It is a commonplace of American history that one way the Southern planter aristocracy maintained its dominant social position was to focus the hatred of poor whites on African Americans. So long as the white poor could comfort themselves with their supposed superiority to African Americans, they were unlikely to analyze the true source of their misery and turn their ire on their white betters. According to the New York Times Magazine, a similar story appears to be playing itself out in today's France, where the large and growing North African population, frequent victims of discrimination, vents its frustration on France's Jewish minority. The result is a wave of anti-Semitism in France unparalleled since the end of the Second World War.