Saving the Old World

Sports can really bare the soul of a society--everything is out in the open with sports, with its combination of great passion, obsessive coverage and unlikely juxtapositions.

Nowhere is this more apparent than the nexus of soccer and racism. Whether during the World Cup, or a run-of-the-mill match.

The latest ugly incident--which, with a mob beating up on a Jewish fan and then a black cop, highlights both ancient anti-Semitism and modern racism--took place in the heart of 'civilized' Europe.

The BBC: French President Jacques Chirac has condemned violence that led to the shooting of a French football fan by a plain-clothes police officer.
The policeman, who is black, fired into the crowd after he was physically attacked while seeking to protect a fan from anti-Semitic abuse, officials say.

The violence broke out after Israeli side Hapoel Tel Aviv beat Paris Saint Germain (PSG) 4-2 in a European match.

Mr Chirac said he was horrified by the reports of racism and anti-Semitism.

The BBC's Caroline Wyatt in Paris says the incident has shocked France and raised questions over racism, anti-Semitism and violence among football fans.

A hard-core of PSG supporters are connected to the far right, she adds, with several fans banned from the club's matches after previous violent incidents.

According to Paris state prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin, young French fans of the Tel Aviv team were rounded on by PSG supporters chanting anti-Semitic slogans after the Paris side suffered defeat.

About 100 PSG fans gathered to chase one Tel Aviv supporter, the prosecutor said, at which point Mr Granomort tried to intervene.

Witnesses said the crowd hurled racist insults at him, while making Nazi salutes and shouting anti-Jewish abuse at the man he was trying to protect.

According to the French authorities, Mr Granomort was physically attacked as he shouted that he was a police officer and pulled out his gun.

Fans interviewed on French radio said he had appeared to fire two shots in panic, as he was pushed to the ground.

He then sought refuge in a McDonald's restaurant with the man he had been trying to defend, while police reinforcements were brought in to restore calm.

It's fitting they sought refuge in a McDonald's--there's a reason this kind of thing doesn't happen in America, despite our having five times as many people as France and far more diversity. (Which itself is no accident; people aren't stupid, they don't immigrate to America as a waystation to France).

Maybe one reason why France is still grappling with these seemingly medieval situations is shown by Le Monde's website, where the story is 3rd on the page (behind headlines about Iraq and the poisoning of an ex-KGB agent in London).

I think it's time Americans started holding France and the rest of Europe to modern standards when it comes to race. Racism and anti-Semitism may well be engrained in their national culture by centuries of bigotry and violence--but that's not an acceptable excuse; it just means Europeans may have to resort to the same radical, ahistorical measures they're usually pushing on Third World societies.

It doesn't help when Americans like David Unger publish in publications such as the New York Times items like Editorial observer: Facing reality on Europe's immigrants:

'Write an article!" came the shout as I left a room full of German women preparing the food for their weekly breakfast discussion meeting in the Rollberg housing project in the Neukölln section of Berlin.

They were Germans now, but most had been born elsewhere, generally in Muslim countries. One wore a head scarf, the others did not. The youngest looked about 19. The oldest might have been a grandmother.

These women illustrated a reality finally accepted by some of Germany's most conservative politicians - there is no reason someone cannot be German and Muslim at the same time. In America, that idea would be unremarkable. In Germany, with its tragic history of exclusive nationalism and race-based citizenship, it is an intellectual revolution.

The moving spirit behind these meetings was Ayten Köse, an infectiously enthusiastic woman of Turkish descent, who relished telling a visitor what it had taken to make this project a reality.

The breakfasts were among the activities of an outreach program sponsored by the local government and the European Union. One goal is to help residents connect with one another and with local public services. That, in turn, is meant to reduce the sense of isolation many immigrants feel from the larger society they live in and from its political institutions.

It took a long time for Germany's leaders to wake up to the fact that millions of foreign-born or foreign- descended residents - people who originally arrived as guest workers or asylum seekers, along with their German-born children and grandchildren - intend to spend their lives in Germany with no plans of returning to their ancestral homelands.

More than three million of these new Germans are Muslims - nearly two million from Turkey, with most of the rest from Bosnia, Albania, the Arab world, Pakistan and Iran.

It is in Germany's interest to help these newcomers succeed and prosper, by helping them improve their German language skills, preparing them for better jobs and smoothing their path to German citizenship. That lessens the risk of their slipping into an underground world of isolation, joblessness and despair, where they might fall prey to terrorist recruiters.

The new realism of its politicians is welcome, but Germany has a long way to go. Immigrants still face violent attacks from xenophobic neighbors and the discriminatory attitudes and practices of some local governments. Despite recent reforms, it remains too difficult for many long-time residents to become citizens.

Whoo-hoo! Non-Muslim and non-Turkish Germans are allowing Germans of Muslim faith and Turkish descent to--what, exactly? Participate in society? Start programs that they hope will one day allow them to walk down the street without being beat up? Become--gasp--full-fledged German citizens! Wow, what a great revolution!

I mean, why are we celebrating things like this, expecting nothing more of Europe than half-civilized band-aid measures? Really, shouldn't we be lecturing Germans about how they don't live in the 18th century anymore and if they wanna trade with us they better adopt 21st century norms when it comes to diversity?

The funniest thing about the editorial is it's all about how white Christian Germany is 'accepting' other Germans--yet none of the people involved in the program are white Christian Germans, and there aren't any ordinary WCGs quoted!

The saddest thing about the editorial is its conclusion:

Yet, despite its shortcomings, Germany's new approach contrasts favorably with that of neighboring France - the home of Western Europe's largest and perhaps least integrated Muslim population.

French policies have been confounded, paradoxically, by France's militantly integrationist official ideology. The well-meaning insistence that all French citizens are simply French has led to decades of willfully ignoring the particular needs and diverse cultures of distinctive segments of the French population.

The poor and unemployed young men who burned cars in suburban neighborhoods last autumn weren't protesting against the noble French ideal of égalité. They were protesting against the daily humiliation of coping with police officers, politicians and employers who have no real idea of what their lives are like and no desire to find out. It is that kind of estrangement that German programs like the one in Neukölln are trying to avoid.

I think if Germans are hoping to avoid that kind of 'estrangement' (which Unger glosses by not calling it racism and apartheid), they're late by a few decades.

I don't think Germany is any better than France on the race issue; they're both offenders, and the sooner both societies come to this realization and go through their version of the civil rights movement, the less traumatic it'll be. And it'll be traumatic; it has to be, otherwise Europe won't be able to change.

It's not just the French and the Germans, of course. The Times had an article the other day headlined Dutch Consider Ban on Burqas in Public. Leaving aside the headline problem (are Dutch Muslims not Dutch? If so, the headline surely should be Some Dutch, or Dutch Element), the Dutch government apparently announced this proposal as an attempt to be popular!

Gregory Crouch: Five days before a national election here, the center-right government announced Friday that it planned to introduce legislation to ban burqas and similar garments in public places, saying the full-body garb worn by a small number of Muslim women in the Netherlands posed a grave security threat.

The Netherlands has been considering such a move for months, in reaction to the burqa and other articles of clothing that hide the wearer’s face. The government has raised the fear that a terrorist might wear such a garment to move beyond security checks and carry out an attack. ...

About a million Muslims live in the Netherlands, about 6 percent of the population, and only 50 to 100 women regularly wear a burqa here, Muslim groups say, making them a rare sight. In light of that, some Muslims say they see the entire burqa issue as a referendum on their very existence here, a suggestion that government officials deny. ...

“The cabinet finds it undesirable that face-covering clothing — including the burqa — is worn in public places for reasons of public order, security and protection of citizens,” the immigration minister, Rita Verdonk, said Friday.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Yasar Kalkan, a Muslim auto mechanic in Leidschendam.

“When you go out on the street, how many burqas do you see? None,” he said, adding that Ms. Verdonk “should find something better to do with her time.”

Ms. Verdonk and others noted that the law would extend beyond religious garments to include head-size helmets with full-length visors and any other article that completely covers the wearer’s head and face.

Don't worry, the Dutch police will be stringent and even-handed about enforcing the helmet ban!

Yes, these hundred Dutch Muslim women are a grave security threat. So while we're at it, let's ban them from wearing coats; or scarfs; or sweaters; or baggy pants--you could hide something under all those, too. Perhaps it's best that they walk the streets in clear plastic?

The sad thing about it is apparently many non-Muslim Dutch don't see this as a balancing act where vital issues are at stake on both sides. To them, if Dutch Muslims--forced to choose between observing their faith as they intrepret it, and living in the Netherlands--decide to move, many non-Dutch Muslims would say thank God, we got rid of them.

Just like they saw no harm in driving away Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ali, who really ought to be as well-known as the Angelina Jolies of the world, decided to move to the U.S., to our great gain.

It isn't always one way, of course. As a WashingtonPost.com/Newsweek web feature wrote about someone who's one of the most interesting people I've heard speak on this issue:

On Faith, Panelist Tariq Ramadan, one of Europe’s best-known Muslim scholars, was recently told by U.S. authorities that they will not issue him a visa because of a contribution he made to an Islamic charitable organization - a group later blacklisted by the U.S. government for providing money to Hamas. Ramadan said he made the donation a year before the organization was blacklisted. He will speak via live video to the American Academy of Religion’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. Nov. 19.

Not only did Ramadan speak via live video, but he also participated in On Faith's online discussion.

Which may point to a distinction between the U.S. and Europe--whereas in Europe panicked politicians are scrambling to get in front of what they see as the public's anti-Muslim/anti-immigrant impulses, in this country it seems as if the Bush administration et al is attempting to push the populace in a direction we're not sure we want to go.

So we do things like vote people out of power, and figure out ways of circumventing official policy.

That's not to say there aren't millions of white Christian Europeans who feel exactly the same way, who are horrified by the tide that's resurfaced in their countries and understand its ramifications. The difference, though, is how much less civilized their nations are to being with, and how much fewer in number these WCEs are.

It's important to point this out, and say it clearly. America is nowhere near perfect on these issues; we're not some mythical gold standard. But we're a lot better off than Europe; and they need to come up to our level. Winston Churchill would turn over in his grave, but to paraphrase him, America is the worst model on racism... except for all the other models.

Likewise, Europe is a lot better off than almost all Middle Eastern and Asian and African countries, where non-believers are killed in larger numbers, and more directly.

Make no mistake--what's happening in Europe is on the same continuum as the sectarian violence in places like Iraq and the Sudan. Just because the blood doesn't flow in the streets doesn't mean the seething hatred for and fear of someone not of your faith isn't there. Churchill's half-naked fakir Gandhi's dictum was hatred that hides in your heart is as bad as hatred you're bold enough or enabled to act on.

For now, Muslims and immigrants in Europe are protected for the most part by social norms that evolved after centuries of European civil war. But the conclusion of Crouch's article illustrates how all over Europe, Muslims are being culled from society and set aside as a group to which the usual rules don't apply.

They're routinely described as other, as not us, as them, in ways big and small. They're being made to choose between their faith and their homes.

The Dutch are not alone among European countries in seeking to restrict some forms of Muslim dress.

France banned from its schools the hijab, the head scarf worn by many Muslim girls and women, along with other conspicuous religious symbols. Britain’s highest court ruled this year that a secondary school was within its rights to bar a female student from wearing a jilbab, a loose, ankle-length gown, instead of the regular school uniform.

Prime Minister Romano Prodi of Italy has also joined the debate. “You can’t cover your face, you must be seen,” Mr. Prodi said last month. “This is common sense, I think. It is important for our society.”

Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican’s Council for Justice and Peace, said, regarding the veil, that immigrants of other religions “must respect the traditions, symbols, culture and religion of the countries they move to.”

Ms. Verdonk said she learned only this week that the Dutch cabinet could pursue a burqa ban after getting the go-ahead from legal experts. Those consulted by the government do not believe that such a ban would violate Dutch or European Union laws regarding religious freedom.

Just look at the language--all the references to tradition and culture not only assume that Muslim Europeans aren't part of European society, but send the message that non-Muslim Europeans don't want outsiders to continue shaping 'their' society.

Respect our religion, Cardinal Martino says non-ironically. Just as politicans say all we really want is to be able to get to know you better--as long as, of course, you come to us and do the work.

It's all happened before, of course--it's a little unfair, but when you carry Europe's historical baggage, such seemingly small incidents as the beating of (just two! protest some) people needs to be looked at to see if they're telling, or isolated.

To me, the interior logic is pretty clear. The rhetoric and legislative measures are eerily reminiscent of how after the trauma of WWI and the Great Depression, stressed white Christian Europeans of all stripes essentially said to Jews, we don't like you, we never have, you make us feel uncomfortable (at best). Become more like us. Or go somewhere else. Or else.

Which prompted an exodus of talent and culture to the U.S. (thank God for the New World), which wound up helping America eclipse what was left of European civilization. It's not like Jews were coming to a bed of roses--anti-semitism was the norm in the U.S. at the times. But at least a few hundred thousand made it here and survived, in time thrived. Versus 6 million back home.

The crucial difference between Europe and the U.S. is no matter how bad off we are, we have a history of absorbing people from all over the world. People who--often at great cost, sometimes over long periods of time--become Americans, just like everyone else.

Europe has no such tradition. None. What they have is a legacy of pogroms.

It's not entirely their fault; as the Old World, it was a place from which people fled. And the poor, paranoid, huddled blood-based remnants decided you could only be one of us if you were the same as everyone else.

It's only in the last few decades that WCES have allowed people in worse-off situations (which, let's not forgot often came about because of Europe's policies) to flee to Europe. And how are WCEs responding to their new neighbors?

I'd argue they're sending immigrants of all stripe--not just Muslims--the same message as they sent (and send) the Jews. Time and again, when WCEs are actually exposed to people not like 'them', large numbers of them respond with xenophobia, whether via violence in the streets or at the ballot box.

Which is unfortunate, for WCEs. After all, just look at what immigrants have recently done for America.

Venture capitalists betting on immigrant, AP: Venture capitalists hoping to strike it rich are increasingly betting on the entrepreneurial skills of U.S. immigrants — a melting pot that has already cooked up more than $500 billion in shareholder wealth, according to a study to be released Wednesday.

Immigrants launched nearly one in every five U.S. startups that relied on venture capital before turning to the stock market during a 35-year period ended in 2005, based on data compiled by two research groups, the National Foundation for American Policy and Content First.

The lucrative partnerships between immigrants and venture capitalists have become even more prevalent in recent years, the study found.

Since 1990, one in every four venture-backed companies that have completed initial public offerings of stock had at least one immigrant founder, including Internet stars like Google Inc.'s Sergey Brin and Yahoo Inc.'s Jerry Yang.

"Yahoo would not be an American company today if the United States had not welcomed my family and me almost 30 years ago," said Yang, who immigrated from Taiwan. "We must do all that we can to ensure that the door is open for the next generation of top entrepreneurs, engineers and scientists from around the world to come to the U.S. and thrive." ...

Startups founded by immigrants also tend to blossom more quickly than companies launched by U.S. entrepreneurs. It has a taken an average of 6.8 years for an immigrant-founded startup to complete an IPO, the study found, compared with an average of 9.3 years for companies launched by U.S. entrepreneurs.

Making it to an IPO is a crucial rite of passage for venture capitalists because the stock market provides them with a way to realize potentially huge profits from their investments.

The number of immigrant entrepreneurs teaming up with venture capitalists appears to have grown in recent years, the report said, setting the stage for even more IPOs during the next few years.

Just under half of the 342 privately held startups that responded to a survey taken as part of the study had at least one immigrant founder.

Ah, those WCEs. Facing sure demographic failure without new blood, why must they always reject what is good for them; why are they always cutting off their nose to spite their face, why can't they see the light, give up their backwardness and step out of the darkness?

Maybe we should send them some missionaries.

Image of fans in Rome at a Lazio game via Deutsche Welle's European Soccer's Racism Problem article.