You could be forgiven for thinking that recent events in France have little to do with race. Days after 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk was fatally shot during a traffic stop, explorations into the event’s significance still have not told the whole story. Nahel was visibly North African — his parents are from Morocco and Algeria — in France, a country with an incredibly brutal colonial history in North Africa. While I wish I could tell you how many of them were North African, it is illegal in France to collect statistics based on race, ethnicity, or religion. France’s police crackdowns on protesters, including those following the George Floyd protests of 2020, have been called “draconian” by Amnesty International.

Source: The North Africa Journal July 11, 2023 11:10 UTC