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You are here: Home News French News French blacks demand for politics shake-up

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05/11/2008French blacks demand for politics shake-up

Fired up by Obama's historic victory, black voters in France are demanding for a wind of change

5 November 2008

PARIS - Black voters in France vowed Wednesday "nothing will be the
same" after Barack Obama's historic White House victory, fired up by
demands for a racial shake-up of French politics.

France is home to one of Europe's largest black communities as well as a
five-million strong Arab-Muslim minority, but the US presidential race
has held up an unforgiving mirror to its overwhelmingly-white ruling
elite.

"Nothing will be the same after this," said Herve Moussakanda, a French
businessman of Congolese descent and one of dozens of black supporters
who packed a Paris club overnight to watch history being made across the
Atlantic.

"The bar will have been raised and all those excuses about how you can't
do this or don't have the right skills just won't hold," he said,
surrounded by cheers of "O"-"BA"-"MA" and a French version of his "yes
we can" slogan.

President Nicolas Sarkozy made waves in 2007 by appointing three
ministers from ethnic minorities to his cabinet, but France's main
political parties, the right-wing UMP and the Socialists, are accused of
blocking the rise of powerful black and Arab figures.

There is only one black deputy from mainland France in the National
Assembly.

France's main black advocacy group, the Representative Council of Black
Associations (CRAN), is to march on the offices of the two leading
parties Wednesday, to demand they give minority candidates a boost in
next year's European elections.

"Barack Obama is not going to change the lives of the black community in
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jolly1 posted: 06-11-2008 | 9:11 PM

The blacks and arabs chose to come into our country without necessarily being invited: why are they not taking B O's ideas back to their origins and trying to make something of those areas? We were happy and are not looking for change being forced upon us. The problem is they don't want to blend in but to take over. The current blacks in Govt here are not a success -pity as I am a feminist.

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