An extract from Oxblogger Patrick Belton's e-mail to a friend:
What lingers for me was the pride the rioters express in the toughness of their neighbourhood - referring to it as 'ghetto' and 'south Bronx', and offering to take you to caches of molotov cocktails, drugs and arms - which seems to tap into a performative identity of images provided by American media of anger and power. When police aren't around, they speak with exaggerated bravado, pointing out wreckage they claim responsibility for. They're kids, generally from fourteen to eighteen, and they were simply having a rather violent holiday, bashing up cars and bus stops because it's fun to do so. Locals don't want to say anything about them, their own children, students or customers, preferring to blame teenagers from other banlieues, as an article of faith. Residents are quite friendly to curious outsiders, and get on with their lives amid all the high fences surrounding each building of their estates, but they grow silent and uncomfortable when you bring up the unspoken current event. There's nothing religious at all to the riots; these aren't kids who reference religion at all, except to claim to you (possibly with some exercise of imagination) that they have friends in Guantanamo, and they might perhaps add Israel, Jews, and Sharon to France, Sarkozy, the police, and other people whose names in their drunken, possibly drugged, and excited invocations follow after the French equivalent of 'Fuck'. But this is acting out a repertory of imitation...