In France and America, Bigotry Knows No Borders

[Panaconda]

In France and America, Bigotry Knows No Borders
by Michelle Chen
Wednesday, September 15 2010

All the media stories of rabid attacks on Muslims and Latino immigrants in recent weeks might have you convinced that America’s racism is unique among nations. But across the Atlantic, another republic is making headlines with its blatant bigotry. The French may not think much of Americans, but both countries’ governments share a singular antipathy for “outsiders.”

France has launched a widely condemned program to expel members of the Roma ethnic minority and send them to Romania and Bulgaria.

While such assaults are nothing new to marginalized Roma migrants, who trace their deep lineage to a nomadic people of Punjab, India, the state’s determination to decimate their settlements has drawn criticism from the United Nations and European Parliament, perhaps because it evokes the stench of ethnic cleansing in a Europe still grappling with its new identity and past genocides.

The New York Times reported in August on the purge:

France flew some 100 Roma home to Romania — people who France insists agreed to leave voluntarily for a flight and a resettlement sum of about $385 instead of facing the chance of forcible expulsion in a month. … Mass expulsions based on ethnicity violate European Union law, and the failure of France to do individual assessments of each case — as opposed to cursory examinations of papers by the police — also violates European Union rules.

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France’s crackdown on local Roma communities might seem more severe, baldly discriminatory and conducted with minimal due process. But in both expulsion campaigns, the government’s motive is to project toughness by demonizing an utterly defenseless “illegitimate” group. Another common feature is that both are carried out under ostensibly liberal-democratic regimes, with a tradition of absorbing migrants and refugees (both led by statesmen who are children of immigrants, no less).

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http://colorlines.com/archives/2010/09/in_france_and_america_bigotry_knows_no_borders.html