The yellow vests have effectively become a movement of middle-class and lower-middle-class people afraid of slipping further down the economic ladder. The demonstrations began as rural protests, but they now also draw support from cities. Calling the participants the “white working class” is tricky, but it’s become clear that those in the banlieues—which have large populations of several generations from across Africa—haven’t been a major force. And even if those from the banlieues identify with some of the main issues the yellow vests are raising, for the most part, they have not seen themselves reflected in the movement.[...]
But Nordine said he and others from the banlieues haven’t been joining in the Saturday demonstrations, which have often been marred by violence. “If we did that, we’d immediately be stigmatized and people would say, ‘The yellow-vest movement is going to turn into a guerilla war because you’re going to have kids from the suburbs showing up and trashing things,’ ” he said. Nordine didn’t talk about the ethnic makeup of the banlieues, but his remarks point to a recurring frustration: If you’re from “la France profonde”—rural France, largely white France—the demonstrations start a national debate (even if thousands of people have been questioned by police since the start of the yellow-vest protests); if you’re from the banlieues—and most likely of immigrant descent—and take to the streets, the demonstrations are seen as threats to public order.[...]
The banlieues have faced similar problems of unemployment and purchasing power for years. Over decades, they have also become a shorthand for people of color and problems of “integration”—code for a thicket of problems around economics, schools, social mobility, and even Islamic radicalism. These issues have simmered for years, without the kind of media attention that the yellow-vest protests have drawn. In December, a woman from Chanteloup-les-Vignes in Yvelines, a Paris suburb, who identified herself only as Yasmine F., wrote a blog post about why she wasn’t joining the yellow-vest protests. “To have trouble paying for gas means you already need to be able to pay for a car, have a job and degrees, and to get degrees and a job you need to be able to benefit from a better education and not to constantly be the victim of racism, discrimination and disdain from the upper classes,” she wrote. “For me, all those struggles come before the one about rising gas prices.”
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