French riots

It's had to be a light blogging day for me. I've had a ton of work, paid and voluntary, and my cold is pretty rotten.

I note that there's been a fair bit of blogging on the French riots.

Michael Silence has a round up of the Tennessee blogosphere reaction.

I've been thinking about it a lot, but I don't really know what to say. The squalid immigrant suburbs of French cities have always been a bit of a powder keg. Throw in probably justified resentment at French discrimination against les Arabes, incredible unemployment rates, add a little radical Islam, some stupid catalyst incident - et voila - riots.

We've had some inter-ethnic rioting here recently between Asian Muslims and Black West Indians in the Birmingham area, but the causes were entirely different and it played out pretty fast. (Of course, it didn't take us nearly two weeks for someone to die, we got that in the first night, proving British efficiency)

It's hard to judge if something like the French riots could spill across the Channel and happen here. But if it did, I could bet that my neighbourhood would be one of the areas to experience disturbances. There have been several terror arrests in my area and one local man is still awaiting extradition to the US on terror charges.

Let's see what some of the factors behind the riots in France are and how likely we are to experience something like this here in the UK:

Fascistic policing of 'brown people'
Well, I'm sure it's not as bad as in France. And the Brits are very careful to stop and search a quota of white folks, too, as the Vol-in-Law can attest. But many Asians here believe that they are being targeted by the police (and maybe they are).

Segregated neighbourhoods cut off from the economy of the city
Not so much. At least not in London. Most areas are reasonably mixed, and if they are 'monocultural' they usually have reasonable links to the urban centre. But many other cities in the UK are very segregated.

High unemployment
It's not too bad. But Asians find it more difficult to get jobs. The unemployment rate for Muslim youths is significantly higher than for whites. There is some increasing resentment over this. I think it's largely because the schools in their areas are crap.

A history of animosity between ethnic groups.
Some and growing.

Radical Islam.
Oh, yes. A big tick by that one. We have that here. And no one seems to want to address it.


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Further posting on this topic by me and the Vol-in-Law: here, here and here.