In my experience of the French people that I have met, I have come across a lot of racism, from the majority of them.

[sillyme563]

There I said it. I have been married to my French husband now for ten years. I am Muslim and asian.

In the last ten years, I have never heard so much racism as I have in my entire life. Blatant, horrible, disgusting racism - most of it against either black people or Arabs/ Muslims.

'I would never go to South Africa. The safari experience would be good but I don't like black people'
'Gracie's Corner will spoil my child'
'Hijab wearing women are backwards'

ad infinitum.

I just spent the weekend with a couple of our friends from Paris. We walk past two girls in a hijab - cue obligatory conversation about how hijab wearing is wrong. I have to put up with these kinds of comments constantly, from his family and friends, and it's just sad because I have nieces who wear the hijab, and I can't invite them to things where the French are going to be there. I am getting so sick and tired of it, and I just don't have the inclination to be some sort of racial-social justice warrior to argue with all these nasty comments.

What?

Do you regret your bigoted thread title or do you stand by it?

Looking back to when I started going to France there were always criticisms of Parisians in Rural Areas, Rather like the anti second home rows now in some parts of UK.
Country accents were always mocked in Paris. Remember the Irish jokes here! Very similar.

I had no idea that racism can only be committed by white people to non white people. I thought any person can be racist towards any other race. That's been my lived experience.

@AfterWeights i did an AMA on Islam sometime back, why not have a look at that?

I feel like I have explained this zillions of times at this point on mumsnet threads and it becomes exhausting.

but ultimately do others really have to understand the finer points of islamic theology? shouldn't it be as simple as my body my choice?

there is a lot about other religions I may not understand but I don't cast judgement on them, I simply accept it is their belief and move on.

Fully agree.

Anybody can hold racist views. Plenty of black people, Asian people, Arabic people have discriminatory biases and belief against white peoples and other ethnic group.

BUT racism is mainly institutional . I could hold a racist belief against a white person, for example, as a person of color, or be against straight people, as a lesbian. But I have no power to actively discriminate against white people or straight people in the same way that white people or straight people can against me. On a micro scale maybe, I could not hire white people or straight people if I had a business but it wouldn’t actually harm those people. Racism works at a much bigger scale. It’s when most of the people in charge and most people in position of power, all across the system (political, judicial, medical, legal, etc…) are held by a certain kind of people with similar views, to the point their discriminatory beliefs can and do impact lives at a national scale.

Just about a decade ago gay people couldn’t get married in France, less than a decade ago gay women couldn’t have IVF in France and had to travel to Spain. I would have no power ever as a lesbian, to prohibit straight people from getting married or from getting access to IVF because the system isn’t built by people like me for people like me, it’s built by straight people a good chunk of which had belief that for the longest time didn’t accept people like me as citizen that should have equal right. I don’t have to remind you about everything that has happened to people of color through history at the hands of white people, but needless to say, as much as a person of color could hate white people they simply historically haven’t had the power (and still don’t) to reciprocate that level of abuse and discrimination against white people at the scale it was tolerated for people of color (and still is).

That’s why a lot of people don’t consider racism against white people as a “thing”. You are right that they are people holding racist beliefs against all races including against white people. But no black person in France has the power to make sure you can’t get married, aren’t hired, can’t procreate via IVF, are forbidden to wear certain clothes etc… people of color simply haven’t been given that level of power.

Have you listened to what’s going on in France with the whole Karim Benzema debacle where one of our most important Ministre made a completely unfounded claim that he is close to a terrorist group and that he should therefore lose his French nationality, and when asked what proof he has of his link to terrorist organization his only proof is that he tweeted for Palestine but didn’t retweet for the Terrorist attack in Aras and he went as far as saying “if Karim Benzama, finds it in him to retweet about the French teacher I will take back my claims?” I mean. Do you realize how bad that is? Do you really think people of color have the power to revoke your nationality based on you not tweeting what they wish to see you tweet if you are white? No they don’t, but in France clearly people (white people relevantly, since they are the main ones in power), have the power to do this and they are using it as we speak, and they are using it based on nothing but their own appreciation of you as a person and their own belief of what’s correct or not?

So yes, everyone can discriminate against everyone but the few who have the power to discriminate against people who do not look like them on a large scale, and change laws, and enslave people and kill massive amount of people or wipe cities off of the map and alter war conflict through their support or lack there of are few and they are mainly led by people looking a specific way (and it’s really not racist to point that out, the same way it wouldn’t be sexist to point out it’s also mainly men who vote on laws that affect women and also them who are behind most of the bad stuff that happen to them.)

Thank you to those who reported this post. Hope your day is complete
👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

Totally agree having lived in France that racism is much more overt there. It was ok in my experience -albeit 20 years ago - for educated people to come out with vile things against people of North African heritage. Lots of segregation too in cities and very little apparent integration. Obviously there is a lot of racism in the UK too but its much less acceptable to be so overt.

Funny how these threads accusing a group of people, or an entire country, of racism are always just an excuse to post racist and offensive attacks.

I can't believe the thread is still standing.

But the point stands, you married and are still married to this wet lettuce if a man and choose to hang out with his bastard racists friends and family. Put your money where you mouth is and do something about the comments they make when in your company (at least).

Unless it's Britain, when it's A-OK.

Can't have any suggestion that another country has racism problems. It's against the MN zeitgeist that everything in this country is shite

You aren't the first person I have heard this from OP. Obviously there are plenty of non-racist people in France, but I think as a society they are more racist than the UK. This isn't a recent thing by any stretch, certainly in my memory back as far as the Rwandan genocide, and I think historically considerably longer than that.

People have threads all the time talking about how the UK is such a racist culture, or the US? What's the difference?

I find the bs about racism being about whiteness kind of offensive, in a rather racist sort of way, but I guess people are allowed to have foolish opinions and I'm not going to ask for them to be removed; surely we can have a reasonable discussion about the fact that some cultures are more insular or xenophobic or racist or sexist or whatever?

I think one factor in France, and some other parts of mainland Europe, are mass waves of immigration that are not being well integrated. And not (just) because people are racists but because it's probably too many poor people who can't easily fit into the mainstream culture, too quickly. I think the tendency to be more isolationist in France goes back much farther than that, but it has really exacerbated it, and will do so wherever it begins to overwhelm the social capital that already exists in a place.

45 years ago I spent the summer in Nice working for an educated middle class family. It wasn't unusual to hear racist language from them and when I was out and about alone, mostly directed at Algerian immigrants. As a working class kid from London I was pretty streetwise but it shocked me to the core that this was considered normal behaviour.

Where did she do that. You are quick to be seen as so cool. Read the fecking post before you say this.

That was never said. Did you actually read the post or just jump to a conclusion.

Where does she do that exactly

So you can not report what you experience without being racist.

It literally says in my experience of those I have met. It doesn't say all French people, does it. Maybe it is the experience of the OP.

It said The French until it was edited by MNHQ, if that helps you understand previous comments on the thread.

What’s going on right now in France horrifies me. I feel so sorry for French people who are Muslim and are now threatened to see their nationality revoked etc… I am frankly outraged by the fact that as years go by it’s actually getting worse and not better, and that the terrorist attacks are used as fuel to the fire against Muslims (as a whole) when really I see the terrorist attacks as a fuck you to the French institutionally racist and discriminatory system currently in place, I am completely appalled by terrorist attacks and against all kind of terrorism for any motive but I am thoroughly convinced that it’s not religion that’s making a lot of French born people commit vicious crimes, it’s the fact that France has made it almost a crime to be Muslim and to practice their Religion and alienated a good chunk of their own population, pushing them towards extremism.

Right so toddlers being stabbed in parks, priests having their throats cut in their churches, teachers beheaded on the street for showing a picture of Mohammed and journalists being slaughtered in their offices, people being annihilated at concerts are all because the French are meanies who as a secular country, place restrictions around how the Muslim population practice their religion?

Quite possibly the most deluded, apologist and victim blaming take I have ever read on Mumsnet and that takes some doing.

I still think the title is fueling race hate against a nationality

In my experience of the French people that I have met, I have come across a lot of racism, from the majority of them.

Let's flip it

In my experience of Muslim people that I have met, I have come across a lot of racism, from the majority of them.

You need to start calling out the racism direct with the people who do it. This method is just not fair on French people who aren't racist.

Of my French family, most are not at all racist, and one offers up his spare room to refugees. But the ones that are racist express their views with a freedom that I don't see in the UK. I'm not sure how much of it is actual worse racism and how much of it is cultural differences where debating ideas and clashing views is valued more than smoothing over differences and not making things awkward.