Month: December 2005

Many journalists and commentators have cited French reluctance to adopt “the American solution” of affirmative action for its ethnic Arab and African minorities as a crucial factor in triggering the riots in France’s troubled suburbs this October and November.

Affirmative action is why the United States has enjoyed greater racial and social integration, and why France’s disaffected Muslim minority has turned to violence, according to much of the elite media (such as the New York Times and other major metro newspapers, the major networks, and CNN). USA Today, for example, called affirmative action “a policy prescription that could help move France’s immigrants and their descendants into mainstream society.” An NBC report noted “experts” arguing that affirmative action “ is just what is needed to level the playing field and to give the Arab and African immigrant families a kick-start to break the cycle of poverty…”

The truth, however, is that our progress towards racial harmony is not the result of affirmative action, a controversial approach (often employing race-based preferences or quotas) that was late-coming to the civil rights struggle. Rather, America’s pursuit of equal opportunity in education and employment, a growing societal acceptance of non-whites as social equals, and a free market economy that has generated millions of jobs, have been the keys to the emergence of a stable and prosperous black middle class.

So if the French are serious about assimilating their ethnic Arab and African minorities they will not turn to the “quick fix” of state-imposed affirmative action—or as the Europeans term it, “positive discrimination” —but, instead, will try the other “American solution,” racial equality based on access, inclusion and economic expansion.

The first giant step for the U.S. on the journey to greater social justice was a series of legal and political civil rights victories in the 1950s and 1960s removing barriers that prevented blacks from voting, attending quality schools, and finding and competing for decent jobs. Federal anti-discrimination laws followed, to insure that minorities received fair treatment in the job market. Affirmative action programs emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as a way to accelerate racial progress. Where voluntary in nature, they had some success, but generated opposition as violating the spirit of a merit-based society.

In contrast, France has yet to confront its corrosive racial and religious prejudice (including rampant anti-Semitism). A French government study found that youths with Arab-sounding names had their job applications rejected up to five times as often as those with traditional Gallic names. Addressing these iniquities is an unaddressed task—one best handled by enforcing tough, and currently non-existent, French anti-discrimination laws.

Then there is our halting, but persistent, progress towards heart-felt social equality. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders appealed to America’s sense of fairness and commitment to equality. They offered a vision of judging others “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” a vision well suited for a nation of immigrants. It meant accepting minorities not only in schools or the workplace, but also as social equals. As evidenced in the 2005 Gallup Minority Rights and Relations poll, America has made progress on this notion, judging from the attitudes expressed towards interracial dating (one proxy for the fundamental acceptance of other races). More than 70% of Americans surveyed approved of whites and blacks dating and some 95% of those between 18-29 wholeheartedly endorsed interracial romance. It is hard to imagine similar results in a poll of the French, who have been slow to address issues of intolerance.

A final factor has been the part America’s dynamic economy has played in fashioning a more inclusive society. Equal opportunity without economic opportunity is meaningless. Free market policies encouraging innovators and entrepreneurs have generated millions of new jobs in the U.S., “expanding the pie.” In comparison, France has discouraged initiative and closed markets to competition, resulting in a “zero sum” economy. Consequently, gains for one group come at the expense of another. There are successful free-market European models to emulate—Ireland comes to mind—but the French must first abandon decades of misguided economic policy.

True, the U.S. has yet to fully achieve its lofty goals of racial equality. Racism remains a virulent problem in many pockets of our society; Hurricane Katrina exposed the sad reality of poverty for many African-Americans and the work yet to be done. Nonetheless, however imperfectly, there is progress.

So which “American solution” will France adopt? Prime minister Dominique de Villepin proposes showering the volatile banlieus with multicultural rhetoric and state-subsidized jobs, while his rival, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, hints at “American-style affirmative action.” Neither approach will work; France’s leadership ignores the fundamental success factors in America’s long-horizon pursuit of racial and social justice—access, inclusion and economic expansion—in favor of immediate statist answers. France will suffer from that short sidedness; slighting the need for authentic and fundamental reform will not avert “the fire next time.”

What will future social historians think when they look back at photos of New York City’s street scene during this improbably warm autumn of 2005?

Chances are they will find New Yorkers of the early 21st century to be remarkably distinctive: individualistic, idiosyncratic, multiethnic, multiracial and, no doubt, prisoners of their specific time and place when it comes to fashions, customs and behavior.

We can’t see it, of course, the magnificent uniqueness of the here and now. It’s too comfortably familiar. It might take a Louis Trimble, the protagonist of a marvelous F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, to do our city streetscape credit. In Fitzgerald’s tale, Trimble wanders around New York soaking up its simple wonders. “I simply want to see how people walk and what their clothes and shoes and hats are made of,” he explains.

Yet, we later learn, Trimble is no stranger to the city; a native, he hasn’t left its environs in ten years—in fact, he has designed one of its premier buildings. But Trimble has been blind to its sights and sounds because he’s been “every-which-way drunk” for a “Lost Decade,” and has now only just emerged from his alcoholic stupor to begin to appreciate New York anew.

Most of us are so caught up in our daily routines that, perceptions dulled, we miss or ignore the fabulous in front of us. Unlike Trimble, we don’t stop and delight in the human parade passing us by—garment workers with hand trucks, mothers pushing strollers, bicycle messengers careening, street vendors and deal-making businessmen, students with backpacks, tourists slightly-dazed by the speed and scale of New York.

Perhaps only an observer with the keen fashion eye of Tom Wolfe could adequately chronicle the variety of styles and individual statements being made on New York’s streets. Thin women in fashionable black (some things never change). Men in traditional business attire, but without the fedoras of the past. Instead, today’s hats of choice are from the Boys of Summer—baseball caps worn sideways, backwards, with the brim flat, with the brim curved, with ponytails protruding (yes, it’s a unisex style), with Yankees caps the most popular (New York has always loved a winner).

What is also different—and invisible and unremarkable, but passing strange none-the-less—is the ubiquitous electronic invasion of our city streets by cell phones, Blackberrys and iPods. It seems every third person is jawing away on a cell-phone. I chat, therefore I am, has become the motto of the age.

A businessman briskly strides along, conducting a conversation with no one, his miniaturized microphone and phone out of plain view. A tourist holds up her camera phone to snap a digital photo of a landmark, her husband offering guidance in German. Some of the younger phone-users pause to punch the phone keys with their thumbs or fingers – the text messaging of the under-30 set.

Will those future social historians regard these vignettes as the precursor of the plugged-in street? A preview of a wireless, digital world to come, where computers and the Internet are built into anything with electricity, and pedestrians glide by always connected to the invisible Web (shades of the Matrix!)?

Perhaps it will be so. But for now, why not abandon those digital props, and like Louis Trimble, simply enjoy this lovely autumn in New York, lingering, observing, and savoring the flavor of this amazing city in the old-fashioned, purely human way?