Im all for freedom of the press. And execution in response to satire sounds terrible and terribly inappropriate. My heart truly goes out to the victims of the Charlie Hebdo shootings and related hostage activity of the past few days. Nonetheless, the Je suis Charlie slogan bothers me. Im not the most knowledgeable person about religious and cultural tensions in Paris, but it seems to me theres quite a bit of it, especially around Muslim immigrants. Over the years this tension has caught my attention a few times, and its consistently reminded me of racial, cultural, and religious tensions here in the United States, with darker-skinned immigrant populations being marginalized by lighter-skinned folks whove been around for longer. And from my distant outsiders perspective, it looks like Charlie Hebdo puts a lot of energy into pointing satire at people who just happen to be the underdog in that power imbalance. To be clear, in no way do I think the killings were justified. They were terrible. But my limited understanding of the regions cultural politics leads me to wonder if making this a pure freedom of the press issue might accidentally cover up and exacerbate other problematic tensions. Ive tried googling around a little about the role of those tensions in these attacks. I havent come up with much. Maybe that means Im entirely misreading it. If any of my people are more knowledgeable about it, I would love some good links, as Im not sure where to look. Until then, je ne suis pas Charlie, moi.
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 23:13:22 +0000
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