Patriotism can be healthy… sometimes.
This weekend marks the start of the rugby’s Six Nations Championship, which means that I will have to make difficult decisions about which footie game I will have to sacrifice in order to get a chance to see Frenchmen thrive in a sport that is both overlooked and underestimated for reasons I struggle to understand. But first, a little bit of context…
There is a long-held belief that your place of birth determines the sport you will love the most. If you are towards the Eastern parts of France, you will enjoy basketball and teams such as Gravelines, Villeurbanne and Strasbourg. If you grew up in the South-West, rugby will be your thing and teams like Castres, Toulouse and Clermont will get you excited. For the rest of the country, it’s gonna be football and no matter how your local team is doing, you will be there till the bitter end and beyond. But the thing is that I grew up outside Paris and we had the privilege of having great basketball teams (Nanterre, Levallois-Perret, both cities I know by heart for being born and gone to high-school there), an almighty football team revered worldwide except in Marseille (you know that one) and two rival but equally good rugby teams, namely the Stade Français and Racing 92. My heart will always go for the latter. I enjoyed many a game at their late legendary stadium a few bus stops away from my estate and yes, I did play rugby as a chubby kid, tackling all these bitches like there were no tomorrows. If you are tall and stocky, rugby will provide you the fun and the discipline to go through life, one try at a time. Don’t get me wrong, I love basketball too and I’m football-mad — yanks, don’t you fucking dare call it soccer, it’s not soccer, it’s football. I said what I said. So, yeah, I’m religious but not practising when it comes to sport. A secular fan-girl but fan-girl nonetheless.
International competitions are always a great way for me to rally behind my compatriots, whilst living a dream abroad. You see, I said a dream and not the dream, because it’s no fun being an immigrant, let alone an expat, when you are making the best of a situation that is neither ideal, nor great *cough cough COVID-19 cough Brexit cough cough*. Oooh, that was a heavy one, but I digress…
I’ve been part of the Great British society for five years and I am nowhere near where I thought I would be, which makes me wonder what does this country has left in store for me and the way I see it, right-wingers, Tories and other hard-line Brexiteers have panic-bought all the good stuff leaving the shelves empty for little poor moi, scrapping for a subpar pack of toilet paper that doesn’t even have a dog, a tiger cub or a koala in it. Literally, a shitty place to be. And the thought of moving away to friendlier shores seem now like a sound escape plan, rather than a last resort. But I’m not there yet, I’m still hoping to get a permanent job here and I still have bills and taxes to pay. It’s not happening now, so don’t “get back to your own country” me! I can’t even go back to my country if I wanted to and I have no intention going on holidays to my parents’ two-bedroom flat where some of their neighbours and most of their colleagues refuse to get vaccinated. Mind you, there is a “rue Pasteur” very close to the Paediatric Centre my mum used to take me to as a chocolate-skinned chubby cherub, as in Louis Pasteur, the dude who got us freaking vaccines in the first goddamned place. What the actual whaaaaaat?!
All in all, it comes to the same thing: chauvinism. But I am here to tell you that chauvinism and patriotism, in general, are not a bad thing… when used wisely and understood for what it actually means. Whatever view of patriotism you have, you got it wrong and my goal today is to explain to you why you got it all wrong and how we can make it right. Of course, I am more than happy to hear your views, should they diverge to mine but at the end of the day (gosh I’m becoming way too British), this piece is an opinion piece and everything that I publish is MY truth, MY experience and I won’t tolerate — neither here or anywhere else — any tone policing, vitriol, mansplaining or whitesplaining in the channels I use for communicating with you. If you don’t agree with me, it’s your right, but if you are talking bullshit or throw dubious misconceptions , it is also my right to ignore the fuck out of whatever comes out of that mouth of yours. Respectfully and with love.
Okay?
Okay…
Growing up in a double-culture, I have always been aware that the question “but where are come from, originally ?” would pop up more often that I want to. But having an amazing mother like mine (and a father who was great for a bit), I got lucky enough to be taught the perfect answer at a very early age. This is the response my mother taught me:
“You are French and Cape Verdean! You are not half-this, half-that, you are simply both. Because you were born and raised in France, that makes you 100% French. And because your dad and I were born and raised in Cape Verde, that makes you 100% Cape Verdean. If they can’t understand it, it’s their fault, not yours. Now dummy, help me with dinner, your father will be here any minute!”
More often than not, he wasn’t, but hey, I got to learn how to cook and I’m quite good at it.
Being a Frenchwoman in my thirties, I tend to delve into nostalgia and the glorious summer of 1998 when France draped itself with brand new colours. We weren’t just Blue, White and Red ; we were Blacks, Blancs and Beurs. The first category is the one I identify most with, the Blacks (or as we call it “les Noirs de France”), was embodied by legendary players such as Thierry Henry, Lilian Thuram, Bernard Lama and fellow Cape Verdean Patrick Vieira. Then, there were the Blancs, the Whites and they were brilliant folk among them: Bixente Lizarazu, Emmanuel Petit, Fabien Barthez and then-captain Didier Deschamps who got us another World Cup twenty years later as a coach. And then, you had the Beurs — which is a backward slang for “arab” or more generally people of North African descent — and the greatest of them all was a kiddo from the North Estates of Marseille who became an icon overnight and beyond, the one, the only, the GOAT, Zinedine Zidane. Hashtag #ZizouPrésident.
1998 was the best summer of our lives as kids from council estates because we were stuck in front of our tellies, cheering up for our guys like never before, seeing people like us, who grew up like us and who were succeeding in their field and nobody could dispute their talents on the field because, ultimately, they all became world champions at the end of the competition. I cannot describe the level of pride and joy we all felt on that fateful Sunday, 12th July 1998. It was as if our hearts would explode with excitement and happiness and yet, we never wanted to feeling to go away. It was the first time I saw the country united, regardless of who you are, where you from, what you do and what do you believe in. It was utopia and definitely, too good to be true, because a little less than four years later, this fucking shit happened!
2002 got us Hot In Herre, learning the days of the week with Craig David and Cleanin’ Out our closets but we were A Thousand Miles away from imagining that far-right extremism would be here to stay and, as much as it kills me to admit it, these fuckers are. With the high scores of the then-Front National (now National Rally, or “Rassemblement National”) putting them second in the Presidential race, the liberation of racist rhetoric was no longer synonymous with fear-mongering, it became suddenly legitimate. Since then, your weird uncle Jean-Pierre can say easy peasy there are too many immigrants in this country and he won’t have to feel a shred of remorse, guilt or shame because he knows that at least 20% of the voting-age population thinks the same way as he is. You can scream profanities to Jean-Pierre as much as you want, the fact that his racist, sexist and homophobic views are now part of the mainstream discourse, just won’t make any difference anymore. He might be in the wrong — clearly — but there will be media personalities and political parties who will do their utmost to prove him right, using Orwellian tropes, just so they can get his vote and his money. You can be mad AF at His Royal Dumbassery Jean-Pierre The Pfffflth, but HE knows his opinions will get him a Queen Bee status when elections are around the corner and he will get any attention he can get, as long as things go his way.
We all know him. Sometimes, he has a different name, a different regional accent, a family, a history of bullying or being bullied and he will always, ALWAYS, shove his mediocrity to your face to make his point. I mean, you can put glitter into a house of cards, it won’t make it look like Versailles, you know. But I can assure you that Jean-Pierre has any right to be proud of being French. He has the right to be proud of what the country he belongs to has accomplished through history, there is nothing wrong with having a passionate relationship with your culture and your traditions. Where Jean-Pierre and I would differ is how we think France is the best country in the world. Jean-Pierre would love to see a more homogeneous society, that looks more like him and what he knows and I like my country the way I saw it back in 1998. Jean-Pierre would never accept tearing down statues and celebrate the end of slavery and I think France should get a Black History Month, an Asian History Month and an Maghrebi History Month celebrating all the French personalities from the former French colonies who made History with a capital H. Jean-Pierre gets wound up when he hears about police brutality and riots in the estates and I wish that Jean-Pierre could understand that he is partially responsible to what happened to Zyed, Bouna and Adama because he failed them, as a member of the French society. We couldn’t be more different, we won’t see each other eye to eye and he will surely compliment me about how well-versed I am in my MOTHER FUCKING TONGUE, but I’d like to think that should we have met on the 12th July 1998, he would have not seen a piccaninny with an infectious watermelon smile, but a little girl aged 9 who was singing “We are The Champions” and next thing you know we perform a duet offkey.
Patriotism can be healthy when hearts are beating stronger than ever, rallied behind something bigger than ourselves. But all good things in life, abusing of it can trigger bad feelings towards anything different. There is nothing more saddening than witnessing a crowd united in hatred, violence and with the feeling that you have nothing to lose. We all saw it with our very eyes last month at Washington DC’s Capitol, no need to go over it. I’m not American, thank fuck, and it’s been done to death by journalists who are exponentially more knowledgeable than yours truly. History proved us a thousand times that it is dangerous. It’s still showing today in some other countries (India, Myanmar, Brasil, Hungary, Poland, The Netherlands, Nigeria, DRC, Ethiopia, Lebanon…) and yet again, we pretend it cannot happen to us. Not only it can, it did happen to us and it will happen again unless we reconsider that words have a meaning for a reason.
Being a patriot simply means that you feel a sense of pride when it comes to your country. The correct meaning, according to the Cambridge English Dictionary, is “a person who loves their country and, if necessary, will fight for it”. IF NECESSARY! No obligation, no strings attached, if necessary. I guess we can all agree that we are not in a World War situation at the moment. Nothing constitutes the right for any ignoramus to fight for your country if the country is not under attack. I don’t recall any sitting president telling us that we have to bomb villages and quaint hamlets so we won’t get bombed in return. The only war I heard from current heads of state is the war against Coronavirus and that is a rightful war, a noble war and one that could be won if all seven billions of us get our priorities straight. But that’s not down to poor little me, it’s down to you too, to each and every one of us and let’s just say that some memos got lost in the mail and some others got chucked in the bin. Still not a excuse but it could explain a few things.
If, like my Significant Other Half, you feel no pride in being British, that’s okay. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. There is nothing wrong with having hard feelings about your country of birth or origin. You are absolutely within your own right to hate how your country has behaved in the past towards other nations. Being ashamed of your country’s history, culture and stereotypes is a valid feeling because yeah, humanity is trash and people are shit. And because opinions are like scrotums, they can be ugly but they are vital for our own’s sake, therefore we cannot shun anyone for refusing to display it. We just have to accept that we will not see each other eye to eye at all times and that’s fiiiiiiiine. You don’t have to feel patriotic if you’re not feeling it. You do you, on your terms and yours only. Or you could do like me, pick and choose the bits you like to flaunt and bits you want to fight against.
I choose cheese. I choose pastries. I choose baguettes. I choose Bastille Day fireworks, the Impressionists, the African Tirailleurs who fought for France during WW1 and WW2. I choose slapstick comedies with Louis De Funès, the crepes we do during Candlemass, the empty streets of Paris on a 15th August (it’s a bank holiday), I choose Molière, Emile Zola, Victor Hugo, Marguerite Yourcenar, Françoise Sagan, George Sand, Fatou N’Diome. I choose Marianne, Louis XIV, I choose Zidane, I choose a World Cup, two World Cups, three goals against Brasil, I choose Renaud Lavillenie, I choose Marie-José Pérec, I choose Racing 92, I choose Les Experts, I choose Quasimodo and the pain aux raisins. I choose France at its best because that’s what a patriot does: love their country. Lucky me, I’m also Cape Verdean, double the fun! I love being French, I love being Cape Verdean and I will fight anyone who would harm any of my countries.
Fight me, Jean-Pierre! Meet me at the parking lot…
