Rosa Parks suburban rail station in...

[canuck]

Paris, France in 2015. A new intermodal suburban rail station formerly named
"Évangile" or "Gospel in english" will be renamed in honor of Rosa Parks. The station will be part of a rehabbed section of MacDonald avenue in Paris 19th and will feature quick connections to 2 new tram circuits buses and a couple of metro stations nearby.


I just found this while browsing a Paris transit forum. Reading the forum posts, I found a lot of really stupid racist comments. Some were asking why not call it Black Panther or Malcolm X station? Others had more positive suggestions to celebrate Toussaint Louverture; the leader of the Haitian revolution. I applauded this in my own post and suggested that it was easy for french authorities to point fingers at foreign iniquity and dismiss all the violence of french imperialism.

France just passed a law recognizing the armenian genocide by Turkey and making it a criminal offense for anyone to state otherwise. This law is another example of the strategic use of deflected attention to colonial grievances especially since France has stepped up its military presence in places like Djibouti in Africa. They are now interested in protecting more of their interests vis-à-vis the Chinese and other powers on that continent.

[animatedmartian]

Has Europe ever been good at racial relationships? Right. Nice looking station nonetheless.

[casscorridor]

Paris, France in 2015. A new intermodal suburban rail station formerly named
"Évangile" or "Gospel in english" will be renamed in honor of Rosa Parks. The station will be part of a rehabbed section of MacDonald avenue in Paris 19th and will feature quick connections to 2 new tram circuits buses and a couple of metro stations nearby.


I just found this while browsing a Paris transit forum. Reading the forum posts, I found a lot of really stupid racist comments. Some were asking why not call it Black Panther or Malcolm X station? Others had more positive suggestions to celebrate Toussaint Louverture; the leader of the Haitian revolution. I applauded this in my own post and suggested that it was easy for french authorities to point fingers at foreign iniquity and dismiss all the violence of french imperialism.

France just passed a law recognizing the armenian genocide by Turkey and making it a criminal offense for anyone to state otherwise. This law is another example of the strategic use of deflected attention to colonial grievances especially since France has stepped up its military presence in places like Djibouti in Africa. They are now interested in protecting more of their interests vis-à-vis the Chinese and other powers on that continent.

Bravo! Great post. France also banned brurkahs and any covering of the face to supposedly "protect" women's rights... While ignoring their own injustices. And also for the contradictory reason of burkahs not being "French" enough... Yeah, talk about freedoms and liberties... If you aren't French enough [[whatever this might mean), you aren't welcome.

Such contradictory and repressive tendencies remind me of that country south of Canada [[or north if you are in Windosor)!

[canuck]

Yup, although I'm not to partial to burkas, I have a definite lack of sympathy for the enlightened and the civilized french when african immigrants are treated like they dont belong but seemed to be french enough when it came time to fight against the enemy in the two world wars.

When Algeria, and all other african colonies got their independance, all the ex-colonials who had served in the military or civil service were not so welcome. That double standard goes for Spain, England, Holland and Portugal too.

And that is why the Rosa Parks station is a sort of smokescreen to offset the skeleton in the closet. Besides, this kind of reminder of an unsavory american past would not have been possible even 5 years ago. Then, there was still a marked respect for the US led liberation of France in WW2. But with a perceived decline of US influence in Europe, the socialist members of parliament pushed this agenda through. I would like for France to look at its own violent repression of freedom at home and its former colonies before it casts a stone on the US or even Turkey, that is what I mean.

[Gistok]

The ironic part of that is that in the past many African-American performers preferred the "racially more tolerant" European touring circuit much more than the racially segregated USA. Black entertainers like Josephine Baker and Louis Armstrong much preferred their treatment in France in the early-to-mid 20th century.