>If I can take a pause and suggest, too, that every country has its scapegoats and when I hear people in France say things like, oh, the violence in the banlieue is due to American influence (I heard this not in regards to BLM today but actually 20 years ago), I have to raise one eyebrow. I think the American influence thing has truth to it but in France the political conversation on both right and left seems to exaggerate it for drama, I think you'll agree. It behaves like France is not an agent of its own will.

The 90's banlieue described in La Haine is long gone, and I agree that blaming the Americans for that sort of thing is pretty silly. It's better to critically examine each area of American influence on a case by case basis. For instance, what could be termed modern SJW concepts have definitely been spread in France by American influence, even if ironically these have a theoretical foundation in left-leaning mid-20th francophone philosophy with writers like Frantz Fanon or Foucault.

The concept of France not having its own will is essentially the result of a backwards-facing culture. France has been deeply shocked by the loss of their earlier status, and newer generations don't give a shit about all that except when conservative youths allude to a mythical past. Hence there is a current malaise about French culture dying out that would be difficult to properly explain.

>The melting pot idea is a tough one to discuss not least because it's extremely complicated (and in today's climate it's dangerous to talk about), but when you're in the EU with open borders, you're a country that founded the idea of the EU, one expectation is the free movement of people (a principle adopted since at least the 80's). So even if the United States never existed, it would still be a challenge to negotiate conceptually for people in France tied to older ways of viewing the world.

The French view tends to be interpreted as fundamentally racist by the anglosphere. I would argue, on the contrary, that it actually proposes a model of thought that attempts to limit racism in the long run (attempt being the keyword here, heh). To be clear, I do not mean to imply that there is no racism in French society as that would be completely delusional, just that its proposed ideals are in my view a healthier way of interfacing with those problems.

In reality, there is no contradiction between the EU's open borders and the French ideal, since the point is to have every citizen consider themselves as French independently of their other characteristics. Comparatively, the anglosphere model tends to strengthen and highlight the differences between people with hyphenated identities. The concept of race is thus primed to remain a divider in perpetuity unless the model shifts over time. When Noah told France to thank Africa for providing it with players, the reaction was quite negative since rejecting the inherent Frenchness of a non-white person is precisely the type of racism that causes the most grief in France and butts up with the main ideological principles there. Noah later added that he was just inviting the players to recognize their Africanness instead of rejecting their Frenchness, but that only reiterated his misunderstanding of why his remarks were tone-deaf in a French context.

>I live an American megacity, surrounded by upscale Chinese, and I (not so much on purpose but by habit) eat Asian meals probably 50+% of my meals (including sometimes cooking it), I live in a building designed for Chinese investors and their aesthetic tastes even, and from a consumer perspective most of what I wear and buy isn't an American style, but I'm generic here. What's an American urban center? London is similar, and honestly even Paris has large aspects where it feels like any of these other places. I'm not so sure it's specifically American or ever was. A lot of people think New York, specifically Manhattan, is very European, which may shock you. I've heard the same of how many American cities are changing.

The broader point is that the lifestyle consisting in consuming various products within the bounds of megacities is a quite specific cultural practice that is taking over. In a sense, whether you are eating Chinese or Bantu food or living in a brutalist or art deco building is a bit of a red herring compared to the main facts of life in a megacity. When people refer to New York's Europeanness, they are directly contrasting it with the notion of the impersonal sprawl and implying a certain authenticity and granularity among its neighborhoods that goes beyond simple variations in consumption patterns. Authenticity is a pretentious term, but I believe it describes the situation fairly accurately. It's better to interpret it as meaning a more personal interface with the surroundings, and one that is less directly linked to anglophone free-market optimization. Even in Paris, you can taste the difference between La Défense and some of the more old-school neighborhoods, but that is changing fast.

To summarize, it's the interchangeability of all those cities that French people fear, because they can compare it to life in Provence and whatnot. They are also wary of the ideology that comes with it, namely the sort of thought patterns and aesthetic choices that dominate Instagram feeds and imply a lack of cultural biodiversity. I am aware that this point of view sounds explicitly elitist, but I am paradoxically trying to communicate a view of life that is more communal and more accepting of other ways of thought.

>Are you referring or did you see the NYT article attacking France's secularism as racism in disguise?

I'm not sure which one you are referring to, but a while back they had an interview with Macron that I found really stunning in its arrogance. It's not that I am unwilling to consider opposing viewpoints, but that any person already passably familiar with the topic could tell they were not presenting the arguments made by Macron and the broader French society in good faith. I would say these views don't represent all Americans but they do represent the neoliberal coastal elite as I understand it. One of whose traits tends to be the belief that their own ideology is not an ideology but just a rational and scientific approach.