Celebrating Bastille Day and a new call to arms

On July 14th France will celebrate Bastille Day- the day in which members of the lower class in France stormed the Bastille (a prison that embodied the absolute power of Louis XVI’s ancient regime) and which is considered to be the beginning of the French Revolution and the Republic. In Paris, people will gather along the Champs-Elysées to commemorate liberty, equality and fraternity. There will be beautiful fireworks, La Marseillaise will play, and a military parade will march amid a flurry of Les Tricolores.

Before we raise our eyes to the sky to take in all those beautiful lights, let’s take a moment to take stock of what the country is really celebrating. “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity”- awfully hard to accomplish anywhere these days and France is certainly no exception. The riots in Clichy-sous-Bois, even though outrageous and completely unjustifiable, exposed France’s huge immigration problem. France claims to be egalitarian but who can take part in that claim? It seems to me as if these values still only apply to the French. Some people are quick to say that it’s because immigrants are not trying hard enough to integrate. In some cases that might be true; however, it’s important to acknowledge that one reason why immigrants might be having a hard time integrating in France is that they are not expected to integrate but to assimilate. The ban of head scarves in French public schools is a perfect example of this point. The new museum, Musée du Quai Branly,  which is supposed to show France’s appreciation and respect for multiculturalism, has been criticized for being a spectacle and for bordering on the theatrical- a missed opportunity to show France’s genuine commitment to diversity. Assimilating into a country that is also struggling to find its own identity within a larger European context must be difficult. To cut France some slack, Europe’s expansion must also make it hard to expect immigrants to do anything but assimilate. In the face of so much change it is hard to give up one’s identity- on either side.