PressEthic

Back on September 8th , I talked about how the U.S. should look outward to help deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Well, now perhaps we can help European countries that are grappling with rioting in an immigrant community.

For six days straight, Paris’ Clichy-Sous-Bois, a section of the city whose population is mostly African immigrants and mostly Muslim, has erupted in violence after the deaths of two men who the community suspects were running from police.

The story as described here by UPI sounds somewhat like the problems the U.S. has faced in its history of immigrant communities: self-contained neighborhoods that feel discriminated by those on the outside, a government that struggles to be inclusive and provide for the new members of its population and, what this article calls “positive discrimination,” we would call affirmative action.

Although we have had our fair share of problems, and Katrina exposed ongoing problems, our experiences so far might provide a little direction, especially if the minister of the interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, thinks that calling angry people “scum” will make the situation go away. It’s another example of how international journalism can play a role in spreading possible solutions to problems a society has not faced before.