Ed Alcock for The New York Times
Semou Diouf, 50, has spoken
French all his life and was
educated in France but says he
still feels like an outsider, despite
living under a Constitution that is
officially color blind.
Posted on 11/12/2005 4:01:26 AM PST by Pharmboy
Ed Alcock for The New York Times
Semou Diouf, 50, has spoken
French all his life and was
educated in France but says he
still feels like an outsider, despite
living under a Constitution that is
officially color blind.
PARIS, Nov. 10 - Semou Diouf, holding a pipe in one hand and a cigarette in the other...(snip)
"I was born in Senegal when it was part of France," he said before putting the pipe in his mouth. "I speak French, my wife is French and I was educated in France." The problem, he added after pulling the pipe out of his mouth again, "is the French don't think I'm French."
That, in a nutshell, is what lies at the heart of the unrest that has swept France in the past two weeks: millions of French citizens, whether immigrants or the offspring of immigrants, feel rejected by traditional French society, which has resisted adjusting a vision of itself forged in fires of the French Revolution...put simply, being French, for many people, remains a baguette-and-beret affair.
(snip)
France's Constitution guarantees equality to all, but that has long been interpreted to mean that ethnic or religious differences are not the purview of the state. The result is that no one looks at such differences to track growing inequalities and so discrimination is easy to hide.
"People have it in their head that surveying by race or religion is bad, it's dirty, it's something reserved for Americans and that we shouldn't do it here," said Yazid Sabeg, the only prominent Frenchman of Arab descent at the head of a publicly listed French company. "But without statistics to look at, how can we measure the problem?"
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
At least this is what I've been told all these years.
Well, if you don't want what the folks who were there first want, why move there?
"being French, for many people, remains a baguette-and-beret affair"
The same reason certain people only wear Polo. Wow, what "culture" the French have. No class.
Well, it seems that this article is saying that even if you embrace their culture (as the Senegalese appears to say at the opening of the piece) you're still not French if you're black.
Omigawd! That is the stupidest/funniest thing I've seen in a while...did she ad-lib or did some ignorant copywriter do that?
Okay. But I'm still curious about how much is racism, and how much is it folks who refuse assimilation.
A yellow streak running down their spine?
Condescension?
mewzilla, while we know that islam will neve assimilate, most of this problem is frances own racism. you can rest assured that when a nation, group or individual points fingers at others and cries racist, that nation, group or individual is the truest racist on earth. this defines france and btw, mostly defines black americas leaders, racists one and all thru and thru. they judge blacks based on hair texture, and skin tone. lol, THATS RACIST.
The USA is built on ideas & ideals, not ethnicity.
But,M.Diouf,are you a Muslim? If you are,then you and I both know that you cannot be French,or British,or American,or Australian....thanks to that silly (and scary)comic book called the Koran.
What Makes Someone French?
anyone who considers BO as a aphrodisiac
A correction,if I may:the US was once based on ideas and ideals,but is no longer.
Racism's that bad over there? Has it always been racist? And is it really racism or ethnocentrism? I suppose it might not matter much to someone at the other end of it, but are African immigrants the only ones who are treated this way, or is it anyone from a non-Western country? And if the situation in France is so bad, why the heck move there?
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