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> You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman It's quite contradictory with what happens in practice. You can absolutely go live in France

> You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman It's quite contradictory with what happens in practice. You can absolutely go live in France and be considered a Frenchman. However Americans will always identify you by your family's origin, even if you're born in the US. Actually that difference in how countries see nationality was well illustrated when France won the soccer World Cup, and American commenters didn't see an issue with denying the French players they belonging to their country, and insisting they were from Africa and couldn't have changed that because of their ancestry. The French saw that as profoundly racist. See https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/19/17590302/trevor-noah-france-french-ambassador-araud-world-cup https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/19/17590302/t...

bhupy 4y ago
Oh yeah, Trevor Noah doesn't speak for me, and I (and many minorities, especially most Asians and Latinos) find his brand of progressivism to be the exact opposite of what we think America should be about. The author of the Vox piece you linked says just as much: > "After the 2016 election, Columbia University professor Mark Lilla wrote a New York Times essay, “The End of Identity Liberalism,” making an argument similar to Araud’s (a piece that also follows a long tradition of liberal hand-wringing about identity in the US). In the piece, Lilla even cited his time taking a sabbatical in France as formative of his opinions on this subject. > American liberalism’s emphasis on identity and difference, Lilla argues, is destroying the foundations of democracy in the country — helping the far right in precisely the way that Araud says To be absolutely clear, I don't deny that modern American liberals employ rhetoric directly at odds with Reagan's quote, it's in fact exactly the point I'm trying to make. You can pretty much draw a straight line from that brand of progressivism to the predisposition to draw the (in my opinion false) conclusion that America is more racist than other peer countries. From my experience as a 1st-generation immigrant, that has been not only false, but I see my success as mostly being capped by the color of my skin in every other country except for the US, UK, Canada, and ANZ. I know that to hold true for basically 100% of my peers as well. You don't just have to take my word for it, it's been true for pretty much every single immigrant group in American history. I recommend reading this thread which makes the argument better than I ever could: https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1469031915768279045 https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1469031915768279045 > The American immigrant story -- arrive with little, work hard and move up over three or four generations, win a place in the middle class and a place in the national tapestry even in the face of discrimination -- is still firmly in place, folks. American progressives (especially those like Trevor Noah) take this for granted in the world, and tend to undervalue just how unique it is; this kind of economic convergence within 3-4 generations is extremely atypical in the developed world. It's well and good that a handful of Africans go on to become successful football players in France, but normal non-athletic Muslim immigrants to France actually tend to suffer from multi-generational poverty. Also, while the Vox piece you linked paints the French as tolerant and proud of their footballers, scandalized by Trevor Noah, the reality is a bit more complicated: https://twitter.com/footballfactly/status/1021133330530484225 https://twitter.com/footballfactly/status/102113333053048422.... Across Europe, footballers of color are only conditionally accepted.

bhupy 4y ago

Oh yeah, Trevor Noah doesn't speak for me, and I (and many minorities, especially most Asians and Latinos) find his brand of progressivism to be the exact opposite of what we think America should be about. The author of the Vox piece you linked says just as much: > "After the 2016 election, Columbia University professor Mark Lilla wrote a New York Times essay, “The End of Identity Liberalism,” making an argument similar to Araud’s (a piece that also follows a long tradition of liberal hand-wringing about identity in the US). In the piece, Lilla even cited his time taking a sabbatical in France as formative of his opinions on this subject. > American liberalism’s emphasis on identity and difference, Lilla argues, is destroying the foundations of democracy in the country — helping the far right in precisely the way that Araud says To be absolutely clear, I don't deny that modern American liberals employ rhetoric directly at odds with Reagan's quote, it's in fact exactly the point I'm trying to make. You can pretty much draw a straight line from that brand of progressivism to the predisposition to draw the (in my opinion false) conclusion that America is more racist than other peer countries. From my experience as a 1st-generation immigrant, that has been not only false, but I see my success as mostly being capped by the color of my skin in every other country except for the US, UK, Canada, and ANZ. I know that to hold true for basically 100% of my peers as well. You don't just have to take my word for it, it's been true for pretty much every single immigrant group in American history. I recommend reading this thread which makes the argument better than I ever could: https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1469031915768279045 https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1469031915768279045 > The American immigrant story -- arrive with little, work hard and move up over three or four generations, win a place in the middle class and a place in the national tapestry even in the face of discrimination -- is still firmly in place, folks. American progressives (especially those like Trevor Noah) take this for granted in the world, and tend to undervalue just how unique it is; this kind of economic convergence within 3-4 generations is extremely atypical in the developed world. It's well and good that a handful of Africans go on to become successful football players in France, but normal non-athletic Muslim immigrants to France actually tend to suffer from multi-generational poverty. Also, while the Vox piece you linked paints the French as tolerant and proud of their footballers, scandalized by Trevor Noah, the reality is a bit more complicated: https://twitter.com/footballfactly/status/1021133330530484225 https://twitter.com/footballfactly/status/102113333053048422.... Across Europe, footballers of color are only conditionally accepted.