American Bloodbath
This is what the glamorous French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levi had to say about the recent race riots that rocked France (the whole Stranger interview is here).
[You asked if] I found these riots American? Of course yes, and that is what I said, by the way, to my fellow citizens. I told them and I told Americans, who also failed to discover the meaning of the riots. They were full of scandalized articles about the riots in Paris slums, and so on. Remember Los Angeles, and not only Los Angeles but also remember Detroit! Americans have a short memory sometimes, and they should have known that the French behavior had one advantage over the American one: No one died, no bloodbath. You had a bloodbath in L.A. 10 years ago. You know that better than me. Thirty or forty dead. Maybe more. But in France, no one.
What's different between LA and the Paris banlieus is that everyone in America knows about, or thinks they know about, Watts, hardly anyone in this country, even people who've been to France a dozen times, is more than dimly aware that these places exist.
When we think of Paris we think of the Seine and the Eiffel Tower and sidewalk cafes and so on. And of course those places exist, and Paris is a real city even in its tourist center. But no one ever visits the ring suburbs. Serried ranks of crumbling concrete tower blocks stretching as far as the eye can see; they don't appear in Rick Steve's guides, even though every European city has them. They're not just full of Muslims, either; they're home to the native-born poor, including the most virulent white racist blockheads you could ever imagine.
So when they erupt into flames it's a surprise, because we didn't know they were there. It's not a short memory for problems here; we do remember those. Levi may be "glamorous", but his ability to travel through a country without actually seeing anything isn't as different from America as he supposes.