When America Says It's Ok To Be a Bigot

You know how I've been doing the preliminary work for my parent's addition, and I finally got the plans a couple of weeks ago. For whatever reason, the designer wouldn't make copies, so I had to head down to a copy shop in Exeter that does blueprint copies.

The owner was an ebullient middle aged man, a true extrovert. I don't think he stopped talking, either to me or nobody in particular the entire time I was there. The news about Floyd Landis' initial positive test indicating heightened testosterone levels had been just been leaked, and the man --- I'll call him Tom --- quickly turned conversation to that topic. “Did you hear about this crap? Unbelievable ... well, not for the French. You just know they couldn't let another American win. They just don't have as much testosterone as we do. That's why they're all cowards and we've had to save their butts twice.”

I reminded him that Napoleon, who's island birthplace of Corsica was made a part of France before he was born, lead a French army to conquer all of Europe, to which he replied that all of the “real French men” must have died during the Russian winter. Clever.

I've been hearing variations on this theme since elementary school. My mother, Jacqueline, is French. She was born in Paris in 1939, but was quickly moved to a small village named Beaugency for safety as the Third Reich invaded. On June 10, 1944, as the Allies attempted to halt the retreat of German armor across the Loire River, Beaugency was bombarded from the air. One of the bombs landed in the backyard, leaving three of my relatives dismembered and the house containing my three year old mother flattened. By providence, a few of the collapsed rafters fell upon each other, leaving a small pocket where her crib stood.

Forty-six villagers died that day, but the bombs failed to cut the bridge. A local farmer, however, used the opportunity to amass agricultural explosives and made the bridge impassable. I imagine he must have been pretty nervous as he assembled those explosives at the middle of the bridge, knowing that another Allied bomber could return at any moment to finish the job.

My grandfather felt the deaths of his family members deeply, but like my uncle who was in the Resistance, he understood the necessities of war.

But the people who call all the French cowards don't care about my family history, so I don't tell them anymore. I stopped doing that years ago after one of the Franco-bashers said, “Well, it's still true.” People who are bigoted aren't going to change that easily, and most of them never.

As I stood in Tom's copy shop I got to thinking something that hadn't occurred to me in all the previous incidents of the kind. Tom would likely never have said, “All the Blacks are cowards and weaklings and that's why they got sold into slavery.” Or, “If those Jews weren't such pussies they wouldn't have let themselves get gassed.” In American society in 2006, it's not acceptable to publicly display prejudice against Blacks or Jews. Your everyman/everywoman recognizes that's totally wrong. But it's ok if the group your hate speech is directed at is French.

Of course, the French aren't the only group that American society gives special hate dispensation, but they do seem to be the most freely hated. Maybe that's because they're viewed as snobby and elite, so they don't get any of the points that a nationality that's viewed as working class might receive. Or maybe it's because their most recent governments have often been at odds with ours.

Whatever the reason, I'm tired of turning a deaf ear. If you want to bash the French government, French fashion or French food (but that would be crazy) then be my guest, but if you're going to have a bigoted moment and slur all the French then I'm going to jump in your ass with both feet.