It is not just Islam...

There has been a bit of a hiatus here, hasn’t there!

The reason will become apparent over the next week or three.

In the meantime I want to pick up on a matter which was forefront of the news in late October, and which is still hitting the headlines and the right whinge blogspots, that of the continuing riots in France. There is an excellent report and comment through Random Fate on the (smaller) riot in Grenoble.

I am sitting here, Sunday 9 a.m., listening to a radio doco/op-ed on Auckland’s own version of the same problem.

Being presented in the South Auckland case are some “simple” explanations – the “gangsta” culture, the hip-hop, rasta mix, racial tension between Maori and various Pacific peoples... and so the list goes on. Yes, it is possible for there to be racial (and it is very definitely racial) conflict between Samoan and Tongan in particular. It tracks back in part to long-standing historical wars between the islands.

There is the influence of the worst of American culture; the “colours”, the street gangs, the rumbles, the finger languages, and the uniforms.

There is the mix of Polynesian culture; the “patu” honour (of scoring a hit against an opponent, the greater the hit the higher the score) and the tradition of tribal loyalties to reinforce the gang culture.

There is also the lawyer who spends Monday morning in Manukau Court as one of 15 duty solicitors. Her clients are entirely PI, Maori or immigrant. Her clients are, most frequently, functionally illiterate. They are aged between 16 and 25. They have never been employed. They are most often still living at home with their parents. Most of those families do not have a telephone. The only car takes dad to work at 5.30 in the morning and he returns at 7 in the evening. There is not enough money to buy a newspaper regularly. Getting to the unemployment office is difficult, to apply for a job is difficult, to get to an interview close to impossible.

For these kids, an evening’s entertainment is stealing a car, thrashing it until it stops, then burning it. Or it is pushing the boundaries of the next gang in the hope of provoking an attack. Hanging out in the local shopping centre will provoke the law. More serious is the utu (revenge) for prior wrongs – the equivalent of the “rumble” in America. Weapons of choice are knives, hammers and broken bottles.

The parallel with France?

There are several –

Illiteracy.

Unemployment, particularly long term and inter-generational unemployment.

Perceived if not actual racial discrimination.

Ghetto style agglomerations of poverty.

The solutions are not simple. I will return to this theme as well as part of a planned series of reports coming out of the hiatus just broken.

UPDATE - 15 Nov

There is an interesting op-ed in the Herald this morning. As it is a contract columnist, Herald does not put it on its e-edition which is a shame.

Essentially, the comparison is made between France and the current riots with Britain and the Brixton riots of some years back.

The conclusion, and this for me is the most interesting aspect, is a matter of cultural difference.

Britain is a nation with a population that includes peoples from many different cultures, a result of its colonial power in the past. Britain has changed, culturally in particular, to include and allow the introduced cultures to create a "multi-cultural" society.

France on the other hand had a far less extensive "colonial empire". Most of that it had was in western Africa. France accepted the same immigration from the colonies to homeland in the same way as did Britain.

The very big difference, as pointed out in the op-ed piece, is that France is trying very hard to remain mono-cultural. You are either French or you are not.

To add my comment, that argument is supported by the fact that France prohibits any of these "ex-pat colonials" to hold French citizenship. That prohibition applies even if you were born in France.

At least Britain has had the courage to learn from past mistakes. Brixton was certainly a turning point in their cultural outlook and attitudes. It is noted that those changes did not prevent or divert the underground bombings.

There is a very interesting parallel to this line of argument in the South Pacific at the moment. I will return to this point later...