BBC
Days of rioting in the bleaker suburbs of Paris have highlighted discontent among many French youths of North African origin.
As part of a series on French Muslims, the BBC News website's Henri Astier looks at the issue of discrimination, a leading source of frustration in France's unemployment-riddled ghettos.
France's Muslims are not all of north African origin, and North Africans in France are not all Muslim. Kabyles are very secular. Is an aetheist American still described as a Christian? It is not possible to tell a person's religion from their ethnic looks or the sound of their name.
"People always talk of the need to 'integrate' Muslims. But the youths are French. Why should they need integrating?" asks Samia Amara, 23, a youth worker near Paris.
Mr Sabeg agrees that "integration" is just hot air. "What does it mean? Are some French people supposed to integrate and others to be integrated?"
Indeed. 'Integration' in France is based on a 'republican' ideal that everyone should fit in to a French republican mould, and suppress their roots and original culture. Despite being an island and a monarchy, Britain integrates not only immigrants, but also their original cultures.
His country, he points out, has no black or Arab TV presenters, and all MPs from mainland France are white.
Mr Valls is a firm believer in "positive discrimination" - a very un-French concept that is beginning to gain acceptance.
I disagree. The media, however, should show more images of multicultural integration in Britain and the US for example.
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