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Comment by rcpt | Hacker News Reader

wdym cultural infrastructure?

I know nothing about France fwiw

America has machinery within the culture that allows immigrants to assimilate. Americans treat them as American and they feel American. I don’t mean the sympathy liberals feel to immigrants—this is a cultural pattern that operates in South Georgia as much as it operates in New York City. I’d call it “legalistic pluralism.” You’re “an American” if you’re legally a citizen and can recite some platitudes about the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, and apple pie.

In France, “Frenchness” is bound up in a millennium of shared culture and history, a thousand different kinds of cheese, etc. That’s what causes friction with Muslim immigrants. They don’t want to be French—in particular, embrace the deeply held value of secularism—and that drives French people nuts.

Should note of course it's the specific brand of "French secularism" that is a thorny issue. It's a type of secularism that provokes a negative reaction from most Americans as well (though IDK if there has been any polling on the issue).

Specifically, the French brand of secularism known as ‘Laïcité’.[0]

Another major difference in France's ‘cultural infrastructure’ is that they are constitutionally race-blind and don't record ethnic statistics.[1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularism_in_France#Contrast_...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_censuses...

Yeah right. In the south, they are all about everyone being American as long as they can recite some platitudes about the Constitution.

France has a much fairer system for integration. Everything is based on how good you perform. Until you finish your studies, every major test is completely anonymous. You can become a doctor without ever having to pass in front of a Jury who may be biased by the way you look, what you believe in, or where you come from.

France has not suffered from the same deeply rooted racial discrimination the US still suffers from. During the 19th and 20th centuries, France was a refuge for oppressed minorities.

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