When the riots started, the mayors of the suburban Paris towns recently in flames were invited to meet with the Prime Minister. All of them are white males. This is a way into a complex story of race, class and France. This is intended to be a short, simple explanation to a complex issue, for the non-French reader, so apologies in advance for cutting out some of the nuance. There are many similarities to events in the USA from the 1960s onward, or to Britain's riots in the 1980s, but also certain important differences.

The events: very similar to the Rodney King incident in Los Angeles in the early 1990s, two young men were electrocuted as they seemingly fled a police pursuit, in the town of Clichy sous bois in suburban Paris. Following that, there were about two weeks of nightly violence, involving principally burning of cars, but spreading also to some burning of schools, day care centres, and a few businesses.

The geography of riots in France is different from that in the USA. Rather than occurring in central city ghettos, it occurs in the suburbs, which is where large poor minority populations are housed, in neighbourhoods known as cités, concentrating public housing, mostly built in the 1950s and 1960s, known as HLM, (habitations à loyer modéré, moderate rent housing).

The riots started in the Paris region, but spread to smaller metropolitan areas around the country. The reason for this geography is that public housing policy in France has concentrated poorer populations, but in smaller fragments than American ghettos, and has dispersed these "mini-ghettos" around the country more uniformly than is found in America.

Another difference from American riots is the youth of the participants: overwhelmingly under 25, but also in the majority under 18 years old.

The riots seem to have had three waves: the first, a spontaneous expression of anger in the Paris region; the second, an imitation in the rest of the country, based on similar long-term frustrations as in Paris; and a third, involving organized riots "ordered" by mafia/gang leaders (known as caids) in certain neighbourhoods, using their younger "staff" to burn public facilities as part of an ongoing war to get the State (education, police, anything involving public sector intervention) out of the neighbourhood so as to facilitate their underground economic activities - the creation of "law-free, free trade zones").

The background: France has a large minority population, with the largest group consisting of people from North Africa, or the Maghreb, as it is referred to here. These populations are known in slang as beurs, which is the word arabe with the syllables reversed, which is a French street slang known as verlan (the French term for "reverse" is à l'envers, and if you reverse that term, you get verlan). They have a high proportion of citizens and of second- or third-generation residents. There is also a black population, but there are two distinct groups in it: immigrants from sub-Saharan west Africa, many of whom are not French citizens, and French West Indians (antillais), who are citizens and generally were not involved in the riots, as they are a part of the middle-class for the most part.

The first two of these populations have a high percentage of people in public housing in suburbs of metropolitan areas. France engaged in a massive program of building public low-income housing starting in the early 1950s, when severe post-war housing shortages led to shanty-town creation around some of the major cities during the industrialization boom. This program, supported by the church and the communist party, subsequently was extended and continued to today, so that public housing is to be found in virtually every big and medium-sized French city, mostly in the suburbs. The older projects are big, grim, blocks of concrete, usually set in "parks," in a Le Corbusier style. The newer ones are smaller 4-5 story buildings, also in parks. Public housing constitutes about 25% of the total in France.

The maghrebins arrived in massive numbers after the independence of former French colonies in North Africa, as well as during the period of high growth and low unemployment up through the 1970s. They were involved in a classical process of "ethnic succession," taking the places in the suburban low-income housing complexes that were being vacated by the white working class. The black Africans have arrived more recently, with the ongoing crisis in sub-Saharan Africa, and this gives rise to a complex ethnic mosaic in the cités, with the usual mixture of cooperation, solidarity, rivalry and conflict.

Structural causes: these are the usual mix of unemployment, racism and frustration. The Maghrebins who arrived prior to the 1970s came in a time of full employment. But with the end of the Old Economy, France entered a period of massive, persistent unemployment. Since 1980, national unemployment has been around 10% or more, youth unemployment around 20% and minority youth unemployment at least 40%. The minorities have not found a place in the New Economy, and this is complicated by France's overall difficulties with economic adjustment over the past quarter century. This leads to an "identity" problem: these youth are not the "purposeful immigrants" of their parent's generation, they have no roots in their parent's cultures or countries, and yet they do not feel really "French." No real alternative collective identity, except perhaps as "excluded," or - in street culture terms, racaille ("thug culture") exists, although most observers think that the majority are just plain alienated.

1. Unemployment. This means that youth in these neighbourhoods are often in families with nobody working, or perhaps only one person working; where their older siblings are unemployed as well, and where there is little or no example of successful employment experience around them. Add to this the usual story of quick, flashy money from illicit trade in drugs and stolen goods, and we have elements that are similar to those known in American cities.

2. Policing. Policing policy has also contributed: there are massive complaints about police harassment and "lack of respect" for minority youth, and France has laws that permit tougher interrogative and preventive detention techniques than are (legally) possible in America.

Socialist governments have instituted community policing, but the right-wing currently in power stresses more law-enforcement. Another difference with the USA is that local police forces are not very important in France. There are two national police forces, the CRS and the gendarmes, one civilian and the other military, and both are commanded by the central state's chief executive (prefect) at the level of the "county" (département). So the type of local dialogue over police practices that occurs in the USA has to go through higher, more centralized political levels in France, and it is fair to say that there is less ability for local populations to affect the police than in America.

3. Education. As in America, there is a high level of school failure in these neighbourhoods. But again, there are important differences. First, like the police, schools are run by the national government, and in principle there are no huge differences in curriculum or budgets from one place to another. Moreover, the national government has instituted "special school zones" (ZEPS, zones d'education prioritaire) with extra budgets for these neighbourhoods. However, local control of schools is unknown in France. It's hence more difficult to adapt the curriculum to local needs, and bilingual education is unknown and there is a strong emphasis on traditional academic performance in the teaching and testing process, much more so than in America. And without a diploma, finding a job is very difficult, especially in a society where a high school degree is the key to "middle class" status.

4. Racism. Studies have shown that sending a CV with an Arab or African name on it results in radically lower interview and hiring rates than an identical CV with a "French" sounding name. It is widely admitted that there is widespread overt racism in the labor market in France, and even more for males than females.

But, France is a generous welfare country: the French welfare state is a big one, unlike in America. So, on the "positive" side, people are housed, they have access to health care, education, and - in many places - fairly good public transportation. This does show up: the poor in France tend to do better on "human development indicators" than the American "underclass." On the other side, many commentators point out that France has a culture of "being assisted," rather than "doing for oneself." In these terms, because it's possible to "get by," albeit really badly, families and individuals don't do everything necessary to get out of these neighbourhoods. This corresponds to the right wing-left wing debate over welfare in America. But welfare is objectively much more generous in France than in America.

So, what's the problem? Differences compared to the USA: the obvious difference is that America generates a lot more employment, and even though unemployment is very high for the underclass, it is much lower across the big minority populations than it is in France. Very high unemployment affects very high proportions of the two main minority groups involved in the riots, whereas it affects only the "underclass" part of the African-American and Latino populations in America. This reflects the successes of desegregation of labor markets in America since the 1960s, and the fact that big African-American and Latino middle classes have emerged, and these middle classes have essentially gone "up and out" of the ghetto, i.e. of upward mobility of minorities in America. That phenomenon is much less present in France. One reason is the generally high level of long-term unemployment in France, which provides less opportunity; the other is because of the failure of the French approach to diversity, as we shall now see.

Multiculturalism versus citoyenneté.

Multicultural politics doesn't really exist in France. In the political system, this is because people are groomed through the parties, and the parties are dominated by white people, mostly men. So, coming up through the local ranks is more difficult, including minority-majority towns.

But it's related to something deeper. There is no "Black Power" or "Beur Power" movement in France. There is no equivalent of a Martin Luther King, no intellectuals like Angela Davis in the 1960s, and so on. There are occasional anti-racist movements (SOS Racisme in the 1990s, or the "BBB" (black-blanc-beur, our version of the "rainbow), but these are not sustained politically by a leadership class of people of color. There is no substantial class of business persons of color. There are associations, but they remain at the bottom of the organized power hierarchy.

Why do these things not exist? This has to do with both philosophy and with political structure.

Philosophy: the French notion of being a "citizen" is a very strong one. It goes back to the Revolution, when the "estates" (clergy, peasants, nobility) were abolished in favour of one, egalitarian status, the citoyen. The notion is that being a citizen is not just about a legal status, but about being substantively equal as a participant in the Republic, and substantively equal in condition as well as rights. And it is the role of the State to assure equality of condition. So, by definition, we are all French and equal, therefore there is no point to saying we are "French Black," or "French Beur." That would be to admit that we are not equal, or even to make a fetish out of difference, when the goal of being a citizen is to be equal.

This idea of the Republic has been very important to the development of equality-promoting policies in France over the past century: the school system, the admission to elite civil service by exam and not by connections, the excellent and universal health care and social services, worker protection, and so on. In most of these areas, it worked, until France became a multi-ethnic nation.

This idea of equality is widely held, not only by white people in France, but by most minorities, who do not want to be considered beur or black (except as a matter of private preference: there are flourishing cultural scenes, of course). So, it is the failure to be "French and only French" that appears to generate the anger, not the wish to be "not French."

Most people, on the Left and the Right, reject American-style multiculturalism, because they see it as a way to divide society, to limit equality, to enshrine difference, rather than to abolish it, which is the goal of being a citizen. They see America as a place that turns race into a permanent condition of the society, rather than trying to abolish it as a fundamental feature. The idea that the two can coexist, i.e. difference and equality, is not widely admitted in the French notion of citizenship as "equality of condition, to be assured by the State" and not merely "equality of rights and opportunities," as in America.

Only a few people believe that it would be healthy to talk more about race "in order to get beyond race as an inequality problem." There is a taboo aspect to it, to the point where the French census has no statistics on race or ethnicity! (because "we are all French," of course). But like many taboo subjects, they don't go away, they just go into the closet, where they fester.

The riots have led to some people talking openly about diversity: the need for it in politics, the need for it in government, in firms, and in the way we think. Too early to tell.

Political structure: as mentioned, since local jurisdictions count less than party structure in grooming leaders, it's more difficult for "outsiders" (meaning: people of colour and women) to get ahead in politics.

Moreover, as noted, most of the rioters are confined to horrible public housing projects. There's a huge public housing lobby in France, and no lobby that promotes homeownership for minorities. Yet, in America, good proportions of the African-American and Latino populations have combined upward mobility in employment with buying their own homes, and hence being able to accumulate some family assets, which gives them much more long-term staying power in the middle class. This is not true in France, where homeownership levels are a fraction of American minority homeownership.

The riots have led to a lot of people calling for more public housing, more schools, more after-school help, more dialogue, better policing. Maybe this will happen, because it's consistent with the idea that the State should bring everybody up to the same level in basic services and rights.

But there aren't very many people talking about the need for massive, profound economic reforms that would create more jobs so that there would be more opportunity for minorities, and nobody talks about getting people out of the projects altogether, and into their own homes. That's the scary part: no amount of better social services will, without real integration into the economy, reduce social exclusion and the stigma that comes from being poor and unemployed.