No Darn Wonder

This is pretty belated, but kudos to Peaches for posting this excellent article about the ongoing riots in france. It's exactly the sort of deeper analysis plus answers I was looking for from the beginning and after reading it several times, I have to agree with Doug Ireland - it’s just no damn wonder. What is perhaps most striking to me in the article are the paragraphs on the truer translation of the phrases Sarkozy used to denounce the youths involved:

...But Sarkozy only poured verbal kerosene on the flames, dismissing the ghetto youth in the most insulting and racist terms and calling for a policy of repression. "Sarko" made headlines with his declarations that he would karcherise the ghettos of la racaille-- words the U.S. press, with glaring inadequacy, has translated to mean "clean" the ghettos of "scum". But these two words have an infinitely harsher and insulting flavor in French. Karcher is the well-known brand name of a system of cleaning surfaces by super-high-pressure sand-blasting or water-blasting that very violently peels away the outer skin of encrusted dirt -- like pigeon-shit -- even at the risk of damaging what's underneath.

To apply this term to young human beings and proffer it as a strategy is a verbally fascist insult and, as a policy proposed by an Interior Minister, is about as close as one can get to hollering "ethnic cleansing" without actually saying so. It implies raw police power and force used very aggressively, with little regard for human rights. I wonder how many Anglo-American correspondents get the inflammatory, terribly vicious flavor of the word in French? The translation of karcherise by "clean" just misses completely the provocative, incendiary violence of what Sarko was really saying. And racaille is infinitely more pejorative than "scum" to French-speakers -- it has the flavor of characterizing an entire group of people as subhuman, inherently evil and criminal, worthless, and is, in other words, one of the most serious and dehumanizing insults one could launch at the rebellious ghetto youth. Kerosene, indeed

Racism in too many other countries is at once silent and shrieking, fixed at both poles for the same reason: it isn’t considered to be any big deal. So, again - it’s just no damn wonder.