Not everyone is like that. I am married to a french man and love his family. But when you are at la sorbonne doing a master’s and a professor out of nowhere saying Americans are stupid during class, leaves a good impression of the “french”. This would get someone fired in USA.
I am latin american and felt the same as OP. So did my other latin american friends and spanish friends. The french do love putting other cultures down, specially americans.
I can relate. I lived in France for 5 years. I grew up in NYC from 12 to 24 and i spent my childhood in dominican republic. Two places full of life, openess and happyness. I speak french fluently and had a hard time making french friends and adapting to the greyness, and bad humor of the french. I got a masters from la sorbonne so I had the chance to meet people but at the end only made 1 friend from georgia (the country). At the end, came back to NYC with my french partner for now. I was very depressed for a long time and I was able to feel normal after coming back to NYC.
The worst part is that these people go around being like “no is not possible” instead of trying to help their society be better about these things. Then they get offended when we criticize them for being this way. It is a never ending circle