A great read about Obama and the discussion of race in France. Discussing the issue of race in France is generally met with the traditional "we're all equal under the law" - or extreme discomfort, if not hostility. I used to bristle listening to one particular person who repeated his story of blacks in America in the early 1960s. It wasn't that I disagreed with what he saw, but I always wondered if he actually opened his eyes while working and living in central Paris. The statistics for blacks in the workplace and politics are horrendous and should be an embarrassment though for most, they prefer avoiding the discussion. Below is a small piece of the article but I would suggest reading it all.
When he sat down to talk the other morning, the first two words out of his mouth were Barack Obama. “The idea behind not categorizing people by race is obviously good; we want to believe in the republican ideal,” he said. “But in reality we’re blind in France, not colorblind but information blind, and just saying people are equal doesn’t make them equal.”
He ticked off some obvious numbers: one black member representing continental France in the National Assembly among 555 members; no continental French senators out of some 300; only a handful of mayors out of some 36,000, and none from the poor Paris suburbs.
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