Can We Talk?

For days, we have read about rioting in France, the land of multiculturalism. Chirac seems upset that the rioters are not listening to him. Discussion will solve the problem, he suggests, but still the Molotov cocktails fly. Talk was also supposed to avert war in Iraq, but talk does not work if no one is listening.

On a trip to Paris a few years ago, I could not help but notice that everyone I passed on the streets looked, well, French. As Americans, we are accustomed to a variety of faces which reflect the disparate origins of our residents. Drop a Moroccan or Algerian in the middle of Paris and they will radiate foreign-ness, an easy target of discrimination because they are so obviously not like everyone else. Multiculturalism starts to look more like discrimination in sanitized garb, a buzzword that puts a pretty face on racism. Pressuring the immigrant to conform to the national ethos is far more difficult than shuttling them off to a ghetto, to be ignored behind a facade of laissez faire. In the banlieu, the immigrants have created a microcosm of their country of origin, but the mini-state is untenable. Living between cultures but not belonging to either, the second generation makes their own law. Can we talk? the French may say, but there is a language barrier that inhibits dialogue.