In La Courneuve, just outside Paris, one can glimpse the bitter feelings of the Maghreben, an angry minority.
By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN, Times Senior Correspondent
Published November 11, 2005
[Times photo: Susan Taylor Martin]
La Courneuve has a diverse population, with Arabs from former French colonies making up as much as half the total.
LA COURNEUVE, France - Eager to get home on a cold, damp day, 39-year-old Rachid said he had a minute - only a minute! - to talk about the violence racking France. But once he started, a lifetime of resentment poured out.
He has been a licensed plumber more than 20 years but has never held a steady job. He works hard, but nobody will hire him permanently. When he takes the subway in Paris, the police check his pockets and demand to see his ID. Sometimes they stop him two, three times a day.
Why?
"My face. The reason is my face."
Black hair, dark eyes and olive skin mark him as a Maghreben - one of a million French residents of North African descent. Like Rachid (who will not give his last name for fear of being targeted by police), many were born in France and hold French citizenship but feel as far removed from the French mainstream as the markets of Algiers are from the swank boutiques of Avenue Montaigne.
"It had to happen," he said of the rioting, "because we've been like this for 40 years."
Anger, hopelessness, disillusionment - all boiled over last month after two Arab teens were electrocuted while hiding from police in a power substation. (Police have denied they were chasing the teens.) Since Oct. 27 young rioters have burned thousands of cars and businesses, attacked police and been blamed for one death in a wave of lawlessness that spread to 300 cities and towns.
The violence ebbed this week after the French government invoked a curfew law that has been used only twice since the 1955 Algerian civil war. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said the "absolute priority" was restoring order, but he outlined steps for reducing the discrimination and chronic unemployment that have long plagued those of foreign origin.
As with President Bush's slow reaction to Hurricane Katrina, the response to France's "social Katrina" is being criticized as too little, too late.
"Today we have a generation of young people who know their lives will be poorer or worse than their parents," said Bernard Moussin, chief of staff for La Courneuve, a Paris suburb that had two nights of rioting.
"When you take youth who see little light at the end of the tunnel and you know the difficulties people have in their daily lives, especially in these highly populated neighborhoods, it's not surprising there is a lot of bitterness."
To begin to grasp what is happening in France you need only ride the Metro from Paris to La Courneuve, where the ideal of liberte, egalite, fraternite grows a little less lustrous with every stop. In Paris, the wealthy live in the city center, and the poor live in the suburbs.
Most of the faces on the train are shades of brown. Clothes are discount store, not couturier. Of the passengers lucky enough to have jobs, many do low-wage, menial work out of sight of their better dressed, better paid countrymen and women.
"The French keep their noses high" is the way people in neighboring Germany describe the French attitude toward those not of Gallic origin.
La Courneuve is the poorest Paris suburb and almost certainly the most diverse. Its 35,000 residents represent 83 nationalities, although Arabs from former French colonies make up as much as half the total population.
To house the influx of Maghrebens that began a half century ago, the government built huge apartment blocs such as Quatre Milles - the 4,000 - where Arabs with their large families live in increasingly crowded conditions. Most buildings sprout satellite dishes that pick up Arab TV networks.
Drug-dealing and petty crime are common. Since a boy was killed by a stray bullet in a gang incident this year, security guards have patrolled the area 24 hours a day, although they never venture inside.
"Even police don't go there," said Momo Belil, 24, a guard of Algerian descent. "It's not so much because they're afraid, but if they walked in there, (residents) might throw things at them."
It was in this place that French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, himself of immigrant background, came Oct. 25 to show support for the police. When a resident asked what the government planned to do about the criminality, he replied that it would clean out la racaille - French for "scum" or "riffraff."
The outrage was immediate. "We were shocked that a minister would use these words," said Moussin, La Courneuve's chief of staff. "The entire population felt that they were insulted."
That comment and the electrocutions two days later are widely seen as sparking the violence now sweeping France. Early on, rioters burned 30 cars and fired at police in La Courneuve, but Moussin said his city avoided greater trouble because of local efforts to help its poorest residents.
The city is run by the Communist Party, which remains fairly strong in France and is often considered to do a better job than the national government. La Courneuve is among the few cities that still have their own health centers. It is bulldozing the grim apartment complexes to make way for more attractive housing that residents are helping design.
But La Courneuve can't do everything by itself, Moussin said.
"We have financial need for schools and training so people can get jobs and get promotions. There is very strong discrimination when it comes to job seekers - there's a prejudice against these neighborhoods."
Unemployment is high among people of foreign descent - 14 percent compared with 9.2 percent for those of French origin. Many of immigrant backgrounds never get through high school, making them ineligible for apprenticeships in technical fields.
At a time when the French economy is stagnating, people from all walks of life complain it's hard to find good jobs. But the problems facing those of foreign descent are apparent at a government employment office in La Courneuve.
Even pizza delivery requires not just a high school diploma but at least six months in a previous job - an impossible condition for people such as Rachid, the plumber, who said employers refuse to hire him except on a fill-in basis.
Applicants say employers look no farther once they see "93" in the address: the code for La Courneuve and surrounding areas.
"You put down 9-3," Rachid said, "and you never hear from anybody."
The government's proposals include apprenticeships for dropouts as young as 14, although critics scoff that training programs would be wasted on kids that age. Sarkozy, the hard-nosed interior minister, has endorsed affirmative action, which many French find anathema to the idea of egalite.
In La Courneuve, the police department is trying to diversify the force, only 5 percent of which is of foreign descent. Dropouts who make it through a five-year internship are eligible for permanent positions.
Like many of Gallic origin, though, Lt. Philippe Brouqueyre thinks the immigrant community bears some of the blame for its problems. He is especially critical of the rioters.
"There's no family structure at all, and these are young people who don't want to join the traditional way of doing things. This underground (drug) economy is more appealing than the idea of a poorly paying job."
Before Sarkozy made his "scum" remark, Brouqueyre noted, gang members in La Courneuve and other rough suburbs proudly called themselves "9-3s." One reason the rioting spread, he said, "is a competition to show which gang is stronger."
"Their only goal is to be in the media. Now it's going to quiet down because the police are in difficult neighborhoods and their presence has eliminated the underground trade. At one point or another, (rioters) will have to go back to business so they will stop their urban violence."
Others say the rioting is at least partly due to legitimate grievances. Moussin thinks continued unemployment and discrimination could spur extremism among France's Muslim population.
La Courneuve is headquarters for the French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamentalist organization that shuns alcohol and espouses head scarves for women. That further separates Muslims from a secular society that relishes fine wines and high fashion and bans the wearing of Islamic head coverings in schools.
The rioting "did not start for religious reasons, and it did not play a major role at the beginning," Moussin said. "But there is a risk that some will get caught up in a religious spirit." Muslim leaders have condemned the violence.
Despite all the talk of greater tolerance and more opportunities, Rachid, the plumber, sees little prospect of change. Like many people of foreign origin in La Courneuve, he withholds his last name to avoid unwanted attention from police.
"I'm afraid they will call me "scum' - it is a very hard word. When I was young, we were called Arabs, although we are French. We have always been called names. Now the names have changed, but it's the same insults."
