There is no quintessential Frenchman

The debate on national identity in France is drawing to a close; the government will tie things up at the beginning of February. Former minister of education Claude Allègre and writer and journalist Denis Jeambar reject a purist notion of identity in the daily Le Figaro: "There is no such thing as the quintessential Frenchman. ... The national identity is the totality of values, the fruit of a long history on a single geographical location. Such a definition excludes any reference to ethnicity. The term 'quintessential Frenchman' simply makes no sense. Long ago the biology of the DNA taught us that we are all of mixed race, and that all of us are unique. A nation's unity doesn't come about through uniformity or unification, because diversity is the rule of nature. ... The fact is that values themselves never cease evolving with time and successive migrations. ... Identity never remains rigid. Hence a debate on national identity that seeks to sterilise or isolate would be suicidal. ... History will never stop evolving, and must not be trampled underfoot."

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