Comments on: Pretending to be cool with les racailles

By: Amir

Amir — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 21:59:20 +0000

You forgot about the natural ennemy of the racaille, The Rugby player, did you never noticed that where there are a high concentration of Rugby players there are no racailles. Racaille are scum who can fight you alone, cowards, that why they never attack or get in trouble with rugby players.

By: jules

jules — Thu, 12 May 2011 10:32:04 +0000

And i’m sorry about all the language mistakes i have done, i’ve not been practising english for a long time now…

By: jules

jules — Thu, 12 May 2011 10:22:21 +0000

To Katie:
Living myself in Paris, and being a young woman living on my own, using public transportation everyday all by myself, i can tell this article is nothing about racism. “La racaille” is a typical French phenomenon, nothing to do with minorities and communities living in peace. La racaille is nothing but a very few ones comparing to the whole mass of suburbian people, from North Africa or not. The whole majority of the people living in almost “ghetto areas” are sad about the situation. Most of them work hard just like anybody else,are perfectly wel-assimilated people who add so much to French culture, and would like to enjoy a more peaceful place to live in but the “ghettoization” of those areas makes it very hard. And because a few part, (the youngest generation,in fact,nd i can tell that their parents feel very desperate about it ) have decided to hate France and French people, because those ones have quit school at the age of ten or eleven and prefer to hang in the street all day long,selling deugs,playing with guns, burning people cars for no reasons or stoning busses or fire brigade cars police cars and mobile emergency medical service cars, then the result is thoses services cannot work properly anymore there and the vast majority of the people living there are totally upset about this. I have so many friends who are from north africa for exemple and who are living there ,and they find it despairing because if, younger, they were working hard at school they would be bullied and because now, even though they are so much more brilliant than many purely French ones, they cannot find a job or are looked at suspiciously,especially if they are Muslim .Here is the only discrimination part: those very few ones racaille disturbing the whole system and leading to discrimination at work towards the rest of these populations. . I once got bashed for no reason except ” i looked too nice with my fucking french girl face” (that’s what they said) by a bunch of these racaille girls in the metro. And there’s nothin you can do when ten girls decide to leave you for dead just for fun. .Those were an exemple of the the very few part that causes trouble just for fun. And that’s why because of a few ones, who’ll go hanging about the whole day because all they want is getting into trouble and provocating you then fall on you when you’re alone and that they are 15 and have knives, that’s why i can tell there is a real urban violence feeling.Yes, i’m fed up that i dare not wearing high heels shoes or a skirt because i’ll be call a “whore or a slut”by these few guys, anytime, anywhere in Paris,yes i’m fed up with being afraid to take public transportation by myself and with knowing i cannot go out late at night by myself, yes. And this is only about a few ones.
UK have chavs, USA have punks and France have racaille. That’s all. And that is no generalization at all,on the contrary , it points out to a very precise phenomenon. And i’ll emphasized the fact this article is, just like the other ones, a stirical one you should read as tongue-in-cheek, just like the fact that not all Parisians find Americans stupid, not all Parisians are depressed, , not all Parisians
This blog is all about stereotypes and clichés,you should notice we are then making fun of our faults, what is the contrary of really feeling superior (you’d know most of us are genuinly debasing ourselves most of the times). And what is stereotype?It is an overgeneralisation of some characteristics of a group of people, a country, a region, etc… You have your owns too, about southern Americans or Canada and Quebec in the US , or about Glaswegian ,Outer Hebridean ,Highlander in the UK for exemple. THIS DOESN’T MAKE YOU a RACIST at all!And the few racailles have plenty of clichés about Parisians or French people in general, so…that’s just fairplay.The only thing is that is a part the population who are not very into humour and will burn your car and crash your head if you just “look like you were maybe having a bad look at them” (never the case, just provocation). We have clichés about Southern French too, and they have their owns towards us, that doesn’t make us fight or stoning cops cars…
That was a long one, but really, your commentary was a cliché too, not seeing the irony of the article and making a generalization of what it says…i just wanted to clear things!

By: Katie

Katie — Sat, 07 May 2011 02:17:57 +0000

One important point that all of the previous commenters seem to have overlooked is that you’re an asshole. Eat your racist, classist bullshit.

By: Nathan Lambert

Nathan Lambert — Mon, 17 May 2010 13:26:05 +0000

Ah la France!

What I’ve always found endearing about France (I am an Englishman having been brought up in France, having tasted the French education system but also trodden in the small and strange microcosm of British expats in the Yvelines, who have their own very tranchée opinions about the French), is the ability to hold to the power and beauty of reason, and yet refuse to see nuances, shades of grey and compromise.

Funily, if there is one place where testosterone seems to be lacking more than Paris is the quaint bourgeoisie of England. However, there is a great value that has been inherited in British intellectual circles: compromise, happy medium, the proverbial via media.

And this is, it seems, what is greatly lacking from all of the opinions read in this article. Talks of “these people”, generalisations, refusal to see through the mist of opaque opinions is plaguing the intellectual and political discourse of France and has been for years.

I grew up in Seine-St-Denis, got my watch, shoes, basket-ball stolen off me in very unpleasant fashion when I was a kid, and I freaking hated it. But I also made dear friends. Valuable people, who knew what honour meant, who understood the value of family, the sanctity of old age and such. Ours is a consumer culture where we get rid of our parents and send them to retirement homes as soon as they are too much of a bother for us. I’ve seen people commonly depicted as “racailles” cut down on their quality of life to have their elderly dad live with them when they became widows. I’ve learnt generosity from “these people”. I’ve also been hurt by some of them.

So what are we going to do? Give free education, health-care and the like, and let them “traine”, do drugs, and live off the RMI all the while contributing nothing to society? No! Are we going to send them all crashing back to their home lands? No!

Let’s look at individuals, let’s put in place structures that will destigmatise people from poorer backgrounds, let’s see how it so happens that a person with free schooling, free higher-education, free health-care can still end up being a menace to himself and to others. Is it because they are savages who are unable to learn? Your position is suggesting as much! Hateful stuff!!

Let’s get stricter, but let’s also freaking wake up and stop not going to Chatelet because you don’t feel comfy there. What kind of a behaviour is that? It’s irrational. Think of the tens of thousands of people who walk through Chatelet each day. How many muggeries each day? What are the chances of anything bad happening to you.

I like your call for the men to get some steel in their backbones, but please, steel in your backbone does not mean lead in your brain.

I would love to find on the internet a place where solutions and opinions aren’t as “tranchée” as they are. I thought I’d found such a place here: I loved your article, but your comments after the article have bordered on the hateful, and acting out of hate will be counter-productive at best, utterly destructive at worst.

Anyway; your description of people’s imitation of racailles at the end of this article was a classic, and was enough to make this blog a worthwhile read! “zyva!!” I mean really! lol. Just to say, I do also find the ghetto style and attitude risible. I’m not a fan, but I do try to be reasonable in my opinions on these things, not condoning a culture of immorality and a love for violence, hate and fear, but trying hard, amidst the hurts of my childhood, to see beyond the cultural trends to the individual lives at play.

By: Olivier Magny

Olivier Magny — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 15:25:23 +0000

Capucine… Racailles don’t explore, they hang. When they hang at Les Halles, they would never venture out to Etienne Marcel (not even speaking of going into Pompidou). What’s interesting though about the Parisian is that even though he can tell his situation overall is deteriorating (less jobs, outrageous rents, expensive cost of living, more and more aggressive people on the streets…), he keeps on voting for the same people. Social issues seems to be the only field where Parisians are happy to be unreasonably optimistic. Everything else is or will be shit. Except for the racailles situation – that is not really an issue.

By: Capucine

Capucine — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:25:39 +0000

Forgot to mention: about the Moncler.
yeah, it’s pretty confined to certain arrondissements, compared to Italy, the doudoune phenomena is pretty much non existent in Paris.
In Milan, I’ve seen all winter long people wearing bright colours padded coats: and I’m talking of bright and extra shiny purple! Felt strange as for parisians there’s only 4 colours: black, beige, dark brown and grey.
But trying to learn to use more colours in my everyday wear at the contact of Italians! They’re really good at it!
So, I think that the conventional wear of parisians may be a better subject.

By: Capucine

Capucine — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:19:28 +0000

hey Olivier,

The article was, one more time, excellent.
So true that parisian men and women are afraid of people des banlieues. And that they perceive their coming in Paris intra-muros as an invasion. (the famous intra vs. outer muros cold war)
Though I do go sometimes at Les Halles ( the cool foreign stores always open their first store there), it’s true that you don’t feel very well at ease, especially as walking in the streets around Les Halles I have encountered many guys who were passed out, and for some of them pretty verbally aggressive (strange enough: those guys were not the traditional racaille you describe). The thing is: and I speak for women, parisian women don’t like to go in places where it’s racailleux because they don’t like to be checked out and said “Mademoiselle, t’es très charmante” (vécu), what they perceive as an agression (in French culture being within the 1.2m perimeter circle when first meeting someone is considered rude) and feel like sluts, which as you have so well said in one of your previous post: is a disgrace. Most importantly, as French men are such pussies, who will help them and come to their rescue if attacked? That would explain their fear.
What I would underline though is that there’s a certain contradiction there: as so many hipster parisians go shopping in one of the nearest areas around les Halles: rue Etienne Marcel.

By: Olivier Magny

Olivier Magny — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:22:34 +0000

Lionel…. Ah… La police de l’esprit… Qu’elle vienne me tancer ici devrait j’imagine m’honorer. Que les grands décreteurs de l’intelligent et de l’inconvenant viennent se pencher sur mon petit cas du haut de leur grande humanité et de leurs immenses humanités devrait me valoir un certain frisson de fierté.
Ça n’est pas le cas.

Je n’ai pas pour habitude d’attendre les validations des chagrins et autres petits policiers de l’esprit pour faire ou dire ce qui me semble juste. A l’évidence, ma lecture du problème évoqué ici ne t’aura pas semblé juste.

Dans un élan infiniment français, tu as la gentillesse de venir me recadrer et bien redire a chacun la façon juste de penser. La façon éclairée. Alors quoi? Un merci? Un grand merci? En mon nom et au nom de ceux qui lisent ce blog?
Ton injonction a me limiter “aux sujets sucrés” m’interpelle. J’hésite a la trouver nauséabonde ou simplement comique. J’apprécie en tout cas que tu me laisses le droit, malgré mon écart, de m’exprimer encore. Mon avocat a ce petit procès essaierait sans doute de creuser comment mes analyses de justes pour le sucré puissent soudainement devenir inintelligentes et inconvenantes pour le salé. Malheureux tour de passe-passe. Mais je l’en dissuaderais. Face aux policiers de la bien-pensance, l’argumentation est une vaine mascarade. Ils détiennent tout a la fois la vérité, la solution, la culture, l’intelligence et – a l’évidence – le courage. Le courage de dénoncer les vrais problèmes: tu le dis mieux que moi. Je te cite: “jouer de connivence avec les pires penchants des citadins imbus de leur sûreté”.

Alors oui, merci Lionel, de pointer du doigt les vrais problèmes, les vrais périls, les vraies menaces. Ton courage et la finesse de ton jugement t’honorent.
Merci de tes remontrances, j’en avais bien besoin. Comme tous ceux sans doute qui ont vu du juste dans cet article. Au nom de notre engluement intellectuel pourfendu, je te rends grâce. Je repars plein de confiance pour mon pays et pour sa police de l’esprit.
Je peux dormir tranquille – les gens intelligents veillent.
Je serai sage maintenant.

By: Lionel

Lionel — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:21:32 +0000

Cher Olivier,

Il est triste que quelqu’un qui écrive si bien ne se sente pas plus de responsabilité quant au contenu de ce qu’il se propose de faire entendre.

L’ennui, justement, c’est qu’il le fera toujours avec esprit.

Le XVIIIème siècle français vieillissant avait élevé au rang d’art le “sarcasme” littéraire. Clouer au pilori les petites facilités, les ridicules des contemporains, les poncifs à la mode, n’épargner rien, parfois en profitant de l’occasion pour de légers règlements de comptes, l’effet était, est toujours, souvent délectable. Pourtant, telle mémorialiste est éblouissante de drôlerie et de finesse lorsqu’elle rapporte les travers des membres de la Cour de Louis XV et de Louis XVI, qui ne voit dans la Révolution rien d’autre qu’un désordre sans aucun sens.

Que l’on traite à l’emporte-pièce le Parisien, voire le Bo-bo (quoique pour moi cette catégorie soit le fantasme par excellence de ces dernières années – croisez une telle absence de réflexion et une telle rigueur à respecter le diktat de l’ouverture d’esprit, il ne vous reste rien, ou plutôt personne), passe. Il ne s’agit après tout que de types que tu as choisis, construits, et que tu t’emploies à définir chaque jour un peu plus avant, en te moquant gentiment de leurs prétentions de toutes natures.

Mais à côté des types et des billets d’humeur, il y a des phénomènes sociaux. Il y a les angoisses irraisonnées, les projections grossières, et oui, la violence, la crise d’un certain modèle d’intégration, la perte de repères. Dénoncer les premières, voir ce que cela révèle sur celui qui a peur, si montrer la distance à la réalité qu’elles impliquent semble délicat, c’est intelligent. Les défendre et les présenter comme avérées à tout point de vue, jouer de connivence avec les pires penchants des citadins imbus de leur sûreté, c’est inconvenant.

Je m’en voudrais de te conseiller de limiter l’application de ton humour à des sujets “sucrés” et pas trop exposés ; je me permettrai de t’engager à prendre la mesure de la rigueur dont doit faire preuve celui qui écrit, l’auteur, lorsqu’il s’empare du fait social.

Je te félicite pour ton contrat d’édition.