Ascending Heights of French Power, Trailed by Her ‘Otherness’
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/10/world/europe/ascending-heights-of-french-power-trailed-by-her-otherness.html?pagewanted=
Un #portrait de #Taubira par le #NYT.
She once wrote that she “became black in Paris,” though not by choice, and she has not been made to forget her otherness.
In protest chants this year, opponents of the marriage bill initially identified themselves as “families” — “Taubira, you are beat, families are in the street!” — but later as “the French,” Ms. Taubira recalled, as if to cast her as a foreigner. There were more overt racist slurs, as well, she said.
“I don’t believe there have been other protests, or that it would be conceivable that a protest address another minister with the slogan ‘You are beat, the French are in the street,’ ” said Ms. Taubira, who has tight-braided cornrows and a slight vocal lilt. “There’s a message of exclusion. So, I hear it! That’s all. I want to be lucid. I know what’s going on, I know what a word means, what an attitude signifies, but it is out of the question that a word or an attitude determine my life or my behavior.”
She remains sensitive to her difference, though, an outspoken woman of color in a position of considerable visibility and influence; few have come before her in France.