France

On Friday, France marked the anniversary of the October 2005 riots, set off by the electorcution death of two youths after being chased by two police. It ignited the anger of France's, largely Muslim, Africanand Middle-Eastern populations, concentrated in ghettos like Clichy-sous-Bois. It is a classic example of immigration-based ethnic conflict between immigrant and homelander.
The most prescient example that can be applied here is the Brixton Riots (I highly reccomend Urban75's excellent narrative account). The narrative is the same: impoverished, non-white immigrants, largely from former colonies move into the land of their former colonizer, often into the same neighbourhoods. They are socioeconomically and ethnically sidelined, and conflicts with the white establishment (police, government), is inevitable. Desperation breeds crime, mixes with police brutality and the smallest incident will cause massive civil unrest.
Though characterized by xenophobic public officials (Nicolas Sarkozy's "scum" comment) and newspapers are destructive nihilism and youth rioting because they stupid and hate the world, it is a legitimate form of resitance against centuries of agression and repression--it's latest incarnation being police beating (whether Brixton or Clichy-sous-Bois), and physical, cultural and economic sidelining into ghettos.
Che-like guerilla revolution is no longer applicable in such situations, I am told by me eco-anarchist friend Chasuble Bane, but Revolution by Riot (the destruction and overthrow of capitalist control-cops and corporations, and from the ashes will rise the new society) IS. It is true that snowball effect like the one we saw in France last year could effectively shut down the state and its business cohorts, like '68 only bigger.
Burt returning to Brixton: what lessons can we learn? Things might just get worse before they get better. There were two subsequent riots in Brixton and Handsworth, the lesson there being things might get worse before they get better. The main thing we can gather from 1980's Britian (under Thatcher) and 00's France (under Chirac) is that knee-jerk xenophobia is one of the easist and biggest roots to cut to stop this sort of thing.
Immigrants are misunderstood and feared, something fed off of by right-wing nationalistic politicians like Jean-Marie Le Pen and his National Front, or the National Front in England in the 80's.
Once this is stopped, through cultural understanding intiatives and work against xenophobic bottom feeders, we can start to work on the economic problems and cause fear, distrust, and even violence on both sides.
My main point: Racism has many sides--Economic racism, cultural, post-colonial, anti-immigrant, and we must attack it on all sides. When this is done, the barriers of those ghettos start to come down, and with it the discontent they breed. This is how the ethnic immigrant minorites can effectively morph into mainline society, rather then outright war.
But, one must consider, if this is not done by mainline society (in conjunction with strong local, communitarian solidarity movements), then riots are inevitable, if not justifiable.
In fact, its already happening, with news out of France looking worse by the moment.
ETM theory certainly says that it will.