It's incredibly frustrating to hear about the past two weeks' worth of rioting going on in France. The French have been in denial about their race relations and immigration issues for such a long time, despite the egregious rates of unemployment in the Paris banlieue (where most French North African immigrants live, in a reversal of American social geography). And sadly, it looks like the French are preferring to respond punitively, rather than address the underlying causes of suburban unemployment and disaffection.
What galls me the most, however, is how the rioting has been cast in terms of Muslim terrorism, in this current political climate. While perhaps that connection has been strengthened among French North Africans in the past few years, when I lived in France, young French blacks identified much more strongly with African Americans than Arabs -- producing French rap, adopting hip hop fashion, and using their own particular French street slang. Which isn't to say that the war in Iraq or the increasingly visibility of Al Qaeda might not strike any resonant chords with French North Africans -- but fundamentally, these riots are the result of deeply ingrained racism in a country that is struggling to come to terms with its own post-colonial legacy. Little is to be gained by continuing to pressure French muslims to put aside their cultural and religious identity in favor of some fictionalized white French ideal of nationalism and "egalité."
What do you think?