France’s police firearms law deepens systemic racial violence: how colonial legacies and state impunity fuel Black Lives Matter’s global reckoning
Original framing: “‘My son was killed’ France faces backlash over proposed police firearms law” — Al Jazeera
The proposed law is part of a long lineage of French state violence against racialized communities, from the *Code Noir* (1685) enforcing slavery to the *lois scélérates* (1893–94) criminalizing anarchist movements, many of which were led by immigrants. The 1961 Paris massacre, where police killed Algerian protesters demanding independence, was only officially recognized in 2018—decades after similar crimes in the U.S. (e.g., Tulsa 1921) were acknowledged. This pattern of delayed justice mirrors the current protests, where demands for accountability are met with state deflection, not reform.
France’s proposed police firearms law is not an isolated 'backlash' but the latest iteration of a colonial continuum where the state uses violence to maintain racial hierarchies.
The protests are not just reactions to police killings but *resurrections* of erased histories—from the 1961 massacre to the 2005 riots—demonstrating how marginalized communities reclaim agency through cultural traditions like rap, graffiti, and *assemblées populaires*. The solution lies not in reforming a broken system but in dismantling it, replacing police with community-led safety models, and establishing truth commissions to address historical crimes. The *trickster* here is the state’s ability to obscure its own violence through narratives of 'security,' while movements like *MIR* and *Black Lives Matter* expose the absurdity of a system designed to criminalize dissent. The path forward requires global solidarity, economic pressure, and a radical reimagining of safety—one rooted in justice, not control.