A few days ago, I had a chat about the riots here with Franco-American political scientist Arun Kapil, whom you may remember from our French Election Twitter Summits. He kindly gave me permission to publish our exchange:
Arun: France is in a potentially dangerous place right now, and with a problem that has been festering for decades and appears insoluble.
Claire: Are you referring to the fact that the police executed a 17-year-old kid and no one believes this was just one bad apple? Or to the fact that large numbers of French youths think the appropriate way to respond to this is by sacking and pillaging their own neighborhoods?
Arun: The problem, of course, is the banlieue-ghettos, the people who live there, the police, politicians, and you name it. The police are a huge problem. It’s more than a bad apple or two.
Claire: When you say France is in a “potentially a dangerous place right now,” do you mean that these riots are potentially dangerous, or do you ha…
