Why the Poor Riot or Don't
This is a link to the Luebkenator's blog in which he suggests that 'Merika (Bushism) ain't that bad because the Parisians have race riots too.
I respond below.
Once Upon a Time in the East: Nameless
Not enough on that! The reason that a police killing of two kids sparked two weeks of firey riots in Parisian suburbs is not that they have greater disparity of wealth, but because police killings are rarer there.
If white cops shoot black kids in the US...well, it happens every week, doesn't it? Nobody notices that because the police state is farther along in this country.
Surely France has their own racial and class problems to deal with. They are not doing a very good job with the riots. However, I think that civil society is much healthier in France where riots break out over the killing of children. In our country, we watch cops shoot black kids for entertainment on TV.
Obviously, violence is not the answer. A truly healthy civil society engages in public debate. It considers multiple, reasoned view points before figuring out, through representative or direct means, what to do. However, I think that a group of underrepresented people of liminal political and economic potency demonstrate a healthier civil society in general by taking to the streets. What do people do to resist in our country? More interestingly: who resists? The poor and disempowered often don't have the time or energy or leisure or educational foundation to resist effectively. The poor are too busy working a job a Wal-Mart before going to their second job wherever Manpower wants them to clean the floors. The people who have time to resist are less effected by The Man and aren't very good at the resistance they do.
Perhaps I have overextended here. I think of the Rodney King riots in California as being similar to the Parisian riots. LAPD put the smackdown a lot quicker, though. Additionally, there are poor people's movements that are doing great work in this country. See the CIW's work in organizing farm workers in south Florida and the Strategy Center's work in organizing a bus rider's union in SoCal.
Thoughts anyone? What is the current state of resistance in the US? Would race or class based rioting last nearly as long in the US as in the case of Parisian suburbs? What is the difference? Does anyone have any specific knowledge about French or other European police states and their ability or will to oppress? Anecdotal evidence is the most appropriate for the blogosphere, I think, so I would like to hear a story or two, if anyone has any to offer.
posted by Breathing at 10:53 AM
6 Comments:
several years back my hometown, cincinnati, was perpetually on the news. white police had shot and killed over a dozen black men on the streets in less than a year. one was a 15 year old boy who was shot in the back because he was running away.
now i wasn't in cincinnati at the time, but from what my folks communicated to me, not much happened. there were some angry press conferences held by black leaders, but no riots, nothing like france. the non-black community was eerily quiet about the whole thing. it seemed the black community felt beat down that much further. entangled, hopeless, paralyzed in their rage of such a problematic, embedded system.
so many things could go into the difference between how the us responds vs. france, but i think your first point, cjl, is a good one. we are much more used to violence here.
what i wanted to add to this discussion is to turn the dude's argument on its head. yes it's true that other industrialized countries can't look down their noses and say that they are free of racial problems. but i think the lack of resistance and protesting the kind of race-based violence that occurs in the u.s. is very telling of just how deep our racial problems run.
in response to cjl's questions about differences in crime and police practices, a good place to start is here: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_mur_cap
nation master is a place to compare nations on a whole host of indicators - including crime and murder rates.
c
Good points all of them. Perhaps the inability of the the French police to quell the rioting after two full weeks of it really demonstrates the lack of strength of the police state there.
You could liken it to the Rodney King riots, but the Rodney King riots didn't last two weeks plus, and they didn't spread to the rest of the country - they were relatively minor when compared with these ongoing French riots...
Also, I didn't mean to suggest that Bush's America ain't that bad, just that commentators saying such things as "this would never happen in Europe" are way off the mark, and that the heaps of criticism directed at US society, while justified, should be applied elsewhere, too...
Also, there's a pretty good debate about the issues surrounding the French Riots on Crooked Timber. Link: http://crookedtimber.org/2005/11/09/matters-unmentioned/
alas, no anecdotes, but i think this is a fantastic post/point. i keep recalling (slightly mortified) a time many years ago when cjl and i walked around the marina and a cop was - ? enforcing - at a drunk or homeless guy. at the time i was horrified because cjl went right up and asked the enforced if he was okay; the cop was all "move along" but in retrospect i'm really proud of cjl for his interventionist move.
the exboyfriend, aka the Lawyer, offered this: defense attorneys (especially public defenders) police the police and the prosecutors. it's an interesting perspective, i think.
There is a difference between the metaphor of "police" or the use of police as a verb (as in: "attorneys police the police") and the use of coercive force. While Lawyer Tom may be proud of himself for policing the police, that checking functional role he plays is of a different order to the policing functional role the cops play. His policing is through the law, reasoned debate, and backroom politics/payoffs. The police use the first and the third but replace the second with coercive force. They do not (good cops do despite their structural mandate to force) engage in discussion and, in fact, I think that police only use talk to elicit compliance with their demands. Whether or not this is coercive force, I am unsure. I should look it up, but I suspect that it is, if only passive, coercive force: they deploy language that is backed up by the potential of force. This changes everything about language, discussion, and debate.
Dude, while I agree that Europe does have problems, big ones, I think that saying that "this would never happen in Europe" is closer to the truth than not, in many cases. Indeed the Parisian riots went on for so long, not because France is just as bad or worse in terms of civil discontent, but because their coercive force is less...well...coercive. The LAPD stops the Rodney King riots by being the LAPD: violent. The French did not seem to be ready, capable, or willing to put the clamp on and twist like SoCal. Correct me if I am wrong. Please.
there is a potentially useful (and at least interesting) short essay by roland barthes - "dominici, or the triumph of literature." it's been awhile since i read it, but it is concerned with language and law in ways that strike me as similar to your (entirely accurate, i think) remarks.
it's through the Lawyer, though, that i really acquired my strong distrust of police/government attorneys. so i feel i have to give him some credit, much as i wish i didn't have to.
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