According to Olivier Guitta it seems there's not much of that going on in France currently.
Some choice excerpts from his article.
{...}On March 8, tens of thousands of high school students marched through central Paris to protest education reforms announced by the government. Repeatedly, peaceful demonstrators were attacked by bands of black and Arab youths--about 1,000 in all, according to police estimates. The eyewitness accounts of victims, teachers, and most interestingly the attackers themselves gathered by the left-wing daily Le Monde confirm the motivation: racism.Some of the attackers openly expressed their hatred of "little French people." One 18-year-old named Heikel, a dual citizen of France and Tunisia, was proud of his actions. He explained that he had joined in just to "beat people up," especially "little Frenchmen who look like victims." He added with a satisfied smile that he had "a pleasant memory" of repeatedly kicking a student, already defenseless on the ground.
{...}By coincidence, last week the French government's human rights commission delivered to Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin its 2004 report on racism and anti-Semitism in France. The report underscores a worrisome pattern of retreat into separate ethnic communities. And the evidence of hostility is sobering: The number of violent acts and threats nearly doubled, from 833 in 2003 to a record 1,565 in 2004. Of these, 62 percent were
directed against Jews, who make up just 1 percent of France's population.{...}Obin discusses the attitudes of Muslim students, some as young as first graders. He reports, for instance, that Muslim students, asked their nationality, answer, "Muslim." When they are told that this is not a nationality and they are French, some insist that they can't be French since they are Muslim. This should come as no surprise. The presidential commission that examined the issue of secularism in 2003 reported that "extremist groups are working to test the Republic's strength and push some young people to reject France and her values."
{emphasis mine}
Go read the whole thing.
There is much at stake here. It seems as if the French are perhaps awakening to this problem, but I don't think the measures they're taking are strong enough to stop it completely. They need a better reporting system, first off, but there is still much they could do. They're still in pc/appeasement mode. Which is ironic, don't you think, considering how willing they are to put themselves on the line when they feel their culture and language is under attack by the English-speaking hordes?
Posted by Kathy at April 6, 2005 04:13 PM