6 ms·

Well, the more people wonder whether French of Moroccan extraction really are French or Moroccan, the less French they are. I'm French, of no extraction. Pleas

• spitx 14y ago
  The reason I or anyone else would have, to bring up their ancestry is because of the apparent disconnect between the essential Frenchness one expects and the consistently abrasive conduct of some of these implanted peoples. Take Mahiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCXtmmj7fJc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCXtmmj7fJc Isolated incident? Perhaps. Not part of a larger trend? Maybe. After all the cake and watermelon, we know that it doesn't add up. We all want to pretend that it ain't what it really is. Just like we find ourselves aghast at Marine Le Pen picking up enough seats to front the third largest party in all of France in well under a decade.
  • urbanjunkie 14y ago
    What The Actual Fuck? HN is no place for a racist dick. Kindly fuck off. [edited to add - I expect downvotes or even a ban for my language. I will find a way of coping with my grief, so don't worry about it]
    • spitx 14y ago
      Whatever "Essential Frenchness" is, it most certainly is not centered around the milieu of the "beur". We agree that visitors don't come to France to be greeted by the likes of Galliano but they don't come looking for the likes of Salafists like Mohammed Merah either. Get your act together before its too late. You can only sweep these things under the rug for so long.
      • nakkiel 14y ago
        There's only one thing I'm sure of. Visitors coming to France certainly don't visit to meet your likes.
        • spitx 14y ago
          What I find elusive is this polite society's fevered need to stomp down any finger-pointing in the direction of certain sections of society. If one were to take a look at their irrational phobia of discussion concerning these sensitive topics it would appear that this brand of furiousness at the very mention of something disagreeable is nothing but an outward veneer to fend off further pointed & valid accusations. It's weak weaponry. It shows you're on tenuous ground. It almost always indicates that you're defending the indefensible. That you're arguments are at best propped up by popular sentiments and not by objective observations. That anything found objectionable by the educated segments of a society is necessarily odious despite the facts.
          • nakkiel 14y ago
            Essentially you are admitting that you are racist and tired of being dismissed as such. You mention that our points are baseless and ignore tangible facts (which you have by the way failed to provide) and I'd like to bring to your attention that this is basically what racists are commonly accused of. I would like you to understand that when in doubt and facing two choices one should always prefer what favours human beings over any sort of ideology or other minor consideration; no matter the price (I mean it this way). But I find your way of reversing things funny and will dismiss you as being a troll and wish you good luck on your road. It's certainly a difficult one.
          • vacri 14y ago
            'Valid accusations'? You gave an example of one person being obnoxious and used it to condemn all others of the same origin. It is profoundly unscientific and illogical to build an argument the way you have.
        • chappi42 14y ago
    • vixen99 14y ago
      It's also no place for gratuitously throwing around words like fuck and dick. Try extending your vocabulary.
      • thenomad 14y ago
        What does the size of one's vocabulary have to do with whether you use expletives? Sorry, I know this is off-topic, but I've never really understood the "only uneducated people use swearwords" argument.
        • mkr-hn 14y ago
          Some educated people reel in horror at the thought that they aren't all that different from normal people aside from the number of things they've crammed into their head.
        • Prophasi 14y ago
          I'd take it to mean the size of one's vocabulary in practice, not just the words s/he knows. There's obviously still no necessary implication that a swearer's vocab usage is worse than that of a non-swearer. Strict logic aside, though, I've anecdotally observed that folks who swear publicly among people they don't know tend to swear easily and often, and given the inherent flexibility of most swear words, I think it's fair to say increased usage usually takes a toll on eloquence and creativity in diction. The relationship isn't necessary, but it's intuitive and observably common.
          • thenomad 14y ago
            Interesting ideas, but I'm not convinced by your last point. Amongst the people I know who swear with reasonable frequency, I don't see any correlation with lack of eloquence. Indeed, I can think without trying very hard think of published authors, professional screenwriters and famous Shakespearean actors who would fit into the "uses profanity reasonably casually" description.
            • Prophasi 14y ago
    • urbanjunkie 14y ago
      Nothing gratuitous about my use of those words. I thought carefully about using them, and I believe they vividly and correctly convey my vehemence and disdain for racists.
  • nakkiel 14y ago
    For insults, please refer to the other comment at the same level (which I upvoted and support). I'll go even further and state that people like you are responsible for the situation. I live abroad and can tell you that latent racism kills all the respect I could otherwise have for Thai people. I'm not silly so I'll move back to France in the coming months (as a direct result of the above). Unfortunately for them, French of foreign extraction don't have the opportunity I have. I'd forgive them if they burnt the bulk of Paris: they are human beings and are being bullied by a society as a whole.
  • yesbabyyes 14y ago
    "Essential Frenchness"? What does that even mean?
• lsc 14y ago
  huh. I thought that France didn't have birthright citizenship like the US has. I thought they had a system more like what some of the more radical right wing parties in the US want, where your parent's status has something to do with it, you know, to prevent 'anchor babies.' Hm. According to the wikipedia[1], it's complicated, and I strongly suspect I'm missing some things. It looks to me like they have a 'right of blood' system until you reach the age of majority, then something a little more like a 'right of soil' system after that. I don't know about everyone, but I started working rather before I reached the age of majority. I mean, I wouldn't have starved, but my education would have been severely dampened if i was not able to get legal work until I was 18. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_citizenship#Birth_in_France http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_citizenship#Birth_in_Fra...
  • deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
    • lsc 14y ago
      >It's quite simple actually : you're french if you're born on french soil or if one of your parents was french. according to the wikipedia (which, of course, is not always correct) that is not an or but an and (at least, until the age of majority.) Even assuming that the wikipedia is correct in this case, there is a big difference between automatically gaining citizenship on your 18th birthday, and having a 'path to citizenship' and I have no idea where France is on that continuum. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_citizenship#Through_birth_in_France_.28law_of_place_of_birth.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_citizenship#Through_birt...
      • Kell 14y ago
        Well, it has changed a lot, but you've got it. The Code civil articles 19 to 19-4 states that you are not French by birthright. If you were born in France, you become French at the age of 18 (automatically, no question asked) if you have lived at least 5 years (no need to continuity) in France since you're 11 (21-7 Code civil). And you can renounce to your french nationality in the 12 months after the automatic acquisition (until your 19 or the moment at which you join the military). For now, there is some shit about "path to citizenship" in the French law... but it's for adults asking the French nationality. But, you can ask for the French nationality before, as early as the age of 13, if you lived there the 5 preceding years. The difference is the automaticity, at 18 it's automatic, before that it's on request. And under 18, everyone has more or less the same rights, not withstanding the nationality.
• rickmb 14y ago
  Although I agree with you on principle, most Moroccans in Europe identify as Moroccan first and French/Dutch/Belgian second. Also, since they are not "allowed" to disavow their Moroccan nationality, virtually all Moroccans remain Moroccan, even in later generations.
  • nakkiel 14y ago
    It's not their identity but their nationality that is seen as an issue by the op. Identity in social science is a complex matter and trying to attack it with "most" is at best inaccurate. Please read the article on identity negotiation which will shed light to the picture. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_negotiation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_negotiation PS: I'm not RTFM-ing you, it's just a topic that I'm not qualified to address myself, even though I know it's complex.
  • rmc 14y ago
    Lots of British people consider themselves British first, European second. Or Welsh people consider themselves Welsh first, British second. People from Catalonia, may not consider themselves Spanish. Someone born in Ireland to Irish parents, but lived all their life in England might consider themselves Irish, not English. Europe. It's a melting pot, always has been. There are lots of flexible definitions of nationality.
    • spitx 14y ago
      Its not useful to include the British to imbue some meaning to the conversation. I single out British because although they claim to a governance described as unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy they have some of the most decidedly backward understandings on race (esp race-based-class), ethnic origins (Highlanders vs rest), religious denominations (Protestant-Catholic strife) & the concept of nationhood in all of the western world. For such a modern society their outlook on these matters is striking and confused. For a nation that made its business to civilize more than half the world at one time, she shows some forbiddingly contradicting understandings on these matters.
      • 14y ago
• pyre 14y ago
  > the more people wonder whether French of Moroccan > extraction really are French or Moroccan, the less > French they are I'm not saying that it's right to try and exclude them. It's just as stupid as the people in American that want to shutdown immigration to 'dirty foreigners' (forgetting that their ancestors were 'dirty foreigners'). Someone that was originally from Morocco shouldn't be consider 'less French' than someone whose ancestors have been in France for generations, but you can't force this to happen by pretending that people have no past (i.e. country of origin). Maybe the term 'French-Moroccan' has bad cultural connotations in France that you're trying to get rid of by burying the term, but the term itself, or the facts surrounding it are not inherently bad. If someone is "Chinese-American" or "Japanese-Canadian" or "Mexican-American", the term doesn't make them any less American/Canadian. > Regarding the riots, that's also not relevant to the > discussion but because you ask, those riots where the > results of 40 years of bad policies, social rejection > and latent racism. I only bring up the riots with respect to where I got the information that Paris has a large French-Moroccan population.
  • GFischer 14y ago
    The "country of origin" is very debatable. I consider myself Uruguayan because I was born here, but my great-grandparents were German. However, someone in Tuscany was asked, and he said "my family has only been here for four centuries". Should someone like Zidane be considered French, or "French of Algerian extraction"? By the tuscanian's perspective, there are no Americans, only "American of Irish extraction" and so on, while over here we all consider ourselves Uruguayans. Something you don't understand is that those terms ("Chinese-American") are an US cultural thing. Many of my fellow countrymen (I'm from Uruguay) are extremely shocked when they go to the U.S. ... we've learned about at most 3 races, and you people have 16 !!! One of my teachers likes an anecdote where, when filling a form at San Diego University, he had to ask the clerk what "race" he was - the clerk decided he was "Hispanic", and then there was a sub-category "White Hispanic" or "Black Hispanic". However, he's descendant from Spaniards and probably the exact same racial composition as racists from California that despise "hispanics" (there was a genocide here in Uruguay and we don't have native blood, we're all descendants of spaniards, italians and other european countries, plus some descendants of slaves).