The riots started on Oct. 27 with the accidental deaths of two boys fleeing police in a Paris suburb. Small gangs of youth began to set cars on fire in impoverished housing projects. The riots quickly spread to 300 cities and towns across France. And within 10 days France had seen millions of dollars of damage, tens of thousands of cars burned, and nightly fights with police marking the country’s worst unrest since student riots in 1968.
Of course, “experts” quickly weighed in on the causes. Some said this happened because of the growing Muslim population that France failed to integrate. Others said it was an ethnic and cultural problem since many rioters were from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey. Others said the riots occurred because of poverty. Among non-European immigrants, the unemployment rate in France is nearly 40 percent.
We do know this; these are young people from different ethnic groups who find themselves in a land in which they are often rejected and impoverished.
We also know about that in this country. We have too many examples where years of discrimination and marginalization gave way to anger and violence that erupted unpredictably. And the rage we see invites the necessary return to “order,” so the rage goes back underground. Curfews are initiated, police presence grows, and a semblance of order gets restored. But what happens to the rage? It waits.
French social psychologist Charles Rozman recently wrote in Le Monde that the problem is not about poverty, it’s about powerlessness. Both sides in the conflict are powerless primarily because they lack genuine knowledge of each other.
Social psychologists have long known that when people feel anxious and powerless, they tend to hunker down with people who think as they do. And they learn nothing new about the people they are in conflict with.
Rozman suggests in his article that intolerance is about ignorance. And ignorance gets entrenched when we surround ourselves with like-minded people who agree with us.
I recently made a new friend. He is 12 years old and I met him the other day in a social situation. He clearly looked and acted differently from other people. Later, when we had a chance to meet, he told me he had Asperger’s syndrome. When I asked him what it was like to live inside his skin, he went on for about 10 minutes in one of the most touching monologues I’ve heard. He talked about how his mind didn’t work so well and how sometimes it was difficult and sad, and sometimes it was very interesting. I told him how my body didn’t work so well, just like his mind. And I felt kind of the same way he did. When we looked at each other, it felt as if there were genuine understanding and care.
When I reflected later on my new friend, I thought about the conflict in France.
Seems to me that when people in my office are in conflict, things begin to turn around once they ask the question: “What’s it like to be you?” I wondered what would happen if a policeman could sit down with one of these young people and say: “What’s it like to live your life?” And then listen for a while about the loneliness of poverty and the fear of hopelessness. Then maybe the policeman could talk to this young person about what his life is like and what his hopes and fears are for his future. And I wondered what would happen if that small dialogue could get repeated thousands of times around France.
It probably wouldn’t solve any problems, but it would begin to diminish the ignorance that keeps people locked inside their own biases. And do I think I’m being naive? Of course. But I figure that since we don’t seem to have any answers, we might as well just sit back and ask some interesting questions.
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