Azouz Begag is the first Arab Frenchman to be a government minister. He tells Lara Marlowe, in Paris, why it has taken so long
In theory, France has an equivalent of the American dream. Here, the idea that the children of poor, illiterate immigrants can succeed through education in the public school system is called l'ascenseur social - the social lift.
But today nearly 10 per cent of the French population - the black and Arab minorities whose parents and grandparents immigrated from former colonies - are virtual outcasts in French society. The "social lift" broke down a long time ago.
Azouz Begag, France's minister for equal opportunity, is a rare exception. Begag's father, Bouzid, arrived in France from Algeria in 1949. Azouz was born in Lyon in 1957 and spent the first 10 years of his life in a shanty town in the city's deprived suburb of Villeurbanne.
Begag earned a doctorate in sociology, became a researcher at the French national science foundation, CNRS, and wrote 40 books, including the autobiographical bestseller, Le Gone du Chaâba (The Shanty Town Kid). Begag first came to the attention of the political establishment in October 1995, when president Jacques Chirac visited Vaulx-en-Velin, a suburb of Lyon where a suspected Arab bomber had been gunned down by gendarmes. Begag told a startled Chirac how Arabs were prevented from entering nightclubs because of their looks.
Today, Begag is a friend of prime minister Dominique de Villepin, a chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur and the first Arab Frenchman to be a government minister. That didn't stop US immigration officials harassing him in Atlanta last October. A few years ago, when Begag entered a French bank wearing a knit cap in winter, the bank manager trapped him between two glass doors and called the police. He is often mistaken for the minister's bodyguard.
Begag takes these racial slights in his stride. The appropriate response, he says, is: "I must be more and more visible in the media, alongside Dominique de Villepin, to get it into the head of French people that France is a country of diversity now."
Begag blames French governments of the past 30 years for withholding opportunities from the minorities created by immigration. "The 'social lift' didn't work," he says. "It didn't even get to the banlieues, so it couldn't work," he says.
Billions of francs were poured into housing projects in black and Arab ghettos, but discrimination in employment, housing and access to leisure was never tackled.
Begag dislikes the word "integration".
"It was used by socialists for 20 years not to integrate, especially in politics," he says. "This vocabulary must be reserved for newcomers."
There have been three key dates in what Begag calls "the myth of equality": the 1789 revolution, the 1958 constitution and the riots of October-November 2005. He quotes article one of the constitution: "France . . . shall ensure the equality of all citizens before the law, without distinction of origin, race or religion." The riots destroyed all pretence of equality, according to Begag.
"Every night for three weeks, the France of human rights and equal opportunity was shaken by urban violence, initiated by youths of Arab north African and African origin," he says. "Ten thousand cars were burned, €200 million in damage was done, and France endured a wave of urban violence for the first time in her history."
The lesson of the riots was that "there was no real equal opportunity", Begag says. "Now we realise the extent of discrimination against young French people who belong to visible minorities, and the flagrant absence of diversity in French society. There is not enough diversity in the economic or political sectors - mostly whites. There is not enough diversity on television - mostly whites - whereas our society is a multi-coloured mix, a melting pot. In all these neighbourhoods, you have record unemployment rates of 30, 40 or 50 per cent."
On the day of our interview, television station TF1 announced that Harry Roselmack, a journalist from Martinique, would be its alternate evening news presenter next summer.
"For the first time in the history of France, a black journalist will present the most-watched television news programme," Begag says. "We had to wait until March 2006 for that."
The law on equal opportunity which Begag helped draft in the wake of the riots says that television stations "must reflect French diversity". Begag praises Chirac for choosing Tokia Saïfi, a woman of Algerian origin, as a junior environment minister in the 2002-2005 government, and for appointing Begag himself as equal opportunity minister last year. No other government in the world has an equal opportunity portfolio, he points out.
Begag says black and Arab Frenchmen will be elected to the national assembly for the first time next year. He speaks optimistically of a black or Arab politician being elected mayor of a large French city in 2008. Even if his predictions come true, France is decades behind the US.
Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy's call for "positive discrimination" - comparable to affirmative action in the US - is opposed by Begag and his mentor, de Villepin.
"The words 'positive discrimination' sound violent in the ears of the Republic," he says. "In France, 'discrimination' is always negative."
The words "race" and "ethnic group" are equally objectionable to delicate French ears. Yet Begag admits that measures in the equal opportunity law, such as forcing television stations to put minorities on air, are in fact affirmative action à la française.
"You must achieve diversity without saying it," he says. "And it works."