In a radio interview on Wednesday, Bernard Accoyer, the parliamentary leader of President Jacques Chirac’s party, said that polygamy is a reason behind the riots in France. Wow.
Pierre Cardo, a deputy from Chirac’s party, explained that the most rebellious of “delinquents” are “often products of polygamous families.”
In response, MRAP, an anti-racism group, accused political leaders on the right of "playing an extremely dangerous role in feeding our country with the racism that causes the damage we know. . .These accusations shame the nation and are not acceptable from the responsible representatives of the Republic."
Fuck racism, nontraditional households are the problem! Sound familiar?
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Yes on surface that does sound familiar.
however the problem of overbreeding is a serious issue and should not be confused with other issues. The out of control birth rates of many sub populations is a cause of much poverty, polygamy a part of that problem.
"Fuck racism, nontraditional households are the problem! Sound familiar?"
How is polygamy a non-traditional household. It's actually an uber-traditional household in many parts of the world. And even those society's whose traditions have banned polygamy in theory for a long time, mostly allowed it in practice, by looking the other way as men kept mistresses while punishing women who strayed. Bash racism all you want, but don't even implicitly compare polygamy--which has mostly been used to oppress women, control their sexuality and perpetuate the male/female double standard--to gay people in loving relationships or single parents working to make it on their own (i.e. nontraditional families).
The problem is that Acoyer is using polygamy as an excuse to ignore the widespread oppression of the Arab/Algerian immigrants, and shrug the rioters off because they are morally depraved, or whatever. I'm not pro-polygamy, as practiced by most of its modern practicioners, but to pretend that it is the cause of the rioting is crazy.
female headed households are also traditional. in their way. the point is that they are using family structure to mark out difference, and linking that to race without having to use that word. sociologists, policy-makers et alia, have been using "female headed households" to talk about the "underclass" in this country for a long time, without having to admit to the degree to which that is a v. racialized term.