I found a really cool volunteer opportunity in Aix. Every Friday afternoon, I go to the community center on my street and hang out with a bunch of French adults who are learning English. They’re already pretty fluent, so mostly it’s a cultural exchange. The lady in charge is British.
Learning about the assumptions they have of us — and us of them — is enlightening and occasionally infuriating. For instance, one guy (who is always wearing very shiny, very pointy cowboy boots) said he plays in a country music band, and that he was excited to meet someone from the birthplace of country (me). I asked who he covers. He said Brad Paisley. I said not bad. I asked him what he thought of Dolly Parton. This of course was a test to see if he was worthy of playing country music. HE SAID HE DID NOT KNOW WHO THAT WAS. DOLLY. PARTON. I had to restrain myself from jumping out of my seat. This guy knew about the Grand Ole Opry and that Nashville is the center of country music, but he was unaware of Dolly?
It was certainly an affront, but I let it slide for the sake of diplomacy.
I also told them about how much college costs and what its like to truly live in a rural place. They could not believe that everyone who goes to college has to pay upwards of $10,000 a semester. They said that private business colleges charge that much, but never universities in general. They asked me if I rode a horse to get places. I said no, explaining that rural people in the States own cars, but that I did used to have cows and chickens. They loved this, because for some reason the French love western culture. Like, love it. They adore cowboy stuff.
Therein lies a peculiar problem. The love cowboy stuff — okay, cool, whatever — but they also obsess over Native American culture. They even have a French-specific word for them: Amerindien. I watched an episode of a semi-popular French TV show once that followed a man as he roamed around the private residences of reservations, walking in and out of people’s homes uninvited, and asked them to feed him and give him a place to stay. This French man would walk onto a reservation and start interrogating anyone he saw about their culture, often in rude and derogatory ways, and then expect them to treat him as an honored guest. He assumed that the primal and ritualistic Amerindiens would respect his intelligence and worldliness, and like, do a drum circle for him or something. It was physically painful to watch. And that’s just how the French think of indigenous Americans.
For some godforsaken reason, we talked about cultural appropriation. They said that they thought it was very rude to dress up like a cowboy, but not rude to dress up like an Amerindien, because it would be disrespectful to real cowboys but honorable to real Amerindiens. My jaw hit the floor when I heard this. The cognitive dissonance was difficult to work through. But then, the French have different concepts about what it means to be native. They considered themselves for a long time to be the descendants of the Gauls, a race of nomadic tribes that inhabited the region now known as France during the Roman empire. When Julius Caesar conquered the Gauls, their civilization collapsed. In a way, I supposed the French still have lingering feelings of being wronged natives themselves.
Still, I think it’s a false equivalent.
All this stuff doesn’t really anger or upset me, it’s just shocking and definitely worth further research. Well, it angered me at the time, but I think that’s a good thing. It means I’m paying attention, you know?
It’s also really neat to hear true French opinions on the Yellow Vests, in person. I don’t think I could adequately explain here what they think and why, just as it is difficult for them to grasp the context of Native America. It’s just one of those things where you had to grow up there.
I plan to go every week for the foreseeable future. Even though I am still mad about Dolly.
Cordialement,
Allison
P.S.: I am quickly learning that race is something very different here than it is in the U.S., in pretty much every way.
Flan in France 