I was reading an interview of one French politician/political commentator (sorry, I forget who he was, and I don’t have a site), who was talking about this, and he suggested that the problem wasn’t as bad as it’s made out to be…that it’s been hijacked by people with an anti-immigrant or anti-Muslim agenda.
He made the points, that, first of all, most recent immigrants to France, Muslim or otherwise, do assimilate, and have become French in values and attitudes. Secondly, first generation immigrants having problems assimilating, and trying to hold on to their own culture, isn’t unusual in the history of immigration.
Yes, black ghettoes in the US are incomparable to the Muslim situation, and my apologies to monstro for misinterpreting her post. As I indicate in my above post, the issues run much deeper to modern Muslim culture issues, and nothing will change until either Muslim culture changes (not impossible, but not going to happen in the kind of time frame we need), or France finds a way to re-integrate their Muslims, so they associate themselves more with French culture than with Muslim culture.
I don’t know what you mean by “‘melting pot’ challenges”. In a sense, it is true almost by definition, as the US has generally had a more pro-immigration policy than Europe, and thus has had more immigrants to assimilate. However, IMHO, the US has handled immigration better than Europe, as its attitude has been more integrationist than segregationist. This of course has its downsides, since parts of cultures are lost, but it seems that the focus is fortunately on political and economic assimilation rather than social assimilation. For instance, walk into Queens and you’ll still see Russian neighborhoods, Korean neighborhoods, Greek neigborhoods, and so on, but even though I’m not Russian I won’t be looked upon strangely for going into a Russian grocery store. All these groups (Arabs included), while still retaining their cultural identities, consider themselves Americans in one way or another.
Interesting you use the word “minorities” rather than “immigrants” here. Tricky business, because in the US, when one says “minorities”, that includes blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, possibly Jews, etc. Most of these groups (blacks and NAs especially) would not be considered “immigrants”. Policy towards minorities tends to be worse than policy towards immigrants. I called this “tricky business” because French Muslims are generally considered both minorities and immigrants, so both class and cultural issues arise.