Some things need to be made straight here.
The beurs banlieusards are French. They were born in France, not Arabie. Their first, usually their only, language is French. They were educated in French schools.
They have no "home country" other than France.
Their anger is that of the black rioters in America in the 1960s: rage at a hopelessness and sense of oppression.
How was this resolved in America?
Largely, by caving in enough to the blacks to calm the waters. White flight from the cities appropriately segregated them, and gave blacks political control of metropolitan areas. The resulting cronyism, of course, did not do a thing for the average American urban black, but it bought off the rabble rousers and leaders and gave them patronage to milk. The young urban black males turned to the drug trade. In cities where there is little white population, they flourish unregulated. In mixed cities like New York, many are arrested and suppressed.
Overall, an employment program was needed for American blacks, because idle hands are the Devil's workshop, we all know. And so there was not only Affirmative Action created, but it was primarily applied at all levels of goverment jobs. And so, a huge number of civil service jobs, indeed most in the lower grades, are done by American blacks, especially black women. Since black women are the primary wage-earners in black families, this gave them a stake in the society. And so a potentially insurrectionary circumstances in America was averted, by giving blacks territories to govern themselves and the patronage that comes from tax farming those areas, and by converting the government civil service of the cities, states and federal government into a black employment program. Of course obvious segregation was also removed.
Now, to what extent is this model applicable in France?
Quite a bit. Arab youths have no jobs. This is harder in France than in America, because overall unemployment is higher, and without experience it is simply not true that one can get a job if one wants to. And there is nowhere else to go either. Unemployment in Belgium or Germany or Spain are all higher, and the countries are less open to Arabs. Also, they are French, speak French, etc. They can't just pick up and go to a country where they don't speak the language.
Idle hands are the Devil's workshop. So what is to be done? Escalating the violence is foolish. They are French, and have learned the cardinal rule of French protest: don't kill anybody. These are not American-style race riots. Detroit's killed in the 80s. Watts' killed in the 60s. Overall, hundreds of Americans died nationwide in race riots in the US.
6 nights of "rioting" in Clichy and environs, and there is some smashed property, but nobody dead. No cops, no rioters, and no bystanders.
This is not an armed revolt and it's not a "riot" in the American sense. Stores aren't being looted and people shot. In New Orleans, people were killed in the lawlessness. In Clichy, it is not complete lawlessness. It is rage, directed at some items of property, and lapidation of the armored police. But it is limited.
So we are not dealing with a thing that requires sending in the police shooting. We are dealing with a violent strike that will not generalize to all of France.
Therefore, the government will not fall.
But the riots won't stop either, for awhile.
When they are incrementally ratcheted down, what next?
Well, for this the government will need to do what the Americans did for the blacks: create massive new ranks of government jobs. If you are going to pay people unemployment and welfare anyway, you may as well make them show up for a "job" somewhere, and do something administrative for that money. Keeping hands from being idle is very important for preventing restless youth from getting into trouble.
Also, jobs give people a stake and a greater degree of respect. Beyond that, some degree of sensitivity is needed. In America, an outpouring of programs, etc., getting more blacks into entertainment and plastering their shows all around, gave the impression of improvement, and that placated people.
Objectively, in America are things really better for blacks than they were back during the riots?
Quite a bit, yes.
Objectively, have blacks been brought up to the same level of prosperity as the rest of America. No. And there is not a great deal of drive in that direction either.
But the worst excesses and threat, the head of steam of rebellion was removed, and the status of black people in America is improved much from what it was in the 1960s by those various expedients, most of which were resented and resisted by many people.
So must it be in France with the restive Arab youths. Arabs need jobs, any sort of job, to get them off the streets. As America created government jobs simply to employ black people in larger numbers than ever before, and became the primary source of employment for certain sectors of the American society, France will need to do the same. It will not be much more expensive, since you otherwise have to pay unemployment and welfare benefits, and those are not much taxed. Employment wages, at least are taxed, and people with a job have more esteem and less time for mischief.
Getting more beurs onto the televisions and into entertainment will also help.
There are no full solutions, but the Americans have provided a reasonable model for dealing with a large, unhappy racial minority that has become explosive.
Obviously the threat of terrorist organizations must be carefully monitored and whatever means necessary used to prevent the unrest to organize along that vector. But most of those efforts are necessarily clandestine, for obvious reasons: two boys are accidently electrocuted, and there is a riot. What is done of necessity to terrorist captives in order to protect France is not something that can ever be permitted to come onto the streets.
First, the problems in France are happening against the backdrop of a global war on Islamic fascism. Call it what you will, a "war on terror" or on "al Qaeda." But the central fact is that we are fighting a global ideology that has the potential take over entire nations (some of them armed with nukes) and great swaths of the globe. The stakes are higher now, and the problem can only be seen in a global, geopolitical context. This was not the case in America in the 1960's. The youths in your cities can connect via the Internet or other media with angry youths throughout the Islamic world.
Second, the American Civil Rights movement was at its core a Christian movement that appealed to the very best in our history. Many whites--even those who were opposed to some of the legislation at the time--acknowledged that we had wronged black Americans. They had been a part of our nation for nearly 200 years--since our very founding. The African American culture was different, to be sure, but it was not entirely alien. White Americans and black Americans knew each other like family. And we were united at the core by our Christian faith. It is no accident that MLK, Jr. and so many of the other great Civil Rights leaders were preachers. In France today, there are no such "blood ties." What means of reconciliation do you have, beyond government jobs and increased welfare benefits? If you think that this was the key to success in our Civil Rights movement, you are missing the bigger picture.
Finally, you leave out some of the more sinister consequences of our response to the civil unrest of the 1960s. I am speaking about the decline of our schools and the ongoing disenfranchisement of black males, among other things. Today, a percentage of black men are either in prison or on parole. Will this also be a part of the French prescription?
Again, I'm not trying to pick on you. I enjoyed your analysis. But the comparison between modern day France and 1960s America strikes me as facile.
"The beurs banlieusards are French. They were born in France, not Arabie. Their first, usually their only, language is French. They were educated in French schools.
They have no "home country" other than France.
Their anger is that of the black rioters in America in the 1960s: rage at a hopelessness and sense of oppression."
But what of the new immigrants? Are there two problems in France?