The Cultural Component of the Rioting in France… And Here

Over at The Glittering Eye, Dave Schuler extends the argument he’s made in the commentstongue-in-cheek post on the fact that the media continues to ignore the ethnic-religious component of the rioting in France.He argues that the problem goes beyond religion and is ultimately about assimilation and “giving the descendants of immigrants a stake in the country that’s the only one they’ve ever known.”He’s right. Indeed, I allude to that even in my glib observation that, “Clearly, not much has been done over the past two years, since the last set of youth riots, to integrate the youths into French society.”How to go about that, though, is the question. The politics of race and ethnicity is especially difficult in an era where we’re supposed to simultaneously pretend that cultural differences are immaterial and yet revel in the wonderful diversity that different cultures add.

So says James Joyner.

The idea that we should deal with the “root causes” is all well and good but it’s not clear exactly how one goes about doing that. Nor should the fact that there are legitimate grievances be considered justification for mayhem.

(Sigh)

James, let me point you to a post I put up yesterday as regards Ron Paul, where one of the reasons I reject Mr. Paul is on the basis of his being willing to take the blame for criminal actions taken against us. He tells us:

There are long-term consequences or blowback from our militant policy of intervention around the world. They are unpredictable as to time and place. 9/11 was a consequence of our military presence on Muslim holy lands; the Ayatollah Khomeini’s success in taking over the Iranian government in 1979 was a consequence of our CIA overthrowing Mossadegh in 1953. These connections are rarely recognized by the American people and never acknowledged by our government. We never seem to learn how dangerous interventionism is to us and to our security.
– April 6, 2006

In both cases… what Ron Paul is talking about, and what France is going through, the answer is the same.

First, we need to recognize that the people responsible for the rioting, are the rioters, and none other.

That said, you are correct that there’s a religious/ethnic issue at stake here. More correctly, I think, we have a cultural issue at stake.

So, here it is: If you insist on taking the blame for something incidental to those riots, the issue is not that we haven’t given them enough chance in the society, we’ve given repeated chances… that they’ve for the most part never taken us up on.  It’s not that we haven’t given them a stake in society, it’s that we have not made clear that we expected them to live up to their responsibilities to society. Including, their behavior. Every time we’ve gievn then additioal chances, we’ve sent the signal that acting out of line is OK because they’re part of a particular sub-group that the left has decided needs ‘help’ and “understanding”.

We in the west have allowed our minority populations to remain isolated in the cultures they’ve chosen to remain in, all in the name of “diversity”, of course…  and as a result, they’re not members of the culture. They’re not expected to act like an American (or, French) citizen culturally, so why in the world should be be shocked when they meet our expectations and behave like something other than citizens, and try to take us over, culturally speaking?

Addendum: (Bit)  Rusty Shakleford at the Jawa report, brings up a good point from Evan Coyne Maloney:

If we convince ourselves that all of the blame for the current state of the world should be placed at the feet of Western civilisation, then why would any Westerner think that our civilization is worth fighting for? Or even worth saving? The rules of Multicultural Hierarchy require us to pre-emptively surrender, because any crime committed against us by a more worthy Victim is somehow deserved. And if we deserve it, then fighting against what we deserve amounts to fighting the administration of justice…”