Now I will share you some thoughts about my second home country, France. As my mother is French and therefore I speak French at home, I am very familiar with this country. I often watch French television programs and talk sometimes with my French relatives.
Basically I do not see a lot of differences between French and Flemish people. They both have almost the same values. Okay, there are the clichés (France = wine, French bread, cheese, the 'baret' and so on, Belgium = fries, chocolate, beer, ...)
But besides these stereotypes the people are not very different from each other.
Maybe there is just one big difference: the French are (very) proud of their country. They consider France to be an example to the rest of the world. France is the first country which came up with the 'human rights'. Their device "liberté, égalité, fraternité" is very important to them. As France is a feminine culture, they like to talk about everything that appears in the media, give their thoughts about anything and like questionning issues that would maybe not be questionned in Belgium.
French people are generally speaking often more tolerant of immigrants than Belgians. This is because France have an important colonial history, in which they tried to conquer the world. This also explains why French people consider themselves as important in the world whether Belgians do not The black community and Muslim community is far more present in France than in Belgium, while a lot of French people have Italian, Spanish or Portuguese ancestors.
Jokes about black people or Muslim people are taken seriously in France and these communities (and especially the French media) will be offended and react very heavily. Walloons also have this kind of viewpoint (like the French) and often feel more easily offended by Flemish people, if the Flemish make fun of them.
Finally, French people are quite chauvinist, this means they consider their language (and their culture) as very important and foreigners who live there (or even go on holiday) should be able to speak it. Walloons tend to share the same viewpoint about this like the French and this is why they are not very likely to learn Dutch. As I speak French myself I also consider it to be more 'beautiful' than Dutch. However this is just my opinion and like we say in French, "les goûts et les couleurs ne se discutent pas".
