perfidy

Have you argued with anyone that the Poles, not a race represented by the US Census as a race, could not have been victims of Nazi racism? I think that anger at France did, and does, exceed the political debate to broad characterizations and demagoguery. Politics in France are driven neither by body odor nor cheese eating.

"race, in the way we discuss race today"

NDR, the above is the nut of GeekLethal's argument. The Nazis campaign against the Poles can be seen in many lights-- ethnic, cultural, historical-political, all of which make some kind of sense using current modes of thought. By "sense" I mean we can talk about the historical beefs/excuses for German aggression against the Poles and be reasonably sure that the words we're using mean pretty much the same thing now as they meant back then.

But the definition of "race" the Nazis used, and therefore Nazi racial propaganda, is (and was even then) a relic of an earlier age, the era of eugenics and periculture-- of hierarchical models of contemporary human evolution and the modelling of race with an eye toward "improvement". We're well past that kind of rhetoric now, outside of Tennessee and ravening cells of Kosovars/Serbs/Montenegrens. Granted, the idea is still around, but ONLY and ALWAYS as a convenient excuse to violence.

Our concept of "race" now is arguably far more nuanced than that older model, and it is unarguably quite different. It may be just as faulty (and ultimately prove just as dangerous) as the older model, but the German race-thought of 1937 is as different from what GeekLethal is talking about as Copernican cosmology is from Aristotlean.

NDR,
No, I've never had that argument but you'll see why I think it would be a silly one to have. Not because I think you're silly, but because I'm not going to enter the arena to fight over whether this or that conflict was a "race war".

All I can say for sure is that the idea that "French" is a race, which seems to be where the ambassador's comment led, is dumb.

But John has deftly handled the nuts of my argument and thereby pleased me.

France wasn't supporting Saddam exactly. The French just didn't support the immediacy of our invasion schedule and refused to bow to our pressure tactics. Rather unlike them to feel so "unsurrenderly." [Sorry, no real English word fit here and I couldn't think of the French equivalent.]

In all seriousness, if hate is applied equally to an easily definable group of people, the word "racism" comes to my mind, too. Not that I'm agreeing that happened in this case. "Freedom Fries" just doesn't rise to the level of Jim Crow.

Picker,
See, I was tempted too to recognize anti-French vitriol to be on par with anti-whomever vitriol.

But doesn't it just go against the grain for ANY white person to cry "racism" by other white people? And wouldn't it just have to be a Frenchman doing the crying?

Race was always a more nuance category, and the boundaries between races blurred. We have not advanced that far: there have only been spikes in which people have been determined to make these categories more rigid. Race itself as a concept has no biological validity and exists only in the realms of rhetoric anyway.

If my use of NS examples was excessive, I apologize. However, I used it to point out that examples from the internal American context cannot be applied in the same way to outside relations. Is there racism against Frenchmen within the US? We could ask John Kerry, but the answer is no. That does not mean that the critiques of Frenchmen and French actions do not have racial elements. And I alluded to at least one: stink. How about noses? These have been prevalent in blog discourses since late 2002.

And I take this very personally. I have experienced the wonders of racism in America. A former girlfriend gave me thirty minutes on how she felt Jews were dirty and stank ... I was never brave enough to reveal myself fully. And this was in America, the land of nuanced racial categories.

In the US of 2004 nearly sixty years after the Holocaust, I agree. But not too many years before I was born folks had a different mindset. In those days "nationality" very well could be "race." Southern Europeans were somehow subhuman, Jews were locked out of much of public life, and the Irish needn't have applied. I think it's really interesting how much less national origin and religion matter now.

I track what you guys are saying, but we're not talking about an American. This guy was a Frenchman, who claimed racism by Americans and then cried that no one treated as they might similar remarks against blacks or Jews.

I think the core of my distaste for this remark...I'm getting there... is that a member of the French leadership would claim any kind of experience remotely resembling what a black or Jewish citizen has faced.

As for your old girlfriend- did you beak the news to her after you fucked her? Bwahahahah

In my one sojourn outside of North America, I was subjected to racism. The English constantly were stereotyping me as a loud, brash and violent person just because I'm American.

Or maybe it was because I'm loud, brash and violent?

I could never clear that up.

Cultural or historical sterotypes may bear a glancing, surface similarity to racial stereotypes. In that a racist may say that Jews or blacks are smelly, unclean, whatever. And I may say that the French are smelly cowards. But the key difference is that I have no underlying conception of the French as subhuman, inferior, or whatever. I don't hate the French, I am irritated at the French. And when many Americans are irritated at the French, for this ambassador guy to flip out and cry racism is sad, and of course it also reinforces American conceptions about the whiny and pathetic state of Frenchdom today.

It is also mildly ironic that the Frenchman claimed the protection that should be afforded black and jewish victims of racism, when anti-semitism and anti-african sentiment in France is at a sixty year high.

Not to pour lemon juice on a paper cut NDR, but how long were you dating that person before that ... opinion ... came out? And I second GL's thoughts. It'd serve her right.

The English were right, Mr. Buckethead, you ARE loud, brash and violent.

You are an American and loud, brash and violent is your goddamn birthright. If we Americans weren't loud, brash and violent, we'd be polite Canadians and the Queen would be on all our stamps and money.