Rihanna's not the only girl in the world

Rihanna: Cancelled her concert in Nice.

I'm genuinely pleased Rihanna is safe and well after docking in the city where 84 people or more died at the hands of a suspected terrorist in a speeding lorry.

I'm pleased, too, that people greeted the news of Rihanna's safety with the right level of cynicism. The Daily Mail, as you would imagine, made much of it.

Imagine if she had been caught up in the tragic events or, worse. Then the headlines would all have been about her. Not those poor souls mown down in a callous, deliberate act of terror on France's day of national celebration.

It would most certainly have out-headlined the deaths this year of David Bowie and Prince.

As it was, the megastar wrote on Instagram that her gig at the city's Allianz Stadium "would not be going ahead as planned... due to the tragic events". She has been in Europe with her Anti World Tour.

And the Nice Jazz Festival, due to start on Saturday, has also been cancelled.

A representative for Rihanna - confirmed she was safe as news of the tragic killings unfolded. Of course, concert organisers had to announce the cancellation, for the benefit of those who had tickets. But the prominence of the story in some media outlets made for uncomfortable reading in the circumstances.

The makers of the sequel to the movie Fifty Shades of Grey, which had been filming on location in the south of France, also said everyone working on the film had been accounted for and was "safe and sound".

Actors including Jamie Dornan, Dakota Johnson (right) and a crew are filming scenes for the final 50 Shades installment in the tourist destination. It is not known if filming will be suspended following the attack.

Truth be told, the Rihanna story was not such a big deal in the print editions. But one of the issues I have with online media is that it is harder to "weight" stories - and harder still in Facebook and Twitter feeds, where news of a missing cat and a major tragedy can occupy much the same screen space. In newspapers, projection of stories can be more balanced.

Thus, people were venting their spleen online because newspapers had supposedly given as much prominence to a singer who was safe as to the scores of unknown victims.

At least 84 people including women and children died and at least 50 more people are injured after a lorry hit crowds who had gathered to celebrate Bastille Day, the French national day. The driver has been identified as a 31-year-old French-Tunisian man in French media. He was shot by police after driving at spectators.

His motive is not yet known, but perhaps he was making a point in choosing Bastille Day and all it stands for - in particular equality, and opportunity.

Discrimination is keeping the children of immigrants at the bottom of France’s economic pile, despite a report advising Prime Minister Manuel Valls last year.

Young men of sub-Saharan African origin face the biggest obstacles in finding jobs. Figures compiled from a number of studies show economic integration is a “massive” problem for the descendants of immigrants.

In 2012 unemployment among under-25s of African origin was 42 per cent, in some specific areas much higher, compared to 22 per cent among descendants of European immigrants and those of families long-established in France.

Among children of immigrants from other continents it was 29 per cent.

“The young man of sub-Saharan origin is the one who has the most difficulty,” Pisani-Ferry said.

“The colour bar still exists, that’s the main source of inequality,” said Bernadette Hétier of French anti-racism campaign Mrap.

She blames “fantasies, in the negative sense of the word” leading to a perception that “men are seen as more dangerous”. “There is an element of fear,” she added.

The report did not blame discrimination exclusively, pointing to training, family background and place of residence as other factors that affect employment prospects.

Lack of useful contacts and language skills may also have some impact, it finds, but “part can also be attributed to discriminatory behaviour”.

“A quarter of immigrants and descendants of immigrants declared that they have experienced discrimination over the past five years, nearly half of those of Sub-Saharan African origin, the main criterion of discrimination felt to be skin colour,” the study said.

Valls stirred debate after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris last year when he said that a form of apartheid existed in France.

The study found inequality affecting the children of immigrants in a number of areas:

• 14 per cent lived in officially recognised deprived areas, compared to 4.0 per cent of the total population in 2008;

• 24 per cent left school without qualifications, compared to 16 per cent;

• Median household annual income was 13,360 euros, compared to 20,310, in 2011;

• 33 per cent of 18-50-year-olds lived in public housing, compared to 13 per cent of people of European Union origin.

Hétier said: "There were eight years of very serious war between colonial France and Algeria and for years and years we had a real problem of racism against people of north African origin.

"But, at a later stage, migrants from sub-Saharan Africa started coming to France. That accelerated in recent years, but we’d still find it hard to believe that this population suffers from more racism than the north Africans."

Much was made of France's multi-cultural football team winning the World Cup on home soil in 1998. The country united behind a team with players with overseas heritage.

Striker Youri Djorkaeff was of Armenian descent; Lilian Thuram, the team's elegant defender, was born in the small town of Pointe-à-Pitre in the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe; left-back Bixente Lizarazu was Basque; midfielder Patrick Vieira was born in Dakar, Senegal.

Champions of the world: France's victorious team in 1998, with Zinedine Zidane clutching the trophy

The central image of the long night of celebration that followed the final victory, against Brazil, was of the face of Zidane - who is of Algerian origin.

The 1990s had been miserable in France. Rising unemployment, industrial unrest, racial violence in the suburbs and the spectre of Islamist terrorism in the heart of the city (Parisians experienced deadly attacks long before anyone else in Europe - in 1995 a bomb attack by Algerian militants on the metro left eight dead) had made the country tense and fractious.

It appeared on the surface that France's World Cup win was its greatest moment of unity since WWII Liberation and heralded a new era of integration. But it merely masked deep issues of racial tension and near-apartheid that exist, especially in the big cities such as Paris and Marseille.

In 1996, Jean-Marie le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, described the French football team as 'artificial' because it was made up of too many black and Arab faces from former French colonies and too few pure-blooded white Gauls.

Striker Thierry Henry's response to the question of race had been to dismiss its significance and to declare that le Pen had "been born in the wrong century"'.

Le Pen (right) had slyly and deliberately evoked memories of the Algerian war, the conflict between France and its former colony that led to Algeria's independence in 1962. The war remains a cause of much bitterness in France, particularly in the volatile suburbs.

And while the divisions continue, so most likely will the attacks. For all talk about Islamic State and Muslim division, France's issues are closer to home.

Too many attacks in recent times have been indiscriminate and have seen Muslim victims.

Of course, some terror incidents have thrown up links with Middle East terror groups, notably Isis - but the soldiers of fortune in France are in large part its own disaffected sons and daughters.

And, whether or not France drops bombs in Syria, that disaffection predates the conflict there and has been ingrained in second generation French North Africans who feel - quite rightly even by official figures - that their place in French society is restricted to the margins.

France's leaders urgently need to put a fresh emphasis on equality.

#Terrorism