/DR

I have never really been a brilliant student, but I have always been quite interested in that part of the French history which starts after the Second World War. World War II is to me one of the consequences of the competition that often exist between men and to a larger scale between nations. “Never that again”, was the message and the conclusion of the war that involved nearly all nations. There is no doubt that the Second World War partly explains the geopolitical situation of the current world today. However, in the last few years, it seems that many nations, especially in Europe, have displayed a lack of remembrance of the different ingredients that plunged the whole world into complete chaos some seventy years ago. Our societies have in fact never really accepted differences. To the rejection of “racial” and ethnic distinction the Western World in particular has now moved to the rejection of any ideology or value that does not fit in with its own understanding of things. The crusade that aimed at dominating different peoples and their territories has given place to a more subtle form of domination that involves the rejection of any value, ideology or way of life other than that of the our Western World.

These are facts I had become well aware of since I left college in the early 1990s. In order to socialise more easily I had often tried to put these questions of justice and injustice in the world aside. After spending some few years abroad, in 2007, I decide to come back to France and through my work and involvement in community work serve the country. I had different jobs, just because Britain had made of me a hyperactive person. Among the different positions I held, one was working as a supervisor in a high school in the district I lived in. More than eighty per cent of the children in that school were of ethnic minority backgrounds, with parents coming either from North Africa or Sub-Saharan Africa. I enjoyed looking after the teens, being in charge of them whenever a teacher was missing. It was during my second year in that school that I decided to develop a workshop around the teaching of English. Despite the tension that existed between the Head and the teachers in the school, I was given a green card to establish a Skype correspondence between the pupils of Georges Rouault High and some other children in a high school located in South Africa. It is important at this stage of the story to mention that in that school the teachers were mostly white Europeans belonging to that social class known in Paris and its region as “the Bobos”.The 2010 Football World Cup was the main theme of the correspondence workshop that also aimed at developing the language skills of the children who communicated in both languages -English and French.

By the end of June, that is to say a week before the beginning of the 2010 summer holidays, a group of teachers came to visit the Head in her office. They told her that they wanted most of the supervisors, me included, out of the school for the following year; thus, just leaving the few white supervisors. Their argument: “People like us are bringing the rules and codes of the ghetto into the school”… We “speak the same language, use the same expressions, and get dressed in the same way as the pupils”. The head of the school obviously refused. The group of teachers then asked that at least only my contract be not renewed for the following year given the fact that in 2007 I presented a PhD thesis at the Sorbonne University in favour of the integration of the Muslim subculture within the British society. That, of course, was the condition for them to stop going on strike again the following year. And just as about 70 years ago the Vichy regime had accepted to deliver Jews to the Germans in order to buy a certain peace, the Head finally decided to get rid of me thus satisfying the teachers’ wish in exchange for peace.

I have, of course, no grievances against the cowardice displayed by the head of the school. Mrs V.S -by respect I prefer not to mention her name- has clearly explained the situation to me and even admitted that the motivation of those teachers was racist. But the situation I find myself in has taught me few things about being an ethnic minority living in France. Between 1939-45 and 2002-10: Nothing has changed, the French history just keep on repeating itself. Also because I live in the same district as most of the children of school and because I am quite well known in the district for the social work that I do, I find it a negative message for the younger generation to hear that according to what one says in a PhD thesis, presented in a French University, one may lose his job, be discarded or even experience discrimination. To the children I often meet in the streets of the nineteenth districts of Paris and who ask me if I am coming back to Georges Rouault High School in September, I do not know what to answer. While I know that not telling them the truth on our French society is not going to help them, I do recognise that this experience of mine will, for sure, not help reconcile the youngsters from the deprived districts of Paris with the French system of education.

/DR

GRENOBLE, France — A utopian dream of a new urban community, built here in the 1970s, had slowly degraded into a poor neighborhood plagued by aimless youths before it finally burst into flames three weeks ago.

After Karim Boudouda, a 27-year-old of North African descent, and some of his friends had robbed a casino, he was killed in an exchange of automatic gunfire with the police. The next night, Villeneuve, a carefully planned neighborhood of Grenoble in eastern France, exploded. A mob set nearly 100 cars on fire, wrecked a tram car and burned an annex of city hall.

The police, reinforced by the national riot police, responded in “Robocop” gear, with helicopters flying overhead and television cameras in place, and made a number of arrests in a series of raids.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, battered in the opinion polls, quickly seized on the event as a symbol for a new campaign to get tough on immigration and crime. On July 30, about 10 days after the riots, he flew to Grenoble to make a fierce speech condemning violence, blaming “insufficiently regulated immigration” that has “led to a failure of integration.”

He vowed to deny automatic citizenship at 18 to French-born children of foreigners if they are juvenile delinquents. He said he would also strip foreign-born citizens of French citizenship if they had been convicted of threatening or harming a police officer, or of crimes like polygamy and female circumcision, which are widespread in North Africa.

“French nationality is earned, and one must prove oneself worthy of it,” he said. “When you open fire on an agent of the forces of order, you’re no longer worthy of being French.”

Villeneuve, or “new city,” emerged directly out of the social unrest of the May 1968 student uprising.

People committed to social change, from here as well as from Paris and other cities, came to create a largely self-contained neighborhood of apartment buildings, parks, schools, and health and local services in this city of 160,000 people, at the spectacular juncture of two rivers and three mountain ranges at the foot of the French Alps.

 /DR

Villeneuve was a careful mixture of private and public housing, including subsidized apartments for low-income families, with branch offices of city hall and a neighborhood corporation that would take care of public spaces while providing residents construction, plumbing and painting services at moderate costs.

“In the spirit of ’68, we made a bet, that with this social mixing we could help everyone advance,” said Jean-Philippe Motte, a longtime city councilor from the political left. “Of course, that was 40 years ago.”

Villeneuve began to deteriorate in the 1990s, with more poverty and joblessness, especially as immigrants from former colonies of the Maghreb and black Africa altered the original social and economic balance. Some of those who could afford to leave did so, and a population of nearly 16,000 dropped to the current 12,000. Three of the original nine schools closed.

“A lot of the middle class left and pulled kids out of school,” said Abderrahmane Djellal, 45, a deputy mayor who works on job training and runs a youth association called Café Crème. Mr. Djellal, who arrived from Algeria at the age of 10 and graduated from the University of Grenoble, says he is a product of Villeneuve’s good years.

“I came from a big, modest family” of eight children, he said. “We went to the local schools. It was an environment that helped me, but now it fails people. There is a social and cultural marginality that has instituted itself.”

Quiet during the day, the open spaces of Villeneuve were increasingly taken over at night by bands of unemployed youth whose parents came here from the Maghreb. Now there are drugs and arms, and a sharp increase in cases of personal aggression and robbery, said Vincent Manuguerra, who lived here until 1996 and still works here.

After the riots, Mr. Sarkozy’s interior minister, Brice Hortefeux, fired the local police chief. His replacement will be Grenoble’s third in three years. Michel Destot, Grenoble’s Socialist mayor, said the firing was unjust. Grenoble needs more police officers, he said, having lost 17 percent of its force since 2002, after Mr. Sarkozy, then interior minister, sharply reduced beat policing. The mayor said Mr. Sarkozy was using Villeneuve for political ends, when the problems are deeper and national.

“We’re in one of the so-called great countries of human rights,” he said, but Mr. Sarkozy’s pledge of “going to war against criminals” really means “going to war against an ethnic community, against a neighborhood,” which Mr. Destot called “insane.”

“The role of political leaders is, on the contrary, to bring people together, to make peace in a certain way,” he said.

His criticism was echoed widely on the left, but the Socialist Party has had little concrete to say, with officials refusing “to be dragged into the trap” of a security debate. The party leader Martine Aubry simply issued a statement saying that Mr. Sarkozy “hurts France and its values with special laws that are unfair and potentially unconstitutional.”

Related

Times Topic: FranceThe Sarkozy push on security appears to have been well-planned, ready for the spark provided by Villeneuve and another attack on the police in St.-Aignan after a Gypsy was shot dead during another car chase. Mr. Sarkozy has campaigned as tough on crime and famously called suburban rioters in 2005 “scum.”

Mr. Hortefeux brushed off the criticism. “We’re waging a war against insecurity,” he said. “We’re on the side of the victims and we have only one enemy: the crooks.”

Opinion polls indicate that the Sarkozy measures are broadly popular in the country.

To Yohann Samba, 18, the unrest and the government’s reaction were not unexpected. “We knew this would happen,” he said, lounging by the Villeneuve tram station in carefully chosen athletic clothing of black and gray, mixing Nike and Adidas.

“There is no communication with the police,” he said.

Of the problems in the community, he said, “They will get worse now. They’re not trying to understand.”

Born here of Congolese parents, Mr. Samba will study law in the autumn. Mr. Sarkozy’s tough speech, he said, “is aimed directly at me, but it doesn’t shock me.”

Mr. Djellal, the deputy mayor, agrees with Mr. Sarkozy that the state “must fight the underground economy, the drugs and arms.”

“But where I can’t follow Sarkozy is when he goes too far and says it’s the fault of 50 years of immigration,” he said. His father won the Legion d’Honneur fighting for France in Indochina.

“For us, it’s insulting,” he said. “A president must make a republic for everyone, so everyone has the chance to participate in the pride of France.”

Article taken from : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/world/europe/09grenoble.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=france%20sarkozy&st=cse

 /DR

Two Saudi clerics have declared Muslim women are exempt from wearing full veils in France, which is planning to ban them, but added they should avoid visiting it as tourists.

The comments, by Islamic jurisprudence scholar Mohamed al-Nujaimi and author and cleric Ayed al-Garni, come two weeks after French lawmakers passed a bill under which women could be fined for appearing in public with the all-covering burqa or the niqab, which leaves the eyes exposed.

« For a woman who permanently resides in France or is a French citizen, if there is harm in wearing the veil … it is permitted that she shows her face when need and necessity demand it, » Nujaimi said in remarks published by al-Watan newspaper.

Muslim scholars are divided over the veil, disagreeing on whether and how much of a woman’s face should be covered. Saudi clerics widely recommend it.

The kingdom is ruled by the House of Saud in alliance with clerics from the austere Wahhabi school of Islam who oversee mosques, the judiciary and education and run their own coercive apparatus, the morals police.

Nujaimi and Garni are not members of the kingdom’s official Senior Scholars Authority, which has not commented on the French parliament’s decision.

Tourism

Tourism to Western countries like France, while not forbidden, should be avoided in favor of Muslim countries where veils are allowed, the clerics said.

Every summer, tens of thousands of Saudi holidaymakers leave the kingdom and its searing heat to spend their vacation abroad, with many traveling to European countries.

« Tourism in a non-Muslim country is not indispensable, it is not needed, it is however allowed … but we have a lot of touristic regions in our country and there are a lot of Muslim countries that do not ban the niqab, » Nujaimi said.

Saudi Arabia is a major U.S. ally that has close trade and political ties with France, home to Western Europe’s largest Muslim minority of almost 5 million. It is thought that only about 2,000 women wear the full-length veil in France.

The new law, which still has to be vetted by France’s highest constitutional authority and approved by the Senate, could make France the second European country after Belgium to criminalize the veil.

Saudi King Abdullah postponed a visit to Paris that was scheduled to start one day before the French parliament voted on the ban, although Saudi officials did not link this postponement to the vote.

Comments by the two clerics come as the Louvre museum in Paris — with the support of the Saudi government — is displaying hundreds of artifacts from Saudi Arabia that have never been exhibited before, either at home nor abroad.

Among them are many pre-Islamic items. Exhibiting them in the kingdom would have triggered uproar from many clerics in the kingdom, who would see in it a revival of idolatry.

Published on www.france24.com/en on 26/07/2010

 DR

Even though I never got used to French traditional food at home, I have always loved French food in general, I used to eat things like baguettes, croissants and other typical western food found in restaurants. The French are well known for their delicious and rich cuisine, and they put a high priority on the enjoyment of food.  In that sense, I must admit, I feel French.

At home, my mother has always been cooking both Western and Kabyle traditional food.

The most famous dish in the Kabyle and  North African culture is unmistakably “couscous”,  and it is becoming increasingly popular in France.

 However, there are many different types of couscous depending on the region where it comes from. Moroccans include saffron , Algerians like to add tomatoes, Tunisians   spice up theirs with  harissa and Kabyles add green beans.

 Among the other specialties from the Kabyle culture, there is also the special bread, « Aghroum” which is flat and crunchy. We can have it with “Felfel” for example (not to be confounded with “Falafel”), It is a simple dish made of cooked and crushed pepper mixed up with olive oil.

  DR/  Kabyle bread, « Aghroum »

 It is this mixture of flavour that finally made of me a real foodie[1] person.

 When, in 2009, I moved to England for 8 months, the change of environment also meant I had to forget both the dishes of my Mum and the French gastronomy.     

The thing that first caught my eye was the quantity of take away shops one could find lined up in the streets of the city where I lived. The same dishes would also be displayed in all the fast food restaurants:  “Burgers, Parmesans, Pizzas and Kebabs”.

Junk food was apparently king in this part of Britain, no wonder if the obesity rate in the North East is the highest in the country. In this region, the most popular dish is called the “Parmo” which is a shortcut for Parmesan. It’s a much loved dish made of chicken or pork « fillet » with « béchamel » sauce and a layer of cheese (strangely not parmesan), normally served with chips and a choice of salad: coleslaw or creamed cabbage.

  DR/ Chicken Parmo, also served in restaurants 

Unfortunately, I did not have many opportunities to discover good homemade British food, except for the famous Fish and Chips that I ate in Whitby, a lovely fishing port of the North East coast. Apart from their Sunday dinner and a filling breakfast, I have not experienced the richness of the British culture in terms of food…Far from sharing Jacque Chirac’s opinion who, joking five years ago with Russian leaders, said about Britons: « One cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad”. From my experience, I have noticed that unlike what is the case in France, in Britain, eating has not much to do with any form of ceremony. 

However, England  remains a multicultural society, and the multicultural aspect of this country is also reflected in the various dishes offered by the migrants who have come to settle there. The dishes of the newcomers are also part of a certain British heritage.Chicken tikka masala, for example, is so popular that it has even been proclaimed as  British national dish.

  DR/ Chicken tikka masala

      (Could you imagine “couscous” being recognized as a “French national dish”?)

Indeed, the best moments I had were when I was discovering new dishes from other parts of the world thanks to my friends who like me were foreigners. I had the opportunity to taste « jollof rice » from Nigeria, chicken rice and « dahl » from Pakistan, « noodles and moon cakes » from China, « tortillas de patatas », « mojete and patatas Alioli » from Spain, « Polish pickles », « Malaysian coconut chicken » and the best green tea ever made by my dearest Pakistanni pachtoune friends.…

Back in France, I was happy to find again my favourite baguette and my mother’s dishes but I also came back with a heavy heart. To my big surprise, shortly after my arrival, I already missed all the exotic flavours I had discovered during my stay in Britain.  My mind was still full of very nice memories about my eating time in England…

DR

PARIS — France is embarking on a grand experiment — how to diversify the overwhelmingly white “grandes écoles,” the elite universities that have produced French leaders in every walk of life — and Rizane el-Yazidi is one of the pioneers.

The daughter of protective North African parents in the tough northeastern suburb of Bondy, Ms. Yazidi is enrolled in a trial program aimed at helping smart children of the poor overcome the huge cultural disadvantages that have often spelled failure in the crucial school entrance exams.

“For now we’re still a small group, but when there will be more of us, it’ll become real progress,” said Ms. Yazidi, 20. But she is nervous, too. “We’re lucky, but it’s a great risk for us,” she said. “We might never make it” to a top school.

Because entrance to the best grandes écoles effectively guarantees top jobs for life, the government is prodding the schools to set a goal of increasing the percentage of scholarship students to 30 percent — more than three times the current ratio at the most selective schools. But the effort is being met with concerns from the grandes écoles, who fear it could dilute standards, and is stirring anger among the French at large, who fear it runs counter to a French ideal of a meritocracy blind to race, religion and ethnicity.

France imagines itself a country of “republican virtue,” a meritocracy run by a well-trained elite that emerges from a fiercely competitive educational system. At its apex are the grandes écoles, about 220 schools of varying specialties. And at the very top of this pyramid are a handful of famous institutions that accept a few thousand students a year among them, all of whom pass extremely competitive examinations to enter.

“In France, families celebrate acceptance at a grande école more than graduation itself,” said Richard Descoings, who runs the most liberal of them, the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, known as Sciences Po. “Once you pass the exam at 18 or 19, for the rest of your life, you belong.”

The result, critics say, is a self-perpetuating elite of the wealthy and white, who provide their own children the social skills, financial support and cultural knowledge to pass the entrance exams, known as the concours, which are normally taken after an extra two years of intensive study in expensive preparatory schools after high school.

The problem is not simply the narrow base of the elite, but its self-satisfaction. “France has so many problems with innovation,” Mr. Descoings said. Those who pass the tests “are extremely smart and clever, but the question is: Are you creative? Are you willing to put yourself at risk? Lead a battle?” These are qualities rarely tested in exams.

But the schools fear that the government will undermine excellence in the name of social engineering and say the process has to begin further down the educational ladder. The state, they say, should seek out poor students with potential and help them to enter preparatory schools. Of the 2.3 million students in French higher education, about 15 percent attend grandes écoles or preparatory schools. But half of those in preparatory schools will fall short and go to standard universities.

In 2001, Mr. Descoings, 52, who cheerfully admits that he failed the concours twice before passing, began his own outreach program to better prepare less-advantaged students for Sciences Po. Last year, the school accepted 126 scholarship students out of a class of 1,300, and two-thirds of them have at least one non-French parent, he said. But that is a far cry from 30 percent.

One of them, Houria Khemiss, 22, is about to graduate from Sciences Po in law. The daughter of Algerian parents growing up in impoverished St.-Denis in the Paris suburbs, she was pushed by a high school teacher to the special preparatory program. She wants to become a judge, “because then you have a direct impact on people’s lives.” Many at Sciences Po will become the leaders of France, she said, “and because we are there it gives them another point of view.”

Oualid Fakkir, 23, who is graduating with a master’s in finance, said, “It’s very dangerous for France to close its eyes and say, ‘Equality. We have the best values in the world.’ It’s not enough. There has to also be equality of chances.”

…………………………………………………………………………….

But other elite grandes écoles are more specialized than Sciences Po, concentrating on engineering, business management, public administration and science, and they are more concerned about the government’s program.

Pierre Tapie, 52, is the head of the business school ESSEC and chairman of the Conférence des Grandes Écoles, which represents 222 schools.

While he shares the government’s objective of diversity, he said, there is a long educational track before the concours. “We cannot be the scapegoat of any demagogic decision because we are the finest and most famous part of the whole system,” he said. Gen. Xavier Michel, 56, runs École Polytechnique, one of the world’s finest engineering schools and still overseen by the Ministry of Defense. Known as X, the school is extraordinarily competitive, and its students do basic training and parade wearing the bicorne, a cocked hat dating from Napoleon, who put the school under the military in 1804.

“The fundamental principle for us is that students have the capability to do the work here, which is very difficult,” with a lot of math, physics and science, very little of it based on cultural knowledge, General Michel said. Even now, he said, the school takes only 500 students a year, barely 10 percent of its specially educated applicants. “We don’t want to bring students into school who risk failing,” he said. “You can get lost very quickly.”

Despite the misgivings, in February the Conférence des Grandes Écoles, under considerable pressure, signed on to a “Charter of Equal Opportunity” with the government committing the schools to try to reach the 30 percent goal before 2012 or risk losing some financing.

But how to get there remains a point of contention. There is a serious question about how to measure diversity in a country where every citizen is presumed equal and there are no official statistics based on race, religion or ethnicity. A goal cannot be called a “quota,” which has an odor of the United States and affirmative action. Instead, there is the presumption here that poorer citizens will be more diverse, containing a much larger percentage of Muslims, blacks and second-generation immigrants.

The minister of higher education, Valérie Pécresse, argued that French who grow up in a poor neighborhood have the same difficulties regardless of ethnicity.

But the government is examining whether the current test depends too much on familiarity with French history and culture. “We’re thinking about the socially discriminatory character, or not, of these tests,” Ms. Pécresse said. “I want the same concours for everyone, but I don’t exclude that the tests of the concours evolve, with the objective of a great social opening and a better measure of young people’s intelligence.”

The government, with Mr. Tapie’s group, has moved to unify and expand scattered outreach programs from different schools. Copied to some degree from Sciences Po, the program Ms. Yazidi attends tries to reach out to smart children, give them higher goals and help them get into preparatory schools. About 7,000 high school students are currently enrolled, but it is too early to tell whether it will produce a large number of successful applicants.

At one recent session, 10 students, all children of immigrants, were working to pass a special concours for a top business school instead of going right into the job market. Their teacher, Philippe Destelle, pushed them to “look more self-confident” in oral exams and “don’t be afraid to have an opinion.” He told one, “You have the answers, but you don’t trust yourself.”

Salloumou Keita, 22, is vocal and social, but worryingly behind on his math. “We have to prove something,” he said. “There is a look we always get, a questioning — ‘Can he adapt?’ ”

Awa Dramé, is 22, French-born of African parents, confident and talkative. “I don’t mind being a guinea pig, so long as the experiment works,” she said. “Reaching this level was unthinkable before, and I can see myself going higher,” she said. “I’m full of dreams.”

(Suggested to AnOpenEye by Siham Keddouh)

DR

We are in the last week of the 2010 football world cup taking place in South Africa. The month of July has arrived at last. In a few weeks’ time “Paris plage” will attract tourists and Parisians alike. And as it has been the case for 37 years, I will once again turn one year older. The month of July is much appreciated by the younger generation. It is the first month of the long holiday in the academic calendar. That is the period when students have just left school and university and are still around. The habit wants it that before travelling for the holidays they take the time to meet and chill out in the streets of Paris. Lots of parties are then thrown during this period. In the districts of the north east of the capital, July is also the month when some associations display the different projects they have been working on since the beginning of the year.     

DR

In the nineteenth I am particularly interested in two figures often seen as examples in the district. The first one is Christophe Adji Ahoudian, a thirty years old political actor who decided two years ago to organise each year in July a festival aimed at promoting the young talents of the district.  His aim is to go against the prejudices affecting the reputation of the nineteenth. “Yes, in the nineteenth district of Paris not everything is negative”. The district is composed of young talented people Christophe Adji Ahoudian wants to put all spotlights on. This year the Festival is taking place from the 5^th of July till the 9^th of the same month. The different events are also sponsored by people from the district who have become kind of success stories or celebrities in France. Among them are the basketball player Moustapha Sonko, footballer Mohammed Lamine Sissoko and others…. . There is no doubt that in the nineteenth district of Paris the “festival talent” is about to become an institution that nobody would like to miss for any reason. The success of the previous edition is particularly due to Christophe Adji ahoudian’s good knowledge of the district and its different communities. Indeed, before being elected deputy mayor of the XIXth district of Paris, Adji Ahoudian was a social worker helping and accompanying the youth of the district in their education.

DR

The second figure of the nineteenth district I find interesting to focus on is Sadia Diawara and his travelling crew. While those taking part in the festival are busy organising everything for the opening day of the festival; a young entrepreneur and director also in his thirties is with some others heading south. Their project, known as “the Road Tree’P”, consists in travelling south by car and planting trees on their way to Mali. Sadia Diawara, the organiser of “the Road Tree’P”, is not actually from the nineteenth; but working there, he is considered as a resident of the district also known under the name of “twenty minus one”. His reputation in the district is without contest. With a crew of 29 people he has decided for the third time to cross the African continent in order to reach Mali by car. He calls his initiative which is also about to become an institution in the district “an act of solidarity with countries affected by desertification”. In exchange for school materials and equipment the thirty people crew will acquire knowledge and experience in a new environment. Through his initiative Sadia Diawara is building an important bridge between Africa and France which only can but enhance the reputation of the nineteenth district of Paris and its residents.

In the nineteenth district of Paris, the month of July being the month when all the work of the different associations and organisations is evaluated, let’s just hope that the success of these two initiatives this year will inspire some more other youngsters.

DR 

But there is a more troubling aspect to the reaction to the defeat, which has focused on lack of patriotism, shared values and national honor on a team with many members who are black or brown and descended from immigrants.

The philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, who has often criticized the failures of French assimilation, compared the players to youths rioting in the banlieues, France’s suburban ghettos. “We now have proof that the French team is not a team at all, but a gang of hooligans that knows only the morals of the mafia,” he said in a radio interview.

While most politicians have talked carefully of values and patriotism, rather than immigration and race, some legislators blasted the players as “scum,” “little troublemakers” and “guys with chickpeas in their heads instead of a brain,” according to news reports.

Fadela Amara, the junior minister for the racially charged suburbs who was born to Algerian parents, warned on Tuesday that the reaction to the team’s loss had become racially charged.

“There is a tendency to ethnicize what has happened,” she told a gathering of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s governing party, according to news reports. “Everyone condemns the lower-class neighborhoods. People doubt that those of immigrant backgrounds are capable of respecting the nation.”

She criticized Mr. Sarkozy’s handling of a debate on “national identity,” warning that “all democrats and all republicans will be lost” in this ethnically tinged criticism about Les Bleus, the French team. “We’re building a highway for the National Front,” she said, in a reference to the far-right, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim party founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Philippe Tétart, a sport historian at the Institut d’Études Politiques, said that the undercurrent of racism was “very unhealthy, but one of the predictable negative outcomes of the World Cup defeat.”

France is confused about its identity and uncomfortable with the growing numbers and sometimes the attitudes of its immigrants and their children, he said. “What is certain is that we are going through in France questions of disobedience, of incivility, of loss of bearings, and this group of irritated young kids is an excessive reflection of those questions.”

In 1998, the French team that won the World Cup was widely praised for its multiethnic nature — black, white and Arab, and seen as a symbol of a more diverse nation. But today, Mr. Tétart said, the talk is the opposite.

Today’s players, he said, “come from a generation who come from the banlieues, and they don’t necessarily have the cultural background to understand what they did.”

Luc Chatel, the education minister, said on television Wednesday that he was “terribly angry” and shocked that Raymond Domenech, the team’s coach, who is blamed for some of the team’s disunity and apologized to the nation for the failures, refused to shake hands with the South African manager after the team’s final game.

“But I’m going to go farther,” he added. “A captain of the French team who does not sing ‘The Marseillaise,’ ” the national anthem, “shocks me, there it is. When one wears the jersey, one should be proud to wear the colors, you’re an example.”

He was speaking of Patrice Evra, who was born in Senegal and who found himself caught between players and managers as the team refused to practice after another black player, Nicolas Anelka, swore at Mr. Domenech and was removed from the team.

Mr. Sarkozy himself called a meeting on the disastrous result on Wednesday, summoning Prime Minister François Fillon, Sports Minister Roselyne Bachelot and Rama Yade, the junior sports minister. In a statement, he said he had ordered them “to rapidly draw the lessons of this disaster.”

The racial makeup of the French team has long been an issue on the far right, even in a country where all the French are “citizens” and are supposed to have equal rights. Of the 22-man squad, 13 are men of color, with two born in French territories.

This month, Marine Le Pen, the vice president of the National Front and daughter of its founder, said that she did not see herself in the makeup of the team, whose players behaved as individuals, not as a team, and who were “fighting for advertising contracts more than for their country.”

“Most of these guys,” she added, “consider at one moment that they represent France at the World Cup, and at another they are a part of another nation or have another nationality in their heart.”

In her contempt, which carefully did not mention the factors of race and ethnicity but implied them, she was echoing her father, who in June 2006 criticized the team for containing too many nonwhite players and failing to accurately reflect society. He also went on to scold players for not singing “La Marseillaise,” saying they were not French.

On Tuesday, Mr. Le Pen said that “the myth of antiracism is a sacred myth in France.” He added, apparently with no irony, that he hated politicians who turned the national soccer team into “a flag of antiracism instead of sport.”

Now, the language of Mr. Chatel, the education minister, resonates with the themes of the Le Pens. That reflects, critics say, the general effort of Mr. Sarkozy and his party, over the last few years, to weaken the far right by playing on the same themes of patriotism, nationhood and identity.

DR

About twelve years ago, France was giving itself a new reputation. Cheese, onion and the baguettes, the very symbols of frenchness were replaced by football and the French national team: “Les bleus”. What a nice passport it was at the time for all the French citizens who happened to be travelling abroad. I remember in 2001 being the curiosity of the younger generation in the city of Exeter in England. At the time I used to work in a high school as a French language assistant. During the breaks the children of the school would often come to me and ask me to join them in their football games.  

It was also difficult for them to understand that football was not my sport and that I was rather basketball. In 2000 France was to win the European Football Cup, thus strengthening again the view point that France and football made one entity. Back in France I could notice the impact of those two victories on the French society as a whole. The French football team was characterised by its multi-coloured aspect, with more black football players than white ones. The “marseillais” Zinedine Zidane who was born some thirty years ago from Algerian parents had become the first French ambassador abroad; nevertheless, regarding the fight against racism or the social advancement of ethnic minorities within the French society, the victories of 1998 and 2000 revealed themselves of no avail.

Yet, throughout the country, in all school playgrounds, every boy, no matter their social, ethnic or religious back ground, dreamed of the French national football team. Football and other sports then appeared as the gateway for any coloured child willing to improve his or her condition in life.

During the last decade, the importance of football in France certainly had some positive economic repercussions on society; however, socially speaking, it appeared as a ramping plague alienating from education the most deprived children from the working class districts of Paris and its region. Today, the parents in the poor districts often appear more concerned with a possible sportive career of their children than with their marks at school. Football, more than school, is seen by many French parents as the only profitable investment when it comes to the future of their children. Working in a high school of the nineteenth district of Paris, I personally had the chance to observe the phenomenon.

So no one should be surprised if I say today thank you to the French national football team.  In South Africa this year the French football myth was more than destroyed. The national team is today completely crashed and ruined and I am quite satisfied with this. It is at its lowest level ever. In South Africa, this year, French football players have been indeed the clowns of the tournament. They were kicked out without even winning one single match in three matches. The behaviour and attitude of the players as well as that of the coaching staff was much criticised. But what if the malaise, misunderstanding and division within the French national football team was the just the reflection of a wider division and malaise within the French larger society? With the intervention of the French media and politicians, there is no doubt that the crisis within the national team has become a state affair that will, for sure, fill the headlines of the French newspapers in the weeks to come.

Let’s just hope that in the deprived districts, the French football rout will serve to make people stop thinking that sports rather than school are the gateway to social and economic advancement.

DR

The reason why I have chosen that word is not because I recognized myself in this name. Far from it, this is just the way I feel I have been sometimes perceived in my life.

For those who never came across that expression before:

A “Beurette” is just a female “beur”, in French slang; it designates French-born people whose parents are immigrants from North Africa.

I found that expression very pejorative and I hated the people who called me like that.

 I grew up in a small French town where it was rare to find any immigrants from North Africa.  I was only surrounded by white French people but my family has always been deeply immersed into Kabyle and Muslims traditions. This might be the reason why I was given this etiquette.

I finally moved to these suburbs called ‘banlieue parisienne’, when I turned 18.

 Back to the main topic:

From October 2009 to May 2010, I spent the academic year in the North east of England, working as a French Teacher assistant mainly in a secondary school – (named) Ian Ramsey Church of England School.

I have North-African background, I was born in Algeria but grew up in France, and I was there (in Britain) “to represent” the French culture, for a year, assisting teachers or teaching on my own small groups of children aged between 11 and 15; discussing different aspects of the French culture with them

DR

When I first started working in this school, I was sometimes feeling quite uncomfortable because I wondered: “how someone like me, who is not French “ pure souche” as we say in France, can share and transmit the French culture. But I finally found my way and realized that indeed I am French, strange as it may seem, even though I have no clue about how French wines taste like, I have never ever tasted “cassoulet or quiche aux lardons”… Fortunately for me, France is much more than just porky recipes!

Little by little, I finally thought I could find another way to introduce the French culture just like any “pure souche” French girl.

I was eventually feeling more French in Britain than I had ever felt in France…Weird feeling, indeed.

It was an experience full of surprise. I was very astonished to see how open-minded Britons were, especially regarding religion. While I was trying to find out few things to show about Christmas celebrations in France, some even went as far as to ask me if I wanted to talk about how French Muslims celebrate Eid El Kebir,.

 I also noticed how they remarkably promoted tolerance and integration allowing minority groups to maintain their cultural identities and customs at school; offering for example, Urdu classes in a school called Church of England…Whereas in France the government has always been uncompromising with secularity, banning religious symbols in public schools. I remember the first time I saw in that same school the immigrants’ children from Pakistani background wearing the veil without facing any problem. I then thought of all the problems this same veil was causing on the other side of the Channel.

I used to think that secularity was the best option at school, but my experience there made me seriously reconsider my opinion. I would never have thought it could work well.

However, while the adults seemed quite aware of cultural differences, the teenagers seemed really surprised to hear that I could be French and Muslim at the same time. Once, during a school trip in Toulouse, we were visiting a cathedral.  Some students were being rude and giggling all the time, so I told them to calm down. One of them, a platinum blond, grumbled “I am not Christian, I don’t care’”. “Are you Muslim then?” I said, just to see her reaction. She looked daggers at me as if I was insulting her. I told her that whatever her religion, when she comes to a place of worship, she should behave. Then I said: “By the way, I am Muslim”. Finally deeply shocked, she said “What?! Muslim?! But I thought you were French!”

DR

When it comes to explain delinquency in the deprived areas of Paris the following argument is often to be heard: “Youngsters of immigrant descents do not have in France any successful role model, except from that of the football players or rap singers”. It is true that in a country where it has become a custom from the mass media to denigrate and negatively depict ethnic minorities, in general models for a certain category of the population are scarce. Besides, the case of Karim Benzema who was recently involved in the Zahia scandal also proves that football players just like rap singers are sometimes far from being good examples for the younger generations. This week I decided to focus on people I think could be presented as models for the youth in the nineteenth district of Paris.

Among all the people I know in the nineteenth district of Paris Sadia Diawara is without doubt one of the best models for the younger generation. I first heard about Sadia Diawara some five years ago. At the time I was travelling a lot between the U.K and the nineteenth district of Paris. Sadia Diawara was the founder of the Afternoons of the Memory at Mama Africa restaurant; a meeting that took place once a month, on Sundays, and where discussions and tales about Africa were told in a convivial atmosphere.

Today, once again the name of the 31 year old director and entrepreneur is in everybody’s mouth. Three years ago, Sadia Diawara who has “more than a wallet in his pocket”, launched a project that consists in traveling from the nineteenth district of Paris to Mali; crossing by car countries such as Spain and Mauritania. The initiative is based on mutual solidarity between the French people taking part in the project and the different people encountered on the way to Mali. Equipment in exchange for knowledge is the key element of the initiative. The Africans teach the French how to plant trees in the region and the French provide them with the necessary equipment. During the trip, cultural exchanges take place not only with the villagers but also between the travelling crew. The first objective of the initiative is to fight all united against desertification no matter the differences or the continent we live in. Through the ecosystem Global Warming affects all of us without distinction.  

DR.

From the two previous expeditions Sadia Diawara remembers the good memories. “I will never forget the first time we arrived in the village my parents had left some thirty years ago to come here and make a living”, he once told me before adding. “The planting of the first trees is an experience no one can forget”… “No matter how many trees you’ve planted, each new planted tree gives you the same sensation and feeling of pride”.   

Road Tree’P is an initiative coming from the heart asking no money or support from any government or organisation. “All we need is people coming and taking part in the trip” Sadia says.    He dreams of the day when individuals take the initiative to go on their own and plant trees in order to fight against deforestation and desertification. In every culture and religion the planting of a tree has huge signification. When he grows older Sadia Diawara would like to be able to say to his grandsons: “You see this forest over there I am somehow at the origin of it” …  “This is my legacy to you”. And, this wish of his is, indeed, what makes him great and a model for the younger generations.