Watts? Crown Heights? Or none of the above?

In the early days of the riots in France, my first thought was Crown Heights, chiefly because the New York police department--under orders from then-Mayor David Dinkins--did not move to stop the riots for days. I still think the comparison is valid on that level. Crown Heights effectively ended Dinkins' career and enabled Guiliani to become mayor. Similarly, French inaction may end the rule of Chirac's UMP party. One shudders to think who voters will turn to in its stead.

Adloyada compares the riots to the urban riots of the 1960s and 1970s, primarily because the rioters' list of grievances sounds similar to the grievances voiced by the residents of Watts.

La Shawn Barber doesn't think so.

While blacks were not integrated into the economy or society in general during Jim Crow, they were fully assimilated into America culture. One of my many pet peeves is hearing people talk about a “black culture,” when it’s actually the “black subculture.”

Black Americans are uniquely American and have more in common with white Americans than with black Africans, for instance. “Black” slang (”ebonics”), expression, music (including jazz), style of dress, etc., are all part of a subculture of the American culture. Whether some blacks wish to believe otherwise is their sad problem.

This, on the other hand, is just plain fatuous. Why should I sympathize with either the rioters or the ruling elite? What about the disabled woman who was burned? Or the 61-year-old man who was killed? Or the thousands of people who live in those suburbs who aren't rioting. Call me an effete bigot, but I'm not buying it.

MORE: Daniel Pipes:

The French can respond in three ways. They can feel guilty and appease the rioters with prerogatives and the "massive investment plan" some are demanding. Or they can heave a sigh of relief when it ends and, as they did after earlier crises, return to business as usual. Or they can understand this as the opening salvo in a would-be revolution and take the difficult steps to undo the negligence and indulgence of past decades.

I expect a blend of the first two reactions and that, despite Mr. Sarkozy's surge in the polls, Mr. Villepin's appeasing approach will prevail. France must await something larger and more awful to awake it from its somnolence. The long-term prognosis, however, is inescapable: "the sweet dream of universal cultural compatibility has been replaced," as Theodore Dalrymple puts it, "by the nightmare of permanent conflict."