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Is There RACISM In France? |
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Melissa's Personal Observations
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The range of thoughts, opinions and views on this question is endless. At times these view points agree and converge, but just as often they clash, creating impasses at every turn. Regardless of the answer - one common factor is that those viewpoints that are most often heard and publicized originate from those who are part of the dominating majority. While these opinions may be astute and valid in their own right, do they speak to the reality of those living with the possibility of racist reactions at every turn. Do they ... can they? This was our question when we left the US in May of 2001 to conduct independent research on a project entitled, Challenges of Racial Integration in Paris, France: Perspectives of the Black Experience in Literature, Film and Reality. As stated in the proposal, at its the core the project was an in-depth exploration of perceptions of race and cultural identity, particularly among the minority youth in Paris. We decided to focus on this community namely because many of the race crimes currently committed in Paris are directed toward minority youth, giving them a unique and possibly unparalleled perspective in regards to the nature of present race relations. "Immigrant origin youths have developed a sense of solidarity and a deep sense of injustice founded on the perception of all immigrants as potential victims of racial violence and the ‘double-standard’ which sees racial murders uninvestigated, police outrages unpunished and themselves routinely harassed and severely condemned for minor offences: 'The cop arrests you, sometimes he insults you or smacks your head in, and after, you end up in front of the judge who finishes off the job by sending you for a rest-cure behind bars. For me, all that lot are working hand-in-hand to press us down even more, to smother us (Karim, 21, from Marseilles, cited by Jazouli 1985, p55) 153. ' The very term Beur was coined as a defiant assertion of ‘Arabness’ in the face of the pejorative charge with which it is frequently invested. The product of a double Parisian back-slang (the two syllables of Arabe pronounced backwards give Rebe which, in turn, gives eBeur) the word, '…indicates something slightly different form our parents’ identity but at the same time the affirmation of an Arab origin. More exactly, it expresses the emergence of a new aspect of French identity: the existence of French Arabs. Up until then, France had known only Arabs in France (Bouamama 1994, p 69) p 157.'" Furthermore, due to their youth, they often lack means and forums in which to address such aspects of their daily lives. "While it is doubtful if immigrant-origin youth are bigger villains than French people who share their social status, there is no doubt that part of the immigrant population are unique victims of particular kinds of crime. " It was our hope, that in some manner we might be able to lend them a means for their voice to be heard.
WHAT YOUTH SAY ...
What is beauty? Media Representations
Life in the Banlieues From Our View
* * * NOTE FROM THE RESEARCHERS Initially, the project was structured towards the realization of two end products - a filmed documentary of the interviews conducted throughout the summer and an academic paper relating the results of the comparison between our literary and film research and the reality we encountered in our work with the youth. While our original conception of the project could have provided us with interesting results, after the work on our interviews began, we decided upon another route. As is the case in any research that involves the observation of people, there are often other issues and concepts that come forth even stronger than those originally anticipated, requiring a high degree of flexibility and malleability to be allowed for the project. This was certainly the case in our study. Any time one comes into another culture to do a study there is always the risk of imparting and imposing one's own cultural views, opinions, biases and unique frame of reference on the culture being studied. Certainly we were no exception to this rule. While on a very basic level we shared some commonalities with our respondents due to age and ethnic background, there were also many differences, particularly in terms of our perception of racism. Our experiences, living in the US and (living in Togo and Zimbabwe for Melissa), undoubtedly influence our conception of this topic. Despite that, we went to great lengths to prevent ourselves from such a mistake by attempting to ask open-ended non-leading questions, by allowing interviews to follow the direction taken by respondents, discussing our own experiences only when questioned and then only minimally. Nevertheless as our summer went on, we began to realize some biases that were previously unknown to us. While we are not sure if these biases influenced our study, we do acknowledge that they could have. thus in our personal sections we outline them and discuss their possible impacts. Finally as is the case with any study of people, there is a great deal of flexibility that must be allotted for. The study you anticipate is seldom the one you get. This is not necessarily due to a lack of adequate planning or insight, but because people are so much more varied and interesting than anyone can plan for. Their individual and collective behaviors offer new roads that can ever be fully accounted for by even the best researcher. While this may present difficulties in formatting the study if one is rigidly fixed to one's plan, if the possibility of growth and evolution are allowed for, the limits are boundless. Such was certainly the case in our experience. The amount of material coupled with some technological difficulties in making a filmed documentary (incompatibility of US and French film systems, PASCAL versus NSTF and the ability to switch and edit between the two), necessitated a change in both our research approach and project scope. In fact, there was so much that we encountered and experienced that it wasn't until we had taken a semester to digest the material and returned to Paris this December that our approach finally solidified. Thus our resulting project is a work - or perhaps better said - a journey in progress, as we are still learning and digesting our experience to reach new conclusions, new questions and a greater understanding of our world. - jovonne & melissa
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