[bsaul]

may i ask where you have lived and travelled in france ?

Have you ever been to any suburb, not just in Paris ( which already has some suburbs with close to 99% non-french inhabitants) but in pretty much any average sized city in the country ?

based on your saying I can only assume you only lived in the central part of paris, and went on holidays in the west coast such as bordeaux or brest. Because all the rest of the country is pretty much in transition.

[wikfwikf]

What do you mean by "non-french"?

[bsaul]

The same i would mean if i said "non-japanese ", only applied to france.

[wikfwikf]

I understand your reluctance to answer a straightforward question: you know exactly what you are, and yet you are ashamed to admit to it.

This is not the political culture of Vercingetorix, nor of Charles de Gaulle ;)

[bsaul]

You'd be surprised. Since we seem to have moved to ad-hominem argumentation :

I think your categories and your political reflexes prevent you from thinking straight. Everybody in the world would have a broad understanding of what "french" means (or "japanese", "americans", "italian", etc). For some reason you pretend to ignore there are some cultural norms that are associated to a nation ("cultural" in the broadest sense, which includes the way you look). I believe because this fact scares you or have been associated to a taboo.

Those taboos prevent you from addressing questions, and not addressing the issues don't make them magically disappear. Worst, you risk leaving those questions to people that have a political agenda.

[wikfwikf]

You seem to be the one subject to taboos. You don't want to say what you mean by 'French' or 'non-French'.

I am perfectly capable of understanding and discussing what can be meant by 'Frenchness', and what I mean by it.

[bsaul]

I've already had this conversation many times with people arguing against the obvious situation, and it inevitably leads to absurd conclusions that defy the immediate cognitive conclusions and intuition of anyone looking at a given city landscape (you could tell just by looking at a picture if a city looks european, african or asian, for example).

However this is most of the time a total waste of time, because the reason the person is arguing against the obvious is not because of intelligent caution, but rather out of scare.

So sorry if i'm not going this route with you. If you're sincerely curious i suggest you go on a bike ride in Argenteuil on a friday.