Ethnicity is a new player in French elections

For the more than 200 years since the French Revolution, this country has declared that distinctions of race or creed must be submerged for the good of La France. Everyone is French, so no one campaigns as a representative of, say, Portuguese, Italian, African or Chinese heritage voters. The French are so committed to the idea of equality that it is against the law to survey the population about its racial, ethnic and religious origins.

No sooner had Wu, a 36-year-old restaurateur, begun plastering campaign posters of his boyish face across Chinatown than opponents accused him of being a “communitarian,” a kind of political curse word in French culture for organising along cultural lines. Wu dismisses such a derogatory characterisation. “The concept that we are all equal is denying the fact that we are all different,” he said. “When a person looks at me on the street, he will see an Asian, not a French, even if I feel very French. So why should I try to hide the reality?”

Despite the burgeoning population of immigrants and their children from North Africa and Muslim countries, France has no black or Arab mayors and no minorities representing mainland France in the National Assembly. Even suburbs with high concentrations of voters of African, Arab or Chinese descent are run by the Franco-French.

When the French go to the polls this weekend for 36,781 municipal elections, almost two dozen candidates at the top of a ticket for the first time will be people of colour or immigrant descent.

But nowhere else in France — and certainly not in Paris, where in addition to a mayor of the overall city, each of its 20 arrondissements has a town hall and an elected mayor and council — is there another candidate talking in quite the same way as Wu about serving a distinctive ethnic community. “I wanted to run for mayor (of the 13th) to show that Asians in France are different from what you think of us,” he said. “I want to represent my community and serve it.”

By saying that, Wu is violating a long-honoured French tradition, says Philippe Maniere, director of the Montaigne Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. “In France, we still believe in this completely idealistic principle born during our revolution that you should not talk about your community because it gives the impression you will favor it, which is unacceptable.”

Maniere admits that politicians of Italian and Portuguese descent whose families came here in the 19th century have had less trouble getting elected compared with mid-20th century immigrants who were black, Arab and Asian.

“Yes, sometimes people take our principles as an excuse not to admit they’re racists,” Maniere says. “But it is also sincere in the thinking of many French.” Even other minority candidates are surprised by Wu’s pro-Asian campaign. “If I’m elected, I won’t simply take care of the interests of Moroccans,” says Myriuam El Khomri, who was born in Morocco and is an aspiring councilor in the 18th. “I’ll take care of everyone’s interests, because they are the same for everyone.”

Wu sees that as the ideal but knows for Asians there has been a different reality. “France has the biggest Chinatown in Europe, and after all these years the mayors have never given us a voice.”