BLACK WOMAN CROWNED ‘MISS FRANCE 2009′
CHLOE MORTAUD
Last Saturday, December 6, 2008, French-American beauty Chloe Mortaud, 19, was named Miss France. Ms. Mortaud is a business student and the first Miss France to hold dual ciizenship, American and French. She represented Albigeois-Midi-Pyrennes in southwest France.
Pyrenees area of France
Ms. Mortaud is the daughter of a Black American mother (who emigrated from Mississippi to France 25 years ago) and a White French father. Ms. Montaud speaks of her country’s diversity in the global world.
MISS FRANCE WANTS TO ADVERTISE FRENCH DIVERSITY
PARIS (AP) — The new Miss France, born to an African-American mother and white French father, said Sunday she wants to advertise her country’s diversity on the world stage.
Chloe Mortaud is not the first nonwhite winner of the beauty pageant, but she is joining a growing chorus of French public figures breaking traditions by speaking openly about race.
“I want to go to people and explain to them that fear of the other is unfounded,” she told The Associated Press the day after being crowned. “I want to incarnate … today’s French diversity” at international beauty pageants.
 |
||
|
Clhoe Mortaud, 18, center, of Midi Pyrenees is kissed by third placer Miss Pays de Loire Elodie Martineau, left, and second placer Miss Lorraine Camille Cheyere after being crowned Miss France 2009 in Le Puy du Fou western France, Saturday, Dec. 6, 2008. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon)
|
France has championed a colorblind standard that sees all citizens as just French, regardless of ethnic origins — an ideal meant to make everyone feel equal. But it has failed to snuff out racism, particularly against immigrants from former French colonies in Africa. Discrimination in part fed riots in 2005 by largely minority youth in French housing projects.
Days after Barack Obama‘s election last month, leading French figures published a manifesto urging affirmative action-like policies to expand opportunities for millions of blacks, Arabs and other minorities. First lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy said she hoped the “Obama effect” would reshape France’s political and social elite.
Mortaud, a dual French-American citizen, said her mother was born in Mississippi but grew up in California, and her father’s heritage is ethnic French “as far back as we could trace the family tree.”
Mortaud said she and her brother were the only children of mixed ethnic background in the small town where they grew up in the French Pyrenees, where she said “everyone knows each other and respects each other.”
Mortaud, 19, is a student in international business in the southern city of Toulouse, and speaks Chinese.
For more on Ms. Mortaud, visit her website: http://www.chloemortaud.info/
Ann
I know Chloë personally. I can assure you that neither she nor her family has created a website. FYI, she also hasn’t created or authorized any facebook pages, myspace pages, blogs, etc.
To-date, the only official Miss France web site is “Miss France TF1” which, created and managed by the French TV station TF1.
she is hot
we gat the same birth date
it is important not to put your north american racial categories on other, chloe is not considered to be black in france but “metisse”or mulatto. she is also like the 5th or 6th mixed race (with some black origin) Miss France, the most famous being the gorgeous half Rwandan Sonia Rolland in 2000.
She is really beautiful!!!
@parisienne
Metisse or mulatto come directly from British slavery. These terms were used to categorize different types of Black slaves. It is not North American racial categories.
The terms were used in the oppression of black people by the British. The term black, is a more politically acceptable term if one MUST be used at all.
I don’t think métisse or mulatto have a negative meaning nowadays. From where I come from, métisse is used in order to say that the person is half, may it be african/other, asian/other, caucasien/other and much more. I like this word because if I say I’m black, I feel like I deny a part of myself: the half causasien.
Stunning woman. I am black and will be moving to France too. Maybe my daughter will come out that beautiful, whenever I have kids. 🙂