France is still reeling from the Islamist attacks against satirical rag Charlie Hebdo which killed 17.
As commenter Kolia points out, many of the murder victims weren't white indigenous French--an Arab and an Afro cop, four civilian Jews. Does this mean religion trumps race?
The truth is that Arab (and Afro) immigrants to France pose two different kinds of threat to the natives. The distinction should be made clear.
For Americans, one of these two will look very familiar, and one will not:
- (1) The daily incivility / insults / beatings / rapes perpetrated by Arabs / Blacks against indigenous white French. No religious aspect to it at all; pure ethnic minority alienation.
- (2) The ever-growing calls to bend French values to mirror those of their guests: Single-sex swimming pools, halal meals, legalized polygamy, criminalized blasphemy... The most extreme is the young man radicalized by an imam who tries to launch a caliphate by holy war.
All the world's a-tizzy about (2). While we admit Islam is a genuine threat to parts of Europe, we're going to swim against the tide and take a look at the more 'banal evil' of (1). Why? This is the everyday brutality the French must live with day in, day out, and it bears a striking resemblance to that aimed at Euro-Americans by their Afro countrymen. What can the data tell us about hopes of assimilating these two alien minorites on either side of the Atlantic?
