Daily Show host Trevor Noah has expressed the novel view that France’s recent victory in the World Cup is an “African victory,” since most of the players on the team are of African descent. This didn’t go over well with the French ambassador to the United States, Gérard Araud, who wrote a terse letter to Noah. “As many players have already stated themselves,” Araud wrote, “their parents may have come from another country but a great majority of them (all but two of 23) were born in France; they were educated in France; they learned to play soccer in France; they are French citizens.”
That’s well stated. Then the ambassador takes a shot at his host country: “Unlike in the United States of America, France does not refer to citizens based on their race, religion or origin. To us there is no hyphenated identity, roots are an individual reality.”
We have no interest in defending Trevor Noah, whom we regard as an unfunny philistine, and it’s true that the ambassador rather unfairly overstates the degree to which French society is governed by fraternité. But Araud has a point. A man born and raised in France is French, full stop.
One other note. Of the current crop of left-wing, explicitly political comedians with late-night talk show gigs, Noah is South African, HBO’s John Oliver is British, and TBS’s Samantha Bee is Canadian. Not one of these people who make a living mocking American politics was raised in the United States. We wonder how many foreign-born comedians make a living in France by mocking French politics.
