The French people discuss Algeria rather a lot. For them Algeria is like what Vietnam and chattel slavery are for Americans. Algerian immigrants and the children of such immigrants often live in decaying suburbs of major cities. Discontent simmers in those neighborhoods and sometimes boils over into violence.

Debates about what it means to be French often presume, even on the left, that Algerian immigrants should adopt mainstream French culture and minimize or eliminate their own.

It's about as hard, maybe harder, to become French in the eyes of the French as to become American in the eyes of most Americans. Algerian immigrants can do it, but the price is high.

For those not willing to pay the price, the result is the stigma of being an outsider.

Colonialism marches on in that sense, with the colonized pressured to adopt the ways of the colonizers, sometimes by force of law, but mostly by force of custom and society.