From the viewpoint of human collectives, forty years is a short time. It is hard to expect society to fully absorb foreign groups within a few decades. Past civilizations that assimilated foreigners and made them equal citizens—such as imperial Rome, the Muslim caliphate, the Chinese empires, and the United States—all took centuries rather than decades to accomplish the transformation. From a personal viewpoint, however, forty years can be an eternity. For a teenager born in France twenty years after her grandparents immigrated there, the journey from Algiers to Marseilles is ancient history.
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