris riots were beginning, in America the nation was pausing to celebrate the end of a pioneers life. For seven hours, mourners listened, sang, clapped and celebrated the accomplishments of Rosa Parks. Each speaker spoke of her quiet grace and the loud aftershocks of her refusal to stand so a white man could sit.
Parks’ protest ignited a civil rights movement, which quite often violently, ended with progress for African-Americans. But, just as the protest in Paris, Parks’ quite “sit-in” uncovered a lot more than just racial social inequality. Her spark and the movement that followed took the veil off of the racial economic inequality as well.
At her funeral, Bishop Charles Adams energetically told the audience of 4,000 that because she sat, African-Americans now sit in the audience of presidents of countries and CEOs of companies. It is this opportunity that has lead to the rebuilding of the Black middle class and has lead to the decrease in teen births in the African-American community, a higher ratio of college graduates and more blacks owning homes and businesses than right after Reconstruction.
No one will admit that race matters in the United States have been solved – far from it. Nevertheless, we would be equally ignorant to suggest progess – significant progress is not evident.
In Martin L. King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail.” he told the Southern clergy, “for far too long the South has been talking monolithically and there needs to now be a dialouge.” In order to get a seat at the table it took protests. While negative racial overtones continue to haunt America – at least in many academic, social and political circles the conversation is being had and had often.
Perhaps that is what needs to occur in Paris. It better to solve these problems without violence. But there is no question it are those out of the mainstream actions, which lead to initial positive reaction and responses to create change those riots maybe unintentionally mean to ignite.
But when the fires are put out and the tensions calm, unless dialouge replaces denial, the City of Lights may indeed be bright with more torches and molatov cocktails than candlelights sitting on coffee tables meant to shine upon the racial and economic injustice being played out right now.
