A pluie dure is gonna fall.

So the French riots have expanded throughout the country, claimed at least one life, and even spilled over into Belgium. It's hardly the worst thing that could happen, and one needs to be careful not to over-estimate the severity of the riots. American cities were subjected to periodic severe race riots for the entire 20th Century. Oh, and that's what these are: race riots. I know that we in the West think we solved civil rights when the US ended legal segregation and the European countries pulled out of their last colonial possessions in the 1960s.
France has an "assimilation" policy for immigrants, both as official policy and, it seems, as a social convention. Which is to say that immigrants aren't to integrate themselves into French society, but instead to become "French." Which, it turns out, is nigh unto impossible when you aren't actually ethnically French--whatever that means. This is the country that fears that the Polish are comming to overrun their borders. I mean, the Polish, c'mon.
But immigration hysteria has always been a problem in the West (since Western countries even started allowing a semblence of open immigration). Around here, it's Latin America, in Europe is the Middle East and North Africa, in Britain for a while it was India and Pakistan. It's the same old scape-goat story and, more than that, it's the fact that in the eyes of a lot of people who are heavily invested in their nationality, immigrants of a different ethnic group can never participate in the construction of that identity.
At the end of a day, you can't have a bunch of people in your country--many of whom are second and third generation citizens--who you don't treat like citizens and then be suprised when they get all pissed and burn this basieur de mère down.