After a tea party, I walked one of my mother's friends to the car. She grabbed my arm as she got in. "Look, I can't talk about it in front of the others. Do you feel this way? I'm worried about this country. I never thought I would say it, but I am ashamed for the first time in my life, ashamed of my own country. Of what is being done in the name of our country. I am in despair about it. Tell me," she said. "Do they hate us over there?"
Maybe they do, but right now I think French people in America must be having a much harder time than Americans in France. Much as I love to criticize France when I'm there, on this trip I've been defending it non-stop. I can only imagine how bad it must be for French people here.
People throw their hands in the air when they hear I live in Paris (after first saying, "Paris, France*?"): "I can speak French! This means 'hello!'" ["I surrender."] They say things like, "I don't have much respect for the French" or "The French are basically cowards" or "Most of the French people I have met are wimps." I don't know what to do.
I am not good at arguing because I take it all personally and tend to think that people who say these things are stupid, which is not a good base for an argument, nor is it necessarily true these days-- these words are idées reçues in the United States right now, and people say them complacently, with no fear of contradiction, much as French people remark complacently at dinner parties that Americans are uncultured grands enfants. ("Mais charmants!" they will add rapidly when they realize I'm American. "Tout à fait charmants!")
I'll be back in Paris next week. (I just Googled meteo Paris and got a link that asks: "Is Paris safe these days?") The weather is nice there right now, which I am looking forward to. Here it's one hundred degrees (38° C), eighty percent humidity. And that's normal. Time for more ice tea.
*Europeans are often sarcastic when Americans ask this, but to be fair to Americans, there are towns called Paris in 26 American states**, and people who live there like to say, "I'm from Paris!"
**States with towns, townships or ghost towns named Paris, according to the U.S. Place Names Gazetteer:
AR, CA, ID, IL, IN, IA, KS, ME, MI, MS, MT, MO, NE, NH, NY, NC, ND, OH, OR, PA, SC, SD, TN, TX, VA, WI
I believe the thing the French, and Europeans in general, would find hardest to take if they understood it is how little weight their views and actions are accorded by either Americans (among both the general popular and the 'elites'), Asians and the rest of the world generally.
I wouldn't want to pound the drum on this particularly, it's just a fact, and not one that most Europeans have even begun to apprehend.
Posted by: ZF | 05 August 2006 at 02:51
You do get some French bashing here in America, but usually not from the most interesting people. I don't even bother to argue with them.
Calling the French lazy, cowards and such birdie names is showing total ignorance. It's as cliché and myopic as saying that all Americans are dumb and fat. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence and basic cultural exposure knows that it's untrue.
But France has its fair share of ignorant morons ["beaufs"] and doctrinaires, too. The kind that makes you ashamed to be French.
As for America's myth of saving the hopeless French traitors:
1. If it wasn't for the French, Americans would still be subjects of the British Empire;
2. If it wasn't for the French dying by the thousands, Hitler would have invaded Britain at the beginning of WW2;
3. If it wasn't for the French, D-day would never have succeeded;
4. They were plenty of French who fought the nazis and helped/saved Jews and GIs;
5. There were "collaborators" and convenient cowards on all sides; everyone turned a blind eye on the Jews' horrendous fate -- including their own community in America [often the first to poke at France's supposed antisemitism].
All the propaganda is just what it is: crap.
Posted by: LA Frog | 05 August 2006 at 03:13
I usually answer this sort of bashing with some statistics:
The infant mortality rate in all of France is lower than any single state in the U.S., let alone all of the U.S.
The Ecole Maternal in almost every town in France provides better and afordable child day-care than can be found in the U.S. at almost any price.
Elementary and secondary schools in France and well equipped and generally well staffed. No school district in France has ever declared bankruptcy as have several school districts in my home state of California.
If your child has the talent and works hard he ofr she can attend a Grand Ecole that is the equal of any graduate school in the U.S. and graduate without being swamped in debt.
The murder rate in France in one-tenth of that in the U.S.
If on some night in Paris you get sick you can call a service that will send a doctor to your home. And it won't cost you a small fortune.
If you are old and sick you can get decent medical care without bankrupting your family. (The number of bankruptcies in the U.S. because of medical bills is a national disgrace.)
The death rate in France from AIDS and AIDS related diseases is one-third of that of the U.S. because of better medical care and more effective social programs.
Besides, in France you can always get a decent piece of bread.
It is possible to go on and on in this way.
Make no mistake, France has its problems - unemployment, social integration, parking space in Paris - but the French achievement of the last sixty years in creating an just society is nothing short of astounding. The U.S. has a long way to go to equal some of these achievements.
Regards,
Ed Morrow
Posted by: Ed Morrow | 05 August 2006 at 06:39
I know what you mean about feeling defensive about France and the French when you're here. I don't even live there yet but I'm already getting the remarks from some of my less-worldly friends and relatives. And I often wonder how French expats living in America are coping with the growing hostility, which really is founded in ignorance of the facts and the history.
Posted by: The Bold Soul | 05 August 2006 at 19:19
Back in May 2004, my husband and I were attending a wedding in Nashville, TN. We were having dinner the night before the wedding at a nice restaurant downtown. The sommelier came to help us choose a wine. In doing so, he asked us what types of wines were our favorites. We had just returned from France the previous fall and my husband had found that he really like St. Emilion wines. So, that's what he asked for. The sommelier apologized and said that he did not have any French wines currently on the menu. They were slowly going to add them back over time. At first, we didn't understand what he meant. Then, it dawned on us. They had deleted all French wines when the war happened the year before. What a sad state of affairs!
Posted by: mmh | 06 August 2006 at 06:54
I'm married to a Frenchman and live in France. After that ridiculous invasion of Iraq happened and the French bashing started my own son asked me how I could live in France. I just don't get it. I give tours of Paris to Americans and I am always asked if the French hate America. Lots of propaganda in the States.
Posted by: Linda | 06 August 2006 at 18:18
Great post!
It makes me remember the last election when the Bush campaign laid into Kerry for his "french connection" (speaks french, "looks french," has a french cousin...). They successfully exploited and expanded upon already-existing Anti-french sentiment that had been simmering since France's opposition of the Iraq invasion. Sentiment that was stirred up in order to detract...
OK, wait, we all know this. I get so riled up...
Every time I visit the midwest & California I'm bombarded with these queries about hating America. If you resist the line of questioning, you're immediately disqualified as an elite, effete, euro-loving coward. Hard to win.
And yet, I reject the notion that we should just ignore them because these are often the "least interesting people." They DID win the last election. And they WILL probably win the next one.
Posted by: Meg | 12 August 2006 at 10:26