In case you hadn't heard, the Parisian suburbs are burning. Now, keep in mind, Paris isn't like the Chicagoland area, as people would describe my sprawling metropolis. Paris has a dense city core, one nearly fifteen hundred years old, filled with metropolitan city dwellers. The outer suburbs of Paris are similar to what they used to be years ago...where the poor are shunted off, safely outside the city walls.
They're rioting, the violence getting worse nightly, as thousands of riot control police fill the streets, firing teargas, beating locals, and making mass arrests. The trigger was the electrocution a few days ago of youth fleeing the police.
Could this happen here?
Well, of course it could. You're already thinking, Watts, Rodney King, Chicago '68, Birmingham...it's not like the United States is immune to civil unrest. It's been in our history since inception that certain populations, oppressed and disenfranchised rise up and make a stand.
But Paris today is an interesting lesson. North African youth rioting there are reacting to a society they simply can't assimilate into. They just don't have the tools, either educationally or socially to adapt. But interestingly, many don't really want to. They just don't see the advantage or use in becoming "French." Their parents tried when they came after WWII to rebuild the country, but their parents didn't make out much the better for it.
Now, with unemployment high, more immigrants coming daily, and a conservative government in power who disdains the "riff raff" and "troublemakers" protesting in the streets (and deals with them in a "zero tolerance" manner), what use is there trying to assimilate?
I sometimes wonder myself. What use is there trying to assimilate to a country that simply doesn't have much to offer? Is my brass ring a great job, a home in the suburbs and two and a half kids? What's the point in that? Where does that get me, but a lifetime of debt, an unfulfilling daily existence, and a ton of consumer goods I don't need / can't afford?
What about the poor? We've got over 40 million poor people in this country. How long can they watch "Cribs" and "The Fabulous Life of _____" until they finally see the light? Now, I'm not talking about some proletarian uprising...I'm just talking about a common sense realization that the goals we're shown and the reality we can achieve are two drastically different things.
Paris is burning because the ruling elite doesn't care about how the bottom half lives.
We need to keep that in mind.