INDCJournal: Racisme

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May 17, 2005

Racisme

Posted by Bill

Baldilocks' post about international racism reminds me of a story that a friend once told me; this friend lived in a house with 5 others that attended a notable international graduate school in DC, and one day they took on a Frenchman as a new roommate. Being the hospitable sort, my friend took this fellow out to dinner on his first night in town, settling on Bistro du Coin after listening to an earful of the newcomer's invective against all cuisine that was either American or bastardized by Americanization. After roasting his host country's food, the uninhibited visitor moved on to other favorite topics, such as the depredations of American hegemony, the ugliness of American cities and the bankruptcy of American culture (I believe), finally settling in on perhaps his favorite subject - America's animated and systemic racism against blacks. According to this fellow, (white, powerful) Americans were uniquely racist and determined to subjugate blacks as a permanent underclass, in contravention to the international standards of justice and humanity upheld by the rest of the civilized world.

Having had enough of this jaw-dropping arrogance, my obviously mild-mannered friend (I would have dropped the jerk by then) finally stung back, "America is racist? What about France's treatment of the Algerians?"

To which the Frenchman started and quickly quipped, without irony, "Oh ... but zee Algerians, zey, zey are so durtee!"

Posted by Bill at May 17, 2005 12:51 PM | TrackBack (0)

Comments

One of my old bosses had a similar tale from when he was in Spain. After being subjected to complaints about America's mistreatment of blacks, he asked them about Europe's treament of the Gypsies. "But they are Gypsies" was the reply.

Posted by: rbj at May 17, 2005 01:25 PM

The French are actually EXTREMELY unpopular in other Europeans according to a survey I read on a blog somewhere today. Asked to describe the French in five words, nearly everyone chose neagtive descriptions exclusively.

Posted by: TallDave at May 17, 2005 04:54 PM

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/17/wfran17.xml

Here it is!

Posted by: TallDave at May 17, 2005 05:03 PM

I lived in student co-op in Berkeley for about 6 years, and one year there was a young french hottie of an exchange student there who roomed with someone I'd known for a while. This person had a Jewish boyfriend (very obviously jewish, by his appearance, name, etc). So, one day we were talking about the French in general and this girl told me that she really did like a lot about the French (she had studied pastry-making during the summers there), but just couldn't get past how racist they were. She then brought up that her exchange student roomate, after meeting her boyfriend had come up to her and whispered in a concerned and conspiratorial manner, "Micah... is he... a jew?"

Posted by: Russell Wardlow at May 18, 2005 12:42 AM

Zut alors!

Posted by: Bill from INDC at May 18, 2005 09:54 AM