In short, in a list of examples of language of the form "the X" that AP would prefer be replaced with something like "X person" or "person with X" one of the examples was "the French".

This is funny because most of the examples were things that you generally do not want to be, such as "poor", "disabled", and "mentally ill" so it kind of suggests that being French is a bad thing.

Aside from the poor choice of examples, the underlying point is fairly valid. "The X" does place the emphasis on the group of people having/with/in X, so when you are not talking about something that really does apply to everyone who has/is X it is the wrong emphasis.

That's why I've always been a bit puzzled by "people of color" as a replacement for the older "colored people". I'm not saying "colored people" didn't need to be replaced, because it did due to its strong association with past massive legalized discrimination against Black people, but I don't see how "people of color" got the nod.

In general "people of <noun>" sounds to me like it has the same misplaced emphasis as "the <noun>".

That's fine if we are talking about something like the Borg where it is the collective that matters and the people that make it up are just interchangeable resources beholden to the collective's will.

Compare to "<adjective> people". The emphasis there is on people who happen to be described by that adjective.