Next French revolution: a less colorblind society

France's policy is to treat all its people as citizens, with no consideration of their color, creed, or race that could undermine national unity. The republic does not recognize ethnic differences; there is no room in the official view for "Arab-Frenchmen," in the way a "Mexican-American" is seen as such in the United States. No official statistics are compiled to count the number of people descended from immigrants, or to pinpoint the number of Muslims in France.

Acknowledging ethnic differences and measuring them, runs the official view, would lead to ethnic separatism and weaken the unitary state.

"The French approach is that if you don't attach too much importance [to ethnic and racial divisions in society] and don't talk about them, they will shrink and disappear," explains Patrick Simon, a social demographer, who says that the riots have created a general awareness - similar to that experienced by Americans in the 1960s - that the inequalities faced by ethnic minorities go beyond individual cases of discrimination.

"The system is theoretically defensible but ineffective in practice," continues Professor Simon. "Instead of having the positive effects that were hoped for, it has the opposite effect."

That supposedly color-blind treatment has not led to equal outcomes is clear from the suburbs where violence exploded two weeks ago: The poorest districts of French cities are overwhelmingly inhabited by North African and black African immigrants and their descendants who complain bitterly about discrimination.

"Your name says everything in France," says a young black man in the Paris suburb of Grigny, who gave his name as Billy Fabrice. "If you are called Diallo or Amir, that's all they want to know. If you are called Jean-Pierre, you show up for a job and they take you."

"It's as if we were here just as extras," agrees Mr. Fabrice's friend Amadi Boda, whose parents came to France from Senegal.

Forbidden by their mind-set from targeting social programs at ethnic groups, the French authorities have instead directed their money and their efforts geographically, targeting the most deprived districts. Since that is where a lot of North African and black African families live, they say, those are the people who will benefit.

Though this approach has not worked as well as it was intended to, French politicians have stuck to their conceptual guns.

At a ceremony last June that launched the "High Authority Against Discrimination and For Equality" (HALDE), President Jacques Chirac was blunt. "There is a limit that we should not cross because that would touch what, in my eyes, is our very identity," he warned. "It would consist of choosing a conception in which some Frenchmen should define themselves according to their origins in order to pursue their rights. That would lead to juridically enshrining inequality and open the way to ethnic separatism."

Some critics say the problem is not cultural integration but straightforward discrimination in a society that has not allowed the arrival of millions of immigrants from different countries to change its view of itself.

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