While the situation in Ferguson, Missouri, remains incredibly tense, the French-American Foundation will host a discussion on ethnic and racial diversity in France and the United States. It will take place on September, 10.

Affirmative action, quotas, ethnicity based statistics: these are common in the US but far from the French standard. The word “race” in and of itself is taboo and remains burdened with negative connotation.

Nevertheless, immigrants and their descendents represented just shy of 20% of the France’s population according to INSEE.

The debate surrounding these two opposite systems will feature American Sociologist Crystal Flemming, Elise Vincent, journalist in the US for Le Monde and Arun Venugopal, a New Yorker and reporter for WNYC.