September 22, 2005--"C'est Si Bon"

True, I’m again about to pick on the French. But before I do allow me to assert that I never went along with the Freedom Fries business and certainly never, never participated in boycotting Bordeaux. Quite the contrary. Life is too short not to drink good wine. So I’m about as much a Francophile as a Francophobe. But when some French begin to lecture us about race, well I can’t just sit here and ask for another pour.

I don’t need to be reminded by “them” that race was a huge factor in why the Bush administration and others responded so indolently and incompetently to Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans. Certainly not by anyone from the French government or intelligentsia. They have a few matters of their own that require attention. For example, the recent spate of fires in Paris that killed more than 50 Africans living in worker housing. All were black Africans. And thus one might enquire why in a country that prides itself on having created, yes created human rights, why do they even have government-funded segregated housing, relatively new apartments without running water, where residents need to cross the street to get water from public taps?

So yesterday’s article in the NY Times that reported how many in France have been eager to point out that the US government’s response to Katrina “brought into plain view the sad lot of black Americans,” that rubbed me the wrong way (see link below).

Further, as reported, France’s insistence on the equality of man presents a predicament—since everyone is equal there is no need to list people by race in France; and since there is no concept of race in France there is no need to take the measure of how blacks are faring in comparison to others. Taking that measure might reveal that there are virtually no black corporate executives, almost no political representatives in regional governments, and not one black member of the National Assembly. Blacks are thought to number at least 1.5 million out of a total population of 59 million; but they are largely invisible—Josephine Baker and James Baldwin notwithstanding (though both are long since deceased).

None of this should be a surprise in a nation that also prides itself on the creation of the canons and methods of Post-Modern Thought-—most notably Deconstructionism, which claims that even the concept of race is socially constructed. This sounds reminiscent to me of something Karl Rove said not too long ago, though pre-Katrina: “Reality is what we say it is.” Karl the Deconstructionist. Though I wonder if he is aware of the source of his political epistemology.

But to quote another well-known expat, Eartha Kitt (not as yet deceased):

C’est si bon
So I say it to you
Like the French people do,
Because it’s oh, so good.