Lyon, France – When Najat Vallaud Belkacem, a Moroccan Muslim immigrant, applied to France’s most prestigious political science university, she recalled, her high school teachers told her she’d never be accepted: She wasn’t rich, she wasn’t from Paris – she wasn’t even from France.
Vallaud Belkacem graduated high in her class at the Institute of Political Sciences and, at age 29, is a member of the most diverse group of candidates ever to seek national public office in France. More Arabs, Africans, Muslims, blacks and women are running for the National Assembly in today’s elections than ever.
“If we want to be heard, we have to engage,” said Vallaud Belkacem, a Socialist Party hopeful in Lyon. “When politicians don’t look like the people they represent, they can’t understand the problems of the people they are supposed to represent.”
Propelled by weeks of street violence in immigrant-dominated neighborhoods in 2005 and emboldened by record numbers of new voters, French minorities are taking on the entrenched powers of one of the least-diverse governments in Europe.
The new candidates are openly debating racism and discrimination in a country where it is illegal to collect data on race and ethnicity and where discussion of those issues was largely taboo in campaigns until this year’s presidential election, which sent ruling-party candidate Nicolas Sarkozy to the Élysée Palace.
“We’re challenging this country,” said Patrick Lozes, president of Action Circle for the Promotion of Diversity in France, an umbrella group of dozens of local black political associations across France.
Minorities hold about 13 of the 22 assembly seats representing overseas parts of the country such as Martinique. But they hold none of the 555 district seats representing continental France, where an estimated 10 percent of the population is Africans, Arabs or other minorities.
At least 250 minority candidates are running this year in continental France, according to unofficial records.
While those figures remain only a small percentage of the 7,639 candidates seeking legislative office, political analysts say they represent a seismic shift.
