The Bastille Day attack on Nice is a significant affront to the society we know and love. Similarly, in January 2015, the French satirical publisher Charlie Hebdo was attacked for defending the right to free expression, practicing a cultural tradition from at least as early as the French Revolution. This revolution, despite its flaws, formed the basis of western modernity and the values we hold dear. Bastille Day commemorates the storming of the Bastille, which is the universal symbol for the start of the French Revolution, and therefore, the start of modern world. At the time, the revolutionaries were campaigning against the entrenched traditionalists who held Europe back from modernity. Today, the foe is the same. It is not a surprise that the most attacked western country is also its most progressive historically and still highly progressive today. It is also one of the most saturated with foreign citizens who, unlike many in America, were not forced to live in France. They had the choice to never live in France, and now they can live anywhere else in Schengen.
It is important to remember that a host country has no obligation to its foreign citizens that it does not owe its original citizens. Host nations especially do not have any obligation to the cultures of their foreign citizens. Symmetrically, foreign citizens choose the nation that suits them the best and they are not beholden to any particular one. Non-original citizens have a right to self-expression and freedom as original citizens do but they do not have the right to change the value system of the original constituents. And in the case that foreign citizen values are in direct contravention of those of original citizens it is clear that those of the original constituents have precedence.
Foreign occupiers of a host nation unlike those born in the host nation are generally there on the goodwill of the host nation. Many host nations provide privileges above basic human rights and these privileges are given in exchange for good behaviour and contribution to society. Crimes committed by foreign citizens are therefore a greater contravention of reciprocity than if they were committed by people forced to live in a country by birth. This point adds considerable disgust to the recent attacks.
I will now comment on the racial situation in the US. The US is particularly special in that many of its foreign citizens did not in fact choose to be in the US, and so a certain amount of racial strife should be expected. The US practices self-imposed, new-age, racial segregation. The attitude toward race is a blend of cultural oversensitivity and lack of racial awareness. The symbolic equivalent is the logical jump from wearing a sticker supporting breast cancer to having a genuine concern for breast cancer. Wearing sticker has no cost to the wearer; concern has costs. The American conversational realm provides the strongest evidence. Race is avoided.
Cultural sensitivity is overwhelming in the US. People are unable to differentiate between a comment that is simply related to race and one that is unkind to a race. I will provide an example for illustrative purposes. A joke that a Mongolian is good at riding a horse is not rude. It is a generalization of something that is probably true on average based on history. It does not demean the race or "boil down the race" as that is not the logical implication. Nor is it overtly a negative comment. It says that a Mongolian is good at riding horses. It does not say that horse riding is all a Mongolian is good at. The latter would be racist, the former is a generalization that is understood to be strictly incorrect but appropriate in the context of a hyperbole as jokes sometimes are.
The racial problem in the US is widespread. Congregations are almost always one-race. There is limited interracial interaction. This is not apparent to people in the system, but obvious to outsiders. Every facet of life - school, government, work - is laden with race-based special interest groups. These groups are allowed to exist independent of each other with little diversity in thinking. Groups like these were derided and made fun of in Canada. They are encouraged and commonplace in the US. There is a widespread belief in the US that association by some commonality determined at birth is reasonable and powerful when recognized. Instead it is divisive and a suboptimal allocation of association. Race divisions occur when we stop having conversations about whether artificial lines should be drawn. Yet the fear of appearing racist often shuts down any such conversation.
A lively conversation on race and segregation cannot stop. Many of the acts of violence in the US and the world is clearly linked to this issue, and some of them are indirectly linked. The solution might be learn to take a joke.