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British haughtiness emerges after french riots Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-11-10-french-riots_x.htmhttp://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-11-10-french-riots_x.htm
Posted 11/10/2005 11:49 PM Updated 11/11/2005 12:11 AM
French rioting spurs British haughtiness, introspection
By Jeffrey Stinson, USA TODAY
LONDON — The rash of riots in France has occasioned some glee in Britain, France's archrival for centuries. Some of the jokes — the damage done by rioters is French "urban renewal," goes one — have not been in good taste.
The arson and looting across the English Channel have, however, prompted Britons to acknowledge their own problems with race and assimilation.
"There is no love lost for the French," acknowledges Dominic Butler, 23, an account manager for a print service in London.
Matthew Stevens, 26, Butler's co-worker, notes that Britain has had its own struggles to integrate disaffected Islamic youths, something revealed by the London transit bombings in July.
The two men say the French riots and London bombings have highlighted differences between attitudes toward race and economic opportunity in Britain and France. In France, it's rare to see someone of North African heritage in a position of power in business or public life. In London, Stevens and Butler say, they see Middle Easterners or Pakistanis in management.
Bob Nani, 21, a clothing salesman in London, says he knows the difference between the French and English systems firsthand. Nani, who is of Algerian heritage, spent a year in France before coming to London several years ago.
"There are no jobs there (for North Africans)," Nani says of France, where he has family members. "If you apply for a job and deserve it, you won't get it. They give it to white men. If you deserve something here, you get it."
Britain's brand of multiculturalism puts less pressure on immigrants and their descendants to shed their cultural heritage — and it works, says Robert Gallagher, 41, a London musician and writer. Gallagher and Valerie Etienne, 41, a singer who is black, say their 2½-year-old son reflects Britain's growing racial plurality. "Britain is more integrated," Etienne says.
Gallagher acknowledges that some Britons view the arson attacks as just deserts for an arrogant France. "There is a bit of the English saying to the French, 'See what's happening now?' " However, he says, "There shouldn't be any glee."
Gallagher says he remembers the 1980s riots in Brixton, an area of south London, by Britons of West Indian origin. They were complaining about discrimination and lack of economic opportunity, not unlike the youths in the suburbs of Paris and other French cities and towns. Britain is no different from other countries in Europe, Gallagher says: It still has a long way to go on racial matters.
The British shouldn't be too smug about their multiculturalism, wrote Kwame McKenzie, a psychiatrist, in an online edition of The Sunday Times of London.
"At times it has seemed as though we are getting pleasure from the difficulties that the French elite has got itself into over its race policies. And as the riots die down the advice from this side of the Channel is coming thick and fast," he wrote. "But perhaps we need to get our own house in order before we can claim to have the answers."
Numbers collected by the British Home Office, he wrote, indicate that incidents of racially aggravated serious crime recorded in England and Wales increased 71% to 35,974 last year from 1999-2000. Over the same period, racial harassment had doubled to 22,669 incidents recorded last year. "Do we have anything to crow about?" McKenzie asked. "It is not clear."
An opinion piece on the French riots published Sunday in the British daily The Observer by Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, was headlined, "A burning issue for us all." Phillips wrote: "Everywhere, smugness about the state of race relations is being punctured."
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