irreconcilable loyalties(5) French citizenship

In reviewing Jeremy Jennings' Revolution and the Republic for the French Review I was reminded once again of the problem of defining citizenship, its rights and duties, a problem that became acute in the presidential election debates in the aftermath of the killings by an Muslim Frenchman of Algerian descent in Toulouse and a nearby town. He killed 3 soldiers of North African origins, also muslim, and a Rabbi, his 2 young daughters and another Jewish girl. The killer claimed association with Al Qaeda and his motive was to protest French participation in the war in Afghanistan (where the soldiers had served, and the killing of Palestinian children by Israel. But a childhood friend of the killer, quoted in a New York Times OP-ED article, said it was not Al Qaeda that crated him, "It was France" because although our passports say we are French, "we are never accepted here."(NYT. 4-12-12, p. A27)

The article, by Karl E. Meyer, focused on the exclusionary [anti-foreign] traditions of the French establishment that are catered to not only by the rightist Front National, but also by President Sarkozy (himself the obviously well integrated  son of a  - white - immigrant from Hungary) who said, among other things: If you don't want to integrate, "you are not welcome. We have been too concerned with the identity of the person who was arriving and not enough with the identity of the country that was receiving them." Meyer then also cites Sanche de Gramont who in his 1969 France. Potrait d'un peuple, gave some [tongue in cheek, I think] criteria of what makes a French citizen: He is not someone who has blue passport and uses the language of Descartes, "but someone who knows who broke the vase of Soissons, what happened the Buridan's donkey and why Parmentier gave his name to a hash," etc.

Why I think this was meant ironically is because Sanche de Gramont had long since become critical of the France that conducted the war in Algeria (where he had been an officer) with its dehumanizing practices of torture. In any case the knowledge of these historical facts was part of France's grade school history curriculum. But some of this knowledge would make me a French citizen as well because before there was a historical France or Netherlands there were the remnants of the Roman empire out of which the modern nations were very gradually formed and so I learned about Clovis and Charles Martel and the break up of the Carolingian Empire etc. before learning that one of the successive Emperors granted a privilege to a certain Dirk (what's in a name?) from which we began to trace the development of Holland before it became the Netherlands, not unlike the development of the Ile de France before it became France. I even learned about the 18th century Parmentier, the promoter of the potato because the potato is such a mainstay of  Dutch diets and thus of  the Dutch economy. Buridan's donkey, the donkey that found itself between two haystacks and could not make up its mind where to begin to eat and thus found itself without anything after the farmer carted of the hay, appeared in my Boek voor de jeugd (Book for Young People) that consisted of selections of western literature. The donkey had been part of that since Aristotle and is thus not particularly French. How it became associated with Jean Buridan, the 14th century professor at the Sorbonne is too long a story. My partner is French and she teaches French Literature and Civilisation at the College level. She received her primary school education in France when all these facts were still part of the curriculum, but she recognized "vase of Soissons" and Buridan's donkey, she could no longer remember the detail and speculated that Parmentier was a chef and the donkey was Alphonse Daudet's (who tells the story of a mule that takes revenge on its torturer) .

Following European Union regulations, French passports are no longer blue, but red (burgundy one might say) and on the cover European Union is written above the name of the member country, e.g. Republique Francaise or Kingdom of the Netherlands. Interestingly enough when the EU attempted to create a closer union with a new constitution to be accepted by popular vote in each country both the Dutch and the French voted against it. But both countries adopted an amended form of that constitution when only a vote by their parliaments was required for ratification.

In both countries large numbers of native citizens spent much of their life abroad "in the colonies" and in the case of France in particular large numbers became permanent residents in those colonies, particularly when they were given the status of a French Departement and its inhabitants got the right to vote. When after WW II, the colonies became independent these French born residents returned to France and many settled in the Midi and not a few voted for the Front National, the ultra-right and anti-immigrant party founded by Le Pen. That party was and remains a minority movement whose members are courted by Sarkozy. Hence the statement, cited by Meyer and others, that Sarkozy made on his way to the Presidency, for ex. as Inerior Minister, that he was going to "Karcher" the rioting 3d world immigrants from the suburban housing projects (Karcher is the name of a company that uses power hoses for cleaning). The movie star Brigitte Bardot for whom as a conservationist I have a certain sympathy, was convicted of writing a letter to an interior minister stating that Muslim were ruining France. But what makes one "French?" In the 2012 legislative elections French citizens in the USA and Canada (and elsewhere) could vote for their own (French) representative. The  winner was Corinne Narassiquin, a native of Reunion living in New York. She is of mixed Indian and Chinese background and has lived in New York for 13 years. She intends to keep a pied a terre in the city while serving her term in Paris.

The killings in Toulouse have put the spotlight on the 3d world immigrants who already stand out because of their color, their problems with the language of Descartes as well as the Islamic religion of most of them. Because of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other militant radicals, that religion is the highest barrier to being accepted. France has a long history of (gradually) accepting immigrants, but if they came from Eastern Europe, like Sarkozy, their color did not set them apart and if they were not Jewish, they were most likely Catholic and even as Russian Orthodox they were Christian. All of them also came from countries where education was seen as the alternative for upward mobility to being born noble. Parents tended to encourage the children to do well and most of them grew up to speak French fluently. In fact their situation did not differ much from the provincial poor of France itself, who also had to learn French as if learning a second language; for many of them it took more than a generation to unlearn the regional dialect of their parents. The problem for the native citizenry is that the 3rd world immigrants come from "the Colonies" and thus by definition are not "civilized." When around 1900 European nations began to assume some responsibility for the well being of their colonial subjects, the French called it a "civilizing mission" and spoke of "making them into Frenchmen." There was an assumption that this mission would be easier among Asian subjects than among those in the central African colonies.

The more I think about what it means to be "a citizen," the more I wonder whether one only  asserts it when someone is critical about important aspects of one's country. I have lived in the USA for more than half a century and never felt either very Dutch or very American. Actually I feel that as a citizen or an inhabitant one needs to continuously evaluate the actions of the Establishment in terms of whether they promote the well being of the citizen as a human being. Sort of in the sense of Jefferson's "each generation must examine the laws anew to see how they can be improved or be adjusted to new circumstances." When my students asked me whether I had become an American citizen or why not, I would say that I did not find it necessary and might joke that the Dutch did their 1776 in 1579. Being a nation of immigrants I can understand why US citizens don't feel very English, but I think it is the provincialism of having grown up in the Netherlands that never made me feel part of the larger Germanic people from which we separated in 1648; their Nazism did not help either. I think less about such achievements as Noble Prize worthy contributions as Dutch than as belonging to all people and if I feel good about Niko Tinbergen's Noble Prize it is because my early years as a birder were influenced by his work and that of his younger brother and students. I feel pretty neutral about his older brother's Prize in economics even though it may have been for more important work..

But my willing to be integrated in the US, even without citizenship, is the reason why I am accepted and never felt any discrimination in spite of my accent nor any rejection, not even when I declined invitations to join one church or another. Obviously I am not in the position of that Algerian Frenchman whose friend said that they were never accepted, but there have been several generations of North African immigrants in France that gained citizenship, the majority of which have not become alienated even when not fully integrated. Intermarriage takes place and one, a woman, was temporarily a junior minister in the Sarkozy govt (as a protege of the Socialist Foreign Minister; they both left the govt. but she got elected to the European Parliament). In the past those who felt alienated became delinquents, now they can also become ideological militants.

On April 12, 2012 the NYT had an obituary for Ben Bella the first President of the newly independent Algeria. He had fought in the French army but eventually joined the Algerian independence movement. He was ousted by a coup and spent time in prison after which he was allowed to go into exile; he returned to Algeria in the 1990s. He dies at the age of 93. Although he called radical Islamists misguided, he confessed that he was a Muslim first, Arab second and then Algerian. In his case, the three are one and the same, though it's likely Ben Bella was (like the majority of Algerians) of Berber stock and decided to be "Arab" because Arabization has been the official policy since the 1990s.

March 12, 2013: Now that French troops are fighting in Mali, I was struck by a French tv report about the capture of a"French jihadist" who turned out to be of North African descent and was subsequently referred to as Franco-African. This also struck me because it shows that he is French first and African second, It struck me because I have the feeling that when I hear "Afro-American" I alsways get the feeling that the term implies that they are not really "American" even though their ancestors may have been in the USA much longer than those of Franco-Africans were in France..