France's troubles

It's probably not a very 'grown-up' response, but I'm sure there are many, many Americans who are watching what's happening in France and saying to themselves, "And you lectured us". The smug certainty of many Europeans that what happened in New Orleans was proof that America was a diseased, corrupt society and that the European way was obviously better has been blown away the past few weeks. No country has found the foolproof policies for dealing with issues of race, ethnicity, religion and assimilation.

Today Anne Applebaum combines a humorous take on the Katrina coverage in Le Monde with some excellent analysis of the problems in France.

For France's immigrants are invisible: Not only do they live in places that most other French people never go, they also hardly participate in mainstream politics or culture, outside of sports. I was in Paris on the night of Chirac's electoral victory over the National Front leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 2002. Although the campaign had been dominated by immigration issues and race, vigorous channel-surfing produced not a single black or North African face on any of the post-election talk shows.

This is something I'm only now becoming aware of. For me, the face of France is the nation's soccer team, much of which is comprised of immigrants and sons of immigrants. I just assumed the rest of French society was as mixed from top to bottom. Wrong.

The Islamic population of France is now 10% of the total and growing rapidly. It won't be long before the proportion of France's Muslim population will equal that of America's black population (approximately 13.3%). Yet, from what Applebaum writes here it's clear that black people are much better represented at the top of American society than are those of African descent in France.