To the editor:
“Hey hey! Take it easy, man! Don’t worry about it! I’m French too!” Comes in handy, doesn’t it? Oh yeah, just put your hand on the person’s shoulder, make comments like the ones just quoted, and everything is golden. You have just succeeded in calming down an angry little boy and everything is fine now, right? Wrong. Just putting your hand on me, smiling benevolently, and saying “I’m French too!” won’t work anymore. Deep down, it never really worked anyhow. I just let everyone think it worked!
Everything is not fine, because this “little boy” isn’t stupid and can see right through all the excuses. They’re handy clichés that have worked well for decades now. They don’t work with me. I’m no genius, but I’m still smarter than I look! Why not give me, and at least six million other people who don’t live all that far from here, a little credit? Do you really think you can fix everything by putting on a “cute” French accent and saying “I’m French too!” in a tone used to calm down cranky babies and pet dogs? Is that really enough? Do you really think that will work? I’m not that easy to convince.
“Oh, come on, man! We’re just laughing at ourselves!” Actually, no, you’re not. At least six million other men, women, and children who live pretty darn close by are French too, and a lot of people in this area tend to lump all French people into a single category. You can’t categorize six million Québécois, or over forty-thousand Frenchmen living in Maine. It’s impossible! You can certainly try, but if you do, you’re guilty of stereotyping and should be ashamed. And if “you’re French too”, don’t expect that to let you off the hook, because it won’t. If “you’re French too”, that means you should know better.
Not every Frenchman, not even every Frenchman who hasn’t forgotten French, speaks broken English. Not every Frenchman runs around swearing like Captain Hook and his band of drunken pirates. Not every Frenchman quit school just after the third grade, or even just after the eighth grade. Many actually finished high school, and many also have college degrees. (Note: They didn’t necessarily have to give up speaking French in order to do well at an English-speaking college, either!) Believe it or not, I could actually introduce some of you folks to school teachers and college professors whose first language was North American French. “Dumb Frenchman” jokes would not sit well with any of them.
Finally, please don’t just assume that I’m overreacting. If I really wanted to overreact, if I really wanted to be nasty, I would not have written this letter in English and simply sent it to a local paper. I would have written it in French instead, and I would have sent it to the Statehouse in Augusta, where many bilingual senators and Congress representatives can read French and would not have been pleased with what they would have read. The “I’m French too” excuse might work with some people, but it doesn’t work with everyone, and it certainly doesn’t work with me. Poor taste is poor taste, regardless.
Paul Gutman
Caribou
