Mercredi, Mai 17 2006 @ Paris - Are you French?
An Indian guy asked me "Are you Japanese?" with his fluent Japanese in the subway station. After I got into the train, a French young man was focusing on his "Detective Conan" comic book and sometimes raised his head and looked at me. I believed he must be questioning whether I was Japanese or not. BUT I AM NOT.
On Paris streets, you can easily run into a Muslim or an African wearing their traditional clothes. I've never expected that there are millions of Muslims living in Paris. In the States, people try to be clothing the same with other people, especially immigrants. More than 70% of Islam immigrants in the US are actually turning into Christian. Here, people keep their religion, culture, and clothes. It seems that Paris is a more "freedom" and "liberty" internationalized city than even New York.
However, the big strike happened last year in Paris suburb areas might tell us some things. Several cultures simultaneously exist in the "City of Light", which Parisians called Paris, in another way might imply that those immigrants are excluded from being the "real" French people. They didn't fuse into one culture. Does this cause any problem? Especially, France is a socialism country and still remains a certain level of aristocratism tradition. I cannot help wondering whether those immigrants really thought themselves French.
