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France spent a century telling Africa it was bringing "civilization." The "mission civilisatrice." The white man’s burden in a beret. They meant: French language, French law, French culture, French schools where African children learned the history of "their ancestors," Gauls with blond hair and blue eyes, while French companies extracted the rubber, the phosphate, the uranium, the labor. That was the civilization. Now the grandchildren of those Africans live in the banlieues of Paris, Lyon and Lille, and in the quartiers nord of Marseille. French citizens, products of the French school system, speaking French as their first language. And France is asking why they’re so difficult to integrate. Integrate into what, exactly? The civilization that went to their grandparents’ country and took everything? Or the republic that promised equality and delivered a suburb with a police problem and a school with no books?