OVERSEAS BRIEFING

Author: KATE DOORLEY

PARIS - Before leaving for Paris I glanced through the handbook that the Study Abroad Office sent me, which talks a lot about cultural differences and how I needed to prepare myself for a totally different value system.

"Alright," I said to myself, "I'm going to Paris, the so-called capital of culture and a Western European city. Other than their comforting disdain for President Bush, how much different can it be?"

In fact, what I have found is that the French indeed have a way of thinking very different from the one with which I have been raised - especially as far as race issues are concerned.

Paris is, beyond argument, extremely diverse. This has not brought the same political correctness that "melting pot" status has brought to the States.

Paris is perhaps one of the least politically correct and least racially sensitive places I have ever visited, in the American sense at least. For example, the city is full of small convenience stores called alimentations generales, most of which are owned by North African immigrants. Ask any Parisian what these stores are called and they will tell you that they're les petits arabes. Go check Babelfish.com if you need a translation.

A few weeks ago I was sitting in a café with a friend having a nightcap. A few minutes after our drinks arrived we noticed that the police had pulled over a car with four young black men inside. The police proceeded to keep them there for the next two hours, finally taking the driver away in their mini-van and taking the car away as well, leaving the other three young men on the street.

I've been in Paris since January, and I've seen all sorts of traffic stops like this. Never once have the people I have seen being stopped been white.

Even the French admit this "profiling" exists. My host mother mentioned being "controlled," when the police demand your ID, which everyone here must always carry, but also that it will probably never happen to me as I'm white.

Racism in France is even a joke on TV. One of the most popular shows among young people in France is a show called Les Guignols de l'Info, a satire a la "The Daily Show" with Claymation puppets. One night the broadcaster announced that, "We talk about how the blacks are dirty blacks and the Jews are dirty Jews, but we also need to remember that the Arabs are dirty little mustached men, that Americans are loud and fat, that the Swiss are wusses, that the Belgians are stupid, that the English are arrogant and have bad teeth and the Germans are drunks. In fact no one is any good at all except the French ... although they are a little racist."

While this might have been a joke on TV, the stereotypes discussed are quite widespread. Political correctness does not exist in France.

People all over the world talk about French culture as being highly refined and sophisticated, but their racial attitudes are also part of their culture. For the French this really isn't a problem, regardless of what we at Middlebury, who are quick to defend diversity and the acceptance of and sensitivity to all differences, might think about it.

So not to sound insensitive, but I have to ask myself how the students who were so outraged by party themes and governmental policies would react to France.