They're rioting in Africa
They're starving in Spain
There's hurricanes in Florida
And Texas needs rain
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls
—The Merry Minuet

Ah, those French! It's good to see there's an effort to restore traditional values somewhere in the world—that somebody somewhere is forcefully demanding "liberté, égalité, fraternité."

I know, I know. They're mostly teenagers and they're burning their neighbors' cars. But the sad truth is that those acts, or something similar, are required in most of the Western "democracies" to bring any improvement at all to the lives of the underclass. I've long been amazed at how quiescent the American underclass remains.

But maybe I wouldn't be touching on this if I hadn't read Edward Colby's survey of the blogs in the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR). Colby mentions that

Mister Snitch! takes on not the MSM, but, rather, lefty bloggers, for their general silence on the story. His "by necessity very incomplete" survey of blogs last night showed that "most sites we examined are ignoring one of the year's most important stories," while "The one that did mention the riots did not delve too far into their origins."

I don't intend here to "delve into their origins." Colby notes that blogger-journalist Doug Ireland has written of the causes, and Professor Juan Cole, who spent some years growing up in France, also wrote on the matter.

Ireland writes of the "inchoate rebellion,"

It is the result of thirty years of government neglect: of the failure of the French political classes -- of both right and left -- to make any serious effort to integrate its Muslim and black populations into the larger French economy and culture; and of the deep-seated, searing, soul-destroying racism that the unemployed and profoundly alienated young of the ghettos face every day of their lives, both from the police, and when trying to find a job or decent housing.

Juan Cole says,

The kind of riots we are seeing in France also have occurred in US cities (they sent Detroit into a tailspin from 1967). They are always produced by racial segregation, racist discrimination, spectacular unemployment, and lack of access to the mainstream economy.

Both Cole's post and a response from Roger Stevenson review some of the historical roots in French capitalism and colonialism, which are quite worth reading.

The law-and-order crowd of the Right, both here and in France, will attempt to make the most of the disorder. And while I began by noting the necessity of such rebellions to bring change, you can never be sure what sort of change will be brought. In the American South, for instance, there were attempts at rebelliion before Martin Luther King. But the results of those efforts were not gratifying.

Yet as in the days of the American Civil Rights movement, there is a sense in France that the "whole world is watching." So perhaps some benefit will be gained—and if not in France perhaps elsewhere.

This view was reinforced by the remarkable reaction of Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson—

"They [the French government] have chosen a confrontational route and it is hard to see how it will become a dialogue," he said.

Persson reserved his strongest criticism for France's interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, who described the rioters as racaille, or 'rabble'.

"I'm surprised by the choice of words, at the start and as things went on. There is an implacability in the attitude towards the situation and I don't think it will lead to a dialogue," said Persson.

"There is justifiable criticism of French society and you don't confront this with the sort of expression Sarkozy used," he continued to a group of journalists in Stockholm on Wednesday.

The Prime Minister ... criticised the decision to send in a powerful police presence and to introduce a state of emergency:

"It's clear that if you resort to emergency legislation then it's naturally very dramatic, the like of which I haven't seen in Europe in the last 30-40 years. It feels like a very hard and confrontational approach."

Persson said he sees what is happening in France as a warning to the rest of Europe of the tensions that are built up as a consequence of poor integration policies and lingering unemployment since the slump of the 1990s.
....

"But obviously a simple thing like the fact that young people in France do not have the option of a study loan means that a great many are shut out from what, today, is necessary for moving on in society, namely further education."
....

Persson also rejected the idea of more local police as a "first step" in Sweden.

"It could be a method that works, but I don't believe that's the way we would choose in Sweden. For us it is about working on the opportunities for education. To start sending out signals about strengthening the police is to break with the political line we have chosen to follow," he said.

Awesome.

Related post
French prisons follow the American model—downhill (7/22/05)