Not just any youths...

HeraldSun (Australia)

(Photo is labelled Marseilles)

Which “young people” are we yet again talking about?

About 40 rioters in a Paris suburb hurled Molotov cocktails at police and firefighters, torched cars and one person fired a handgun during a rampage prompted by the death of a teen pizza deliverer fleeing police… The scenario - the death of a youth with police directly or indirectly involved - mirrors other incidents that have triggered unrest. Tensions between young people and police have long simmered in housing projects in France’s suburbs, feeding on poverty, unemployment and anger over discrimination against minorities.

This AP copy in the Sydney Morning Herald won’t give a clue to the ethnic makeup of the rioters, although it does note at the end that four years ago there was a riot by “young Arab and black men”.

Radio France, though, gives one hint that it’s the same story all over again:

French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux called for calm on Monday after Yacou Sanago, an 18-year-old boy, died when he hit a metal barrier when trying to flee a police cordon...

The problem with this kind of non-reporting is that it so easily permits the illectually dishonest to heap all the responsibility for this anarchic violence on the French state, by leading reporters (in this case) to then say that such violence is “feeding on poverty, unemployment and anger over discrimination against minorities”.

If we actually - and accurately - note that this violence tends to come from one particular religious minority, we might then better see that there is potentially another influence feeding not just the violence, but the poverty and unemployability, too.