BillRoh <hidden@lucifer.com> wrote:

Yet our new friend, Sun Tzu insists that this has not been a problem for him, and we have no reason to doubt him. I guess, as he lives in France, the question would be "How well". Sun Tzu, are you in an upper class neighborhood, lower class? Where are you in the social structure? I don't know if can be said in Europe, but I am willing to bet that the more affluent you are, and the more affluent the area you live in is, the less likely you are to be openly anti-semetic and prone to violence.

 

 

To be perfectly honest, it's true that I don't live in a very problematic place. My home is in the Alps - but I still have to spend much time in the city (Grenoble to be specific).

Now, I  did have to face a lot of teasing at school - but never for racial reasons. As a matter of fact, I think many of the teasers didn't know I wasn't French - it certainly doesn't show. And when people actually notice my accent, they usually ask if I'm from Blegium or England. The reason I was often teased was that I was an easy target: an outsider, an 'intellectual', a geek, the guy who would spend recess walking in circles or reading. You get the picture. But nobody ever attacked me on racial grounds.

Maybe it would have been different if I lived in a poor parisian neighborhood. And maybe the fact that I went to an international (that is, bilingual) high school had some effect. But fact is, I've never seen anybody behave in a racist way during all my stay here.

Interesting fact: See, my father works here as a researcher (recently got promoted to research director.). One odd thing I noticed is that there are at least as many immigrants as Frenchmen doing research in his lab: Two of his best friends are Arabics, more than one colleague is Russian, the boss is greek, the student who just got her doctorate is Vietnamese, and so on.