From: fournet.arnaud
Message: 56950
Date: 2008-04-06
----- Original Message -----
From: "david_russell_watson" <liberty@...>
>
> I don't understand what an ethnic French is. Please explain
> what an ethnic French is, when living in France and when living
> in the USA.
>
> Does it mean French nationals with Vietnamese or Lebanese
> parents are not ethnically French ?
Of course not. They're citizens of France, but members of
the Vietnamese or Lebanese ethnic groups.
DRW
========
This is the American way of seeing ethnicity.
It's meaningless in France.
There was recently a debate whether people should be counted in different
ethnic groups.
This idea has been rejected by everybody.
Your approach to ethnicity is called racism here.
Arnaud
==============
> Does it mean the 500 000 French Jews are not ethnically French ?
That can only be decided on a case by case basis, since the
basis of ones Jewish identity often differs from one Jew to
another. For some it is a matter of religion entirely, and
so they identify ethnically with the ethnic group to which
they belonged before conversion, but there are also atheist
Jews, Buddhist Jews, etc., and so...
DRW
==============
I don't understand why this reasoning applies to Jews
and does not apply to Lebanese or Vietnamese people.
Arnaud
=============
Please stop viewing human beings collectively, at least for
the purposes of judging morality. That mind set is precisely
what underlies racism and nationalism.
DRW
====
Why did you think Vietnamese and Lebanese should be put in the same ethnic
group ?
You started collective grouping and I still don't understand what guidelines
you apply in this process.
Arnaud
=========
Well this is strange, because you recognize that it's odd for
Togolese or Vietnamese to be assigned French ancestors when
they're colonized by French, but you don't recognize French,
Togolese, or Vietnamese as being allowed to preserve their
respective such identities after they move to the U.S.
Apparently, for you, the dirt we're standing on at any given
moment is what gives us our ethnic identity, indifferent to
our ancestry and what we speak, eat, wear, celebrate, etc., or
even call ourselves.
David
===========
I think anybody immigrating in the US (or elsewhere) becomes basically (US)
American,
even though he or she may retain some specific secondary features.
Eating a pizza once a week does not make you Italian,
and the same is true with French fries.
Arnaud
==========