My Wife Is More Than An Articulate Raghead or Why the French Are Xenophobic
My wife and I just back from a twelve-day vacation in St. Maarten/St. Martin (I know, I know--try not to cry too hard for me). One fine evening we found ourselves at a bar on Orient Beach on the French side of the island. By the way, St. Martin is the smallest landmass on earth at thirty-seven square miles to have two separate countries. So, we're at a beach bar on the French side and once again I find myself lucky to have married a woman who speaks French on a conversational level.
She was born in Morocco to an Arab mother and an American father and learned French and Arabic before she learned English. As is often the case, her father's genes ended up being a little more showy than her mother's and so she is often mistaken for your basic Euro-mutt. It's hard to see the Arab in my baby unless you really know what to look for. Basically, she's lilly white.
The French bartender marveled at her Parisian-sounding accent and asked her if we were Canadian. She explained that she was Moroccan. He exclaimed that she was very fair for an Arab and extremely well-spoken. I, of course, had no idea what the fuck they were talking about and was just happy to learn that I was not being made fun of.
When we left the bar she shook her head and muttered, "Typical French racism." She explained the details of their transaction and at first I couldn't figure out why she was pissed until I made a comparison that is common in American culture. What the bartender said to her was pretty much equivalent to a white American person exclaiming upon meeting an African American who speaks in Midwestern American dialect, "Oh, and she was so articulate." That's insulting and racist, of course, because it implies that African Americans aren't usually articulate (read intelligent) enough to speak in mid-western American/Peter Jennings tinted dialect, and that an articulate African American is unusual enough to exclaim about. It's like expressing amazement that three-year old child can read or something.
Anyway, I asked my wife about her "typical" comment. Growing up in a former French colony, and working for an international non-profit, she's had a hell of a lot of experience with that particular country, its people and culture. She's not just some jerk from Indiana (me, hello) who has almost no experience with foreign peoples and hates them when they won't go to war with us (not me, hello); her opinion on the matter was worth something. She explained that the type of unconscious racism that allowed the bartender to make his insulting statement was rampant in the French culture because they don't see it.
The French have a completely inclusive cultural model. You move to their country from Morocco, Indiana, or Iran and you're French. You are not a French person of Moroccan, American or Iranian descent or cultural background, you are French. Full stop.
I think that's a wonderful ideal: We are all one people, undivided by questions of race or imagined differences in culture. In a world so full of division and the insecurity and inequity those divisions can cause, the idea of an all-inclusive society is practically utopian. Kudos to the French for subscribing to this model.
Thing is, it's bullshit in France or anywhere else.
Humans identify ourselves in the simplest, most primordial ways through visual imprinting. So first and foremost, people of a different skin color are just that to us, different. Now, let's talk for a second about the basest of human weakness: fear. How do we feel about things that are different from us? We fear them. We always have and, unless we do some serious evolving in the near term, always will until we are something more than what we now think of as human. There's really only one way to get around that kind of weakness. You have to acknowledge it. If you don't acknowledge your weaknesses they own you and some bad shit can go down before you know it. Like, say, huge socio-economic inequities and three weeks of riots in the suburbs outside of the City of Light. (By the way, the Watts, D.C. and L.A. riots fully qualify for this analysis as well.)
Let me tell you a little story about a terrified kid who was a huge unconscious racist and who beat it eventually...sort of.
(More to come.)
She was born in Morocco to an Arab mother and an American father and learned French and Arabic before she learned English. As is often the case, her father's genes ended up being a little more showy than her mother's and so she is often mistaken for your basic Euro-mutt. It's hard to see the Arab in my baby unless you really know what to look for. Basically, she's lilly white.
The French bartender marveled at her Parisian-sounding accent and asked her if we were Canadian. She explained that she was Moroccan. He exclaimed that she was very fair for an Arab and extremely well-spoken. I, of course, had no idea what the fuck they were talking about and was just happy to learn that I was not being made fun of.
When we left the bar she shook her head and muttered, "Typical French racism." She explained the details of their transaction and at first I couldn't figure out why she was pissed until I made a comparison that is common in American culture. What the bartender said to her was pretty much equivalent to a white American person exclaiming upon meeting an African American who speaks in Midwestern American dialect, "Oh, and she was so articulate." That's insulting and racist, of course, because it implies that African Americans aren't usually articulate (read intelligent) enough to speak in mid-western American/Peter Jennings tinted dialect, and that an articulate African American is unusual enough to exclaim about. It's like expressing amazement that three-year old child can read or something.
Anyway, I asked my wife about her "typical" comment. Growing up in a former French colony, and working for an international non-profit, she's had a hell of a lot of experience with that particular country, its people and culture. She's not just some jerk from Indiana (me, hello) who has almost no experience with foreign peoples and hates them when they won't go to war with us (not me, hello); her opinion on the matter was worth something. She explained that the type of unconscious racism that allowed the bartender to make his insulting statement was rampant in the French culture because they don't see it.
The French have a completely inclusive cultural model. You move to their country from Morocco, Indiana, or Iran and you're French. You are not a French person of Moroccan, American or Iranian descent or cultural background, you are French. Full stop.
I think that's a wonderful ideal: We are all one people, undivided by questions of race or imagined differences in culture. In a world so full of division and the insecurity and inequity those divisions can cause, the idea of an all-inclusive society is practically utopian. Kudos to the French for subscribing to this model.
Thing is, it's bullshit in France or anywhere else.
Humans identify ourselves in the simplest, most primordial ways through visual imprinting. So first and foremost, people of a different skin color are just that to us, different. Now, let's talk for a second about the basest of human weakness: fear. How do we feel about things that are different from us? We fear them. We always have and, unless we do some serious evolving in the near term, always will until we are something more than what we now think of as human. There's really only one way to get around that kind of weakness. You have to acknowledge it. If you don't acknowledge your weaknesses they own you and some bad shit can go down before you know it. Like, say, huge socio-economic inequities and three weeks of riots in the suburbs outside of the City of Light. (By the way, the Watts, D.C. and L.A. riots fully qualify for this analysis as well.)
Let me tell you a little story about a terrified kid who was a huge unconscious racist and who beat it eventually...sort of.
(More to come.)
posted by Captain Ninja at 5:25 PM
1 Comments:
You are right on about how humans learn who is a member of their tribe, and who is a foreigner. What is needed is a recognition of our evolutionary origins and the development of social and political systems to account for it. I don't think there is much hope for this yet when the majority of Americans claim to be religious. However, allegiance to silly religions is plunging in Europe so maybe there is some hope.
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