French expats in America
February 4th, 2007 | 
Author: You usually don’t see French expats online, or at least not in English but I just came across one excellent blog that gives a view (in English) of a French resident in America. Reading it definitely gives me a “foreign perspective” on life from there for sure. Every time I’ve been to America it’s always seemed like home. Well, except in Concorde Mass but then that’s where the War of Independence started so you’d expect some differences there (eg those they call patriots, we’d call terrorists in today’s terms).Yet, even though it’s been a considerable time since America and France were on opposite sides of a war, the French still think that they’re subject to “French bashing” by the Americans. Odd.
The really odd thing is that both America and France tend to think in similar ways ie Americans consider only America when they do stuff and likewise France only considers France when they do stuff. So, for example, almost all Internet directories have a “regional” heading to hold everything not in America and in France you still get chip readers only accepting French cards. Likewise both countries pass laws that they consider to have worldwide applicability eg look at the global hassles we now have from American passport requirements and the nonsense of France banning junk e-mail.
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As a French-American, I’d had French bashing all my life in the USA. I’m born in America, yet because of my French name I’ve had to endure crass sex jokes for all my years in elementary, middle, high school and university.
A few years ago, at a new job, I was pulled into the principal’s office. Apparently, numerous parents didn’t like my French last name and I was asked (in a goup meeting with all district administrators and the union rep) if I was American or a “foreign national”. The superintendant had received calls from parents, anxious and angry that their “precious” children might have a French person as a teacher!
I’ve since had to change school districts. So, YES, there is considerable French bashing in the USA. If I felt like typing longer, I could relate my parents’ experiences living in the USA with French names and French accents.
I really hope that it was just that you were just unlucky in your choice of where to live in America but from what you said I suspect that similar things could well happen in other areas of America too.
For the most part, such things just don’t happen to Brits/Irish that move to America as aside from a different accent and spelling we blend into the background quite quickly.
It’s a real eye-opener for me to hear that parents would object to a non-American teaching their kids. However, in some ways, I shouldn’t really have been surprised. We were travelling along the border with America a few years back and came across a border patrol checkpoint. Just because we looked American (or at least didn’t look Mexican) they didn’t bother asking us for passports or search the motorhome. Another aspect of us appearing to be American as being a plus.