France riots point to racial divisions

Racial divide evident
It was impossible not to see the violence in Villiers-le-Bel in black and white terms.

The hundreds of beefy riot police officers drafted in, some from as far away as France’s eastern border with Germany, were almost exclusively white. The neighborhoods they patrolled were largely black and Arab.

The trigger for the rioting was the deaths last Sunday of two teens whose motorcycle crashed with a police car. Lakamy Samoura, 15 and Mohsin Sehhouli, 16, weren’t wearing helmets and their bike was not authorized for public roads.

Police insisted the crash was accidental, but kids in the neighborhood didn’t believe it. The deaths became an excuse for two nights of rioting in which more than 100 police officers were injured, some by shotgun rounds.

Tellingly, neither of the teens will be buried in France, although both were French. Mohsin’s parents are taking his body to Morocco; Lakamy will be buried in Senegal, from where his parents emigrated in 1966.

Having a foot in France and another in Africa is something that Maka Sali, a black 17-year-old in Villiers, identifies with. She said she doesn’t like taking trips into Paris — about 20 minutes away on the train — because she doesn’t like the way some whites there look at her.

“I feel like a foreigner,” she said. She also said it was “just terrible” that it took the deaths of two teens to thrust the issue of France’s poor neighborhoods back to the forefront of the national agenda.

The riots of 2005 also started when two teens were killed — electrocuted while hiding in a power substation from police.

Rave program promised
Some argue that the recurring violence must make France rethink its taboos.

Mohamed, the police officer born in France of Algerian parents, said France should carefully allow research into the proportion of crimes and urban violence carried out by minorities, so solutions can be found.

M’Barek said France needs more minorities in visible positions of responsibility and that affirmative action may be a way to get them there.

Since the violence of 2005, France has earmarked billions of dollars for programs to improve housing and create jobs in tough neighborhoods. The government says that its newest “equal opportunities” program will be unveiled Jan. 22.

But it was hard to see among the burned out cars and blackened moods in Villiers that much has changed.

“The only thing they (the government) have done is build that police station,” said Frank Dosso, a black 16-year-old, referring to a $7 million police station under construction in Villiers. “But that’s not going to last long.”

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