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00:00 We're with France 24's Philip Turrell and we're joined from New York City by sociologist
00:04 Crystal Fleming, who teaches at Stony Brook University.
00:07 Thanks for joining us here on France 24.
00:10 Thanks for having me.
00:13 When you look to the last two summers in the United States, when there were a lot of protests
00:20 and riots over policing, are the comparisons fair with France or is it a very different
00:27 case?
00:28 Well, there are certainly parallels you can draw and there are also very distinct histories
00:34 of colonialism and racism and policing.
00:38 But first to the parallels, for sure we see in the United States and in France that policing
00:45 reflects the biases of that society and not just reflects those biases, but tends to reinforce
00:52 them.
00:53 Whether we're looking in the case of France, where research has shown that the majority
00:58 of those who experience racial profiling, as well as actually being killed by police,
01:05 are either French people who are also Arab or French people who are black.
01:09 Or in the United States, where we see that it is also groups that have been historically
01:14 subject to racial oppression.
01:18 In any given year, some research has shown that those who experience the highest rate
01:22 per capita of being killed by police are either African American or Native American.
01:27 Many people don't know that.
01:29 And so in both cases, an ongoing history of racism, which is rooted in colonial violence,
01:37 is at play.
01:38 We've also seen, not just in the US and in France, but across the world, police officers
01:44 lying and media representing those lies and misrepresenting those lies as truth.
01:50 And again, in this case, we have, as we've seen in the US and elsewhere, those lies actually
01:56 refuted by camera phone evidence.
01:59 And so yes, there's certainly parallels as well as distinctions.
02:02 Of course, the biggest distinction is that police departments in the United States are
02:10 decentralized, whereas here, they answer to the interior minister.
02:15 Yes, yes, that's absolutely true.
02:18 And like many things in the US, things are decentralized and there's a lot of variation,
02:25 not just across states, but cities and regions.
02:28 In France, given that it's so centrally tied to the national government, I think that there
02:36 is an opportunity for the government authorities to finally listen to what community members
02:44 have been saying on the ground, activists, experts who work on racism, who have been
02:50 mourning that the government needs to do something to not just quell violence, which is what
02:59 the word is used to talk about riots and protests in the face of someone being killed by the
03:04 police, but to actually address systemic racism.
03:09 And addressing it starts with acknowledging it.
03:12 And I want to be clear, I live in a country where there is relatively a lot more acknowledgement
03:17 that systemic racism exists than you see in France.
03:20 There's a lot more denial in France, even though we have that here, but that denial
03:25 is institutionalized under the banner of kind of color blindness.
03:29 We don't see race in a way that we don't quite see in the United States.
03:33 And even in my country, where there's generations of scholarship, of acknowledgement, of public
03:39 debate, of protests, it's still really hard to address.
03:44 But you can imagine how much more difficult it is when you don't even acknowledge that
03:49 systemic racism is real.
03:51 Yeah, under France's secularism, Philip Turel, the state is blind to people's color and creed,
03:59 on paper at least.
04:00 It's interesting what Crystal Fleming is saying, because France has trouble recognizing institutionalized
04:06 racism, but it does talk about institutionalized inequality.
04:11 And France's president was in Marseilles Tuesday when 17-year-old Nael was shot and killed.
04:17 And he was there specifically to address the problems in those working class areas of the
04:24 Mediterranean port city there.
04:25 Well, in particular in the northern suburbs of Marseilles, which are wracked by gangland
04:30 warfare between rival drug gangs.
04:32 And there are many murders taking place, even Kalashnikov guns being used between the two
04:39 gangs.
04:40 And this is something that is a big problem for the French police forces, because there
04:44 are areas where, in theory, all police can go everywhere in France.
04:49 But there are some areas in the country, particularly in some suburban areas, where the police don't
04:55 go, only go when there are large numbers of them.
04:58 And the people there feel that they don't have any contact with the police, because
05:02 they only come in when there is a big problem and they were quite aggressive and rude.
05:06 There is no proximity police.
05:08 That's been whittled down, almost done away with.
05:10 And I think there's a feeling that there is certainly discrimination, because many of
05:16 those families are of immigrant origin.
05:18 They say all the people who are called Pierre or Francois or Marie-Laure have all moved
05:22 away and everybody here has an Arabic sounding name.
05:26 And that means that we are more discriminated against than our white neighbors who are just
05:29 around the corner, who don't ever have any problems with the police.
05:34 And that is why when we've seen the situation that we've seen over the last three days here
05:39 in France, it just takes one spark, one little spark, because the anger is there underneath.
05:44 And it's just bubbling under.
05:46 It doesn't really go away.
05:48 There is a solution found in the short term, but it's still there.
05:51 And then you have another spark that comes along, the death of a youth, and it all boils
05:55 over again.
05:57 The big problem that the government has is how to put a lid on it.
06:00 And they don't have a rapid solution because there are all sorts of different problems
06:03 that are coming out at the same time to do with racism, to do with unemployment, to do
06:06 with conditions that people live in and systemic racism.
06:12 They have to find a solution to that.
06:14 And it's not easy.
06:15 And that's why I think the government is so worried tonight.
06:17 Putting a lid on it or changing the dynamic even better.
06:21 Philip Turrell, many thanks.
06:22 I want to thank Crystal Fleming for joining us from New York City.
06:25 Thanks for having me.