An American reporter in France.

• Author: Craver, Jack
• Position: Essay

At the time, it seemed like a beautiful moment of clarity. I looked around and realized that I was one of more than 1,000 people standing in front of the municipal building in Dieppe, a small city on the coast of Normandy, the day after the Charlie Hebdo attacks. It seemed as if the whole town was there, including students and teachers from the high school where I have worked as an English language assistant since September, when I ditched my job as a political reporter in Madison, Wisconsin, to move here.

As I found myself wondering how the word about the gathering had spread so quickly, I remembered that I was in France, a country in which protests are so frequent that people refer to "the streets" as the third branch of government. But this demonstration was different. I witnessed the massive protests against then-President Sarkozy's policies when I was a student in France. Those marches featured an interesting blend. However, this gathering was utterly solemn. If there was any ire that day, I couldn't detect it from the crowd or the speakers, including Dieppe Mayor Sebastien Jumel, who recalled receiving a congratulatory cartoon shortly after his election from "Charb," the director of Charlie Hebdo and a fellow communist who had been the terrorists' principal target.

Nor did I detect any anger at the subsequent rally that weekend, which was even larger--an estimated 4,000 strong, an impressive turnout in a city of just over 30,000. Again, the crowd was largely silent as it walked through the seafront town, but a couple of people successfully sparked a rendition of "La Marseillaise" once the procession culminated at a memorial to fallen members of the French Resistance. "Vive la France, Vive Charlie Hebdo," shouted one guy as the anthem concluded.

Like any successful demonstration, the rallies displayed strength behind a simple message. While there was undoubtedly going to be future disagreement among the participants over the many ways in which the government responds to the terrorist attacks, at the very least the French citizenry appeared united in paying homage to freedom of speech and its martyrs at Charlie Hebdo.

If only things were so simple.

While almost four million people turned out for similar rallies across the country that day, photos of the demonstrations showed a group of people far whiter than the general population. The nearly all-white demonstration was not remarkable in the overwhelmingly white Dieppe. But similarly homogeneous rallies in Paris and other large French cities have become a cause of concern.

The reason was not...