No justice, no peace

T he day after the Charlie Hebdo killings, I spoke on the phone with a friend in Paris who said that during a bus ride that morning he had been disturbed to see on the faces of young men of Arab appearance expressions that seemed to signal aloofness or even defiance in contrast with the shock and sorrow visible on the faces of majority ethnic passengers. I saw a similar contrast at firsthand a few days later during a Je suis Charlie rally held in the main square in the town of Narbonne, to which I had driven from the nearby village in which I live in southern France. Except for representatives of a local mosque, practically all of those who joined the demonstration were whites, grim-faced and sad. Toward the end of the gathering, I noticed a tall black teenager with a smile on his face standing a few yards away from the demonstrators, toward whom he was looking from the edge of the square. Close by were several men of Arab appearance, probably in their midthirties, standing shoulder to shoulder, exchanging smiles and seemingly lighthearted remarks as they too looked upon the rally from a short distance. The previous day there had been media reports that students in scores of high schools in disadvantaged multiethnic banlieues (outlying urban areas) had refused to observe a nationwide minute of silence in memory of those killed in the attacks. What did that refusal mean? Support for the killers? Resentment over perceived double standards concerning victims of anti-Arab racism for whom no comparable displays of national mourning had been organized in the past? Indifference to calls for displays of national unity in the face of entrenched patterns of discrimination that have excluded large numbers of minority ethnic men and women in the banlieues