"What's your take on Charlie Hebdo and the resultant Arab boycott/war of words?"... Let's not stray too far off topic of this thread, please. Not to "dismiss" the subject, but, there are several threads here that address the
Charlie Hebdo terror attack.
Other than witnessing the general poverty of minorities in and around Paris, my personal experience with racism in France was out in the countryside.
My hosts' landlords invited us to spend a weekend at their country house in a small 12th Century village about 60 miles northwest of
"City of Light". On my walks around the village and roads through the fields surrounding it, I kept noticing that so many of the cars and trucks that were parked or driving by, had the
same bumper sticker. It was yellow, with a black silhouette of the continent of Africa, and words that I, being illiterate in French, naïvely thought might be something supportive, like
Aid for the famines there at that time.
I asked my friend to translate it for me. The gist of it was
"Africans Out of France, Now!". I was shocked.
(I was young!)... Of course, I'm not so naïve about French racism anymore.
A/B