Tuesday, November 08, 2005

GROUP PROJECT: TASK FORCE ON INDUSTRIALIZATION/FRANCE

Post the results of your findings here, by Monday November 18, 2005.

2 comments:

Frank Alvarez said...

Group Members:
Kim Diltz
Kim Hamilton
Frank Alvarez
Frank Muzikar
Filippo Masano

Riots in France
In the 1960’s and 1970’s France recruited workers from North Africa and the Middle East to perform jobs that the French did not want to do. These people stayed on in France and decided to build new lives and start families. Unfortunately, France did not have this in mind. They never intended for these people to stick around and assimilate into the French culture and society. The result today is that there are no jobs created for these people and their French-born children. When they apply for jobs, the employer sees the address and they are not given equal opportunity. These children attend second-rate schools; there is little government aid to help these people. They live in high rise apartments that are projects on the outskirts of French cities. The French are highly racist against these people of African and Middle Eastern descent. They are dark-skinned and many are Muslim.

What it comes down to is that the wealthy French treated these people like they were “scum" and now the negativity is coming back around. Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has actually referred to them as “scum”, so that gives you a perspective on what the rioters are dealing with. There comes a point when people stop just letting things go and they actually do things about it. To these people, nobody stuck up for them, so they felt like this was the only way they can make themselves heard. If they were shown the same rights and were treated like equals, the riots would not have taken place. These people are thought of as scum and are not treated as equals. Imagine yourself in their shoes. Would you do the same? Keep in mind that this incident, which could be considered an accident, was only a very small piece of the larger issues that they dealt with on a day to day basis.

These problems came to a head two weeks ago, when two teens that were believed to be running from the police hid in a power substation and were electrocuted. Initially, the people protested the deaths in the northeast of Paris by rioting and burning hundreds or cars. The rioting began to spread all around France, even spreading into Germany and Belgium. The youths were not only burning cars, but also schools, police departments, parking garages, restaurants and stores. In a way, people are rioting to show others what they have to live with everyday.

There are so many factors that go into what is going on in France, and even all over the world today. Industrialization has had a great impact on the world. With Industrialization comes different religions and different views. It seems as though France just wasn’t ready to become the melting pot that American has become. Obviously we aren’t perfect, but it seems as thought we are doing better dealing with poverty and work for lower income Americans.

Has science and technology contributed to the breakdown? In some ways yes. With computers to help us, we no longer need minimum wage employees. I will use an example from this country. Look at the NJ Turnpike and Garden state parkway: a person used to hand you a ticket when you got on, then you paid another person when you got off the highway. On the parkway, you handed your change to a person, but then they started with exact change lines. Now of course there is EZ Pass. This has made my life much easier, but how many low end jobs has it replaced? At the George Washington Bridge there is about 16 toll lanes, but only 3 or 4 have a person collecting money; the rest are for EZ Pass holders. Jobs have been created in the EZ Pass office, but they are higher end jobs. Science in general has contributed to longer life spans, so there are more people and less jobs. The cost of living has gone up so people are retiring later, and working just to maintain health benefits. The fact is that people who are not as wealthy are struggling more as technological advances improve. Why? Simply because they can’t afford it, so the better technology gets, the farther they are pushed away from it. I think a quote that applies here is “Spend money to make money.” If you have no money to spend, it’s hard to make it.

This violence is not just going to end easily. On one hand, this could possibly become a recruiting ground for al qaeda. These teens have no future in France of in their parents native countries, so the prospect of joining al qaeda could seem quite attractive. France and the rest of Europe need to face these problems. On the other hand this may force the French government to rethink how they treat people in their own country. While they may not want these people there, they will need to learn how to live in peace with them. Tolerance is only a step towards being equals. It is time to assimilate these people into the French culture, treat them as equals. New Jobs need to be created, their children need to be enrolled in schools throughout the cities. The French need to be educated on the dangers of ignoring these people. They must accept them into their society, much as the United States has aimed for. Another scenario is that many immigrants will forced out and pushed back to the countries they fled from.
As to the question of if this will ever happen in America… It already has happened to an extent. Recall the LA riots back in 1992. In a similar type scenario, a man named Rodney King was beaten by police who later were acquitted, causing a racial tension and riots in Los Angeles.

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