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November 24, 2005

Where Are You From?

I've been listening to some post-analyses of the Paris riots lately, and though it might seem like a stretch, what they made me think about is really appropriate for Thanksgiving.

I think of Thanksgiving as the ultimate American holiday of patriotism. More so than any of the days to commemorate wars, or the Declaration of Independence. While it's true that those are significant steps in our history as a country, Thanksgiving is special because it shows how we can grow and change as a culture.

As we all know, Thanksgiving was invented from whole cloth as a myth to try to bring the country together during the massive political rift of the Civil War. I happen to think that this is something we need right now, when our President is actively campaigning to rip the country in half, and when there are actually Americans who believe that if you don't follow him with blind faith, you should be tried for treason.

The myth of Thanksgiving is an interesting one, and somewhat telling. The details have changed over the years as our culture has changed. But at its root is the idea that no matter who we are, we are all Americans, and we are all here together. This is something that really is lacking in Europe: the Europeans think of themselves as privileged because they got there first, somehow entitled to hold their ancestry over immigrants' heads.

Oh, yes, the Europeans didn't lose a war they were not prepared to fight, then undergo genocide and diaspora when the Algerians and Turks started coming to Europe, and that gives them a stronger position to negotiate from, but for the most part the Indians (I'm not going to get into stupid euphemisms about "First Nations" or whatever -- the people who were here when Europeans got here are traditionally called Indians in English just like Algerians are traditionally called Arabs in French; it isn't a slur if it's not used as one) didn't care whether there were white people living in what would become the US, too. It was the white people who wanted all the land for themselves, and also all the animals.

The way immigration is handled in Europe seems bizarre from an American perspective. For one thing, they're just not used to the idea that people from other places can come and live there, and that those people might want to retain some of the traditions of the place they came from. In France, there is a mythical ideal of egalité that says that all people should be equal. This equality, we are told, comes only from absolute cultural assimilation. If you want to be French in France, you have to do things the way the French do, rather than the way you have always done them. Your cultural traditions have no value there, but the reward for that is supposed to be really becoming French.

It's a lie.

In France, you could be fourth-generation native Parisian, speaking no language but French, never having set foot outside the country, but if your name is Ahmed Hassan, you are not and cannot ever be really French. This is the essential lie of cultural assimilation: the French as a culture pretend that if an immigrant absorbs their culture and values, they will be treated like any Frenchman, but that is simply not the case. That person will never be accepted into the mainstream French culture, will never be the image projected to the world of what it is to be French in the 21st century. And they know that almost immediately.

This is why people rioted in France. People don't riot because they are poor. They don't riot because they are unemployed and disenfranchised. They just don't. And for heaven's sake they don't riot, as some have suggested, because they are muslim. Anybody who thinks the Paris riots were caused by those factors is understanding the issue as well as a doctor who hears that you've got a pain in your lower right side and suggests it might have been something you ate.

People riot because not only do they have nothing (or nothing worthwhile) to lose, but also because they have sufficient evidence that they have nothing to gain from continuing to comply.

What does that mean? That means that there's a good reason why there aren't mass riots in cities all over the world when employment falls, in places where there is a large economic disparity. Riots happen when it becomes clear that playing by the rules will not get what is promised.

I contrast the culture in France with America all the time. We've been talking about maybe going abroad for a couple of years, and one of the things I would like to do is tear down the cités in the Paris banlieux and put more culturally appropriate housing there, something that helps build community instead of creating a commuter culture. I doubt I would actually get to do that, but it's something a lot of European capitals are going to need to do to recover from the dehumanizing modernism of the 1950s.

My previous experience with France was feeling like an extreme outsider when I felt human at all. Not because of language -- I was fluent in French and still find myself thinking in that language sometimes -- but because people were nice and welcoming to me until they heard my name, which is strongly associated with immigrant Algerians. When they hear my name they would cringe and make some remark on my [insert insulting racist term here] name. I learned a lot of nasty slang in France. They didn't want me to be different. They wanted me to be exactly like them before they could treat me like a fellow human being.

After my experience being treated like a non-human in France, I was so relieved to come home to America and feel like I belonged. I know that everybody experiences American culture differently, but for the most part, I've never heard of or seen racism as horrible and overt in the US as I experienced in France. (Go ahead, tell me I'm naive or blind. I've left out specific examples because I'm not interested in playing that particular game.)

How does it happen that in the US, you also give up some bits of your home culture -- your language, maybe your favourite foods -- but when you are born in the US, you are an American? I think it's interesting that Americans ask everybody where they're from, meaning where their ancestors emigrated from. When basically everybody is an immigrant (and even the folks who were here when the Europeans got here were immigrants), nobody has a claim to original American-ness. And apart from Asian immigrants who seem to be really big on adopting English names, you can have a name strongly associated with your ethnicity here and nobody thinks anything of it, except that you better memorize the meaning of it because everybody will ask you. It was hard growing up with a funky name spelled in a variant alphabet, but I like my name a lot, I identify strongly with it, and while I've always felt different, I've never ever felt like anything other than an American.

So I give thanks today for being in a country that grows and changes, that created a ritual of togetherness at a time of great breach, that has evolved to get more or less socially tolerant, and yet remains one country, indivisible. Happy Thanksgiving.

Posted by ayse on 11/24/05 at 11:04 AM