In the run-up to Tuesday's election in the U.S., with polls favoring Sen. Obama, a few French media have begun to examine the state of minorities in France. Le Monde recently ran an article on the absence of black elected officials in France. One one of the 555 deputies representing mainland France in the National Assembly is black. Outside of those elected from French overseas territories, which have largely black populations, there are no blacks in the parliament's upper house, the 300-seat Senate.
According to French civil-rights organization CRAN, of the 520,000 municipal councillors elected in 2008, only 2,000 are either black or of North African origin. This represents .33% of the total - in a country where minorities make up 11-17% of the population.
"We need elected blacks here, and we don't have any," said Pap Ndiaye - the author of The Black Condition: An Essay On A French Minority, adding that Sen. Obama's election could help change this situation. "Our political leaders will be obliged to respond to the question of why there are no young people coming from minorities who are active in politics," he said. "It will put pressure on them to find and encourage them." In addition, as U.S. president, Sen. Obama will be an inevitable presence in French media. This will, on the one hand, "accustom this society to seeing someone in this position who is not white," he said. On the other hand, it will inevitably fill young French blacks with hope. "It will show them that political power does not belong to a specific group."
"Obama's very presence in the presidential race has shown that it's possible," said Marie-Jeanne Thomas, founder and editor-in-chief of Brune, a magazine for women of African descent. "Obama is making us dream." The election has become so important to French blacks that a number of them have traveled to the United States to experience it first-hand, she said. "It is an event as important to them as was the fall of the Berlin Wall to many Europeans," Ms. Thomas said. "Obama has entered history. His fate is no longer his; it belongs to the world."
"Obama's adventure is what makes America magical," Junior Minister for Human Rights Rama Yade told Le Parisien. 'This is why I dreamed about America during my entire childhood." Ms. Yade, a political moderate, is the first-ever French black minister, named by President Nicolas Sarkozy when he took office in 2007. "Just think that when I was a child, the only black person I saw on television here was Michel Leeb, who imitated blacks to make people laugh," she said.
Ms. Thomas said Sen. Obama's candidacy will have an indelible effect on France. "After Obama, things will never be the same - even if we never have a black president." Mr. Ndiaye has even higher hopes. "I would like to see a presidential candidate in France named Mamadou Keita whose grandmother lives in Mali."
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