The new Miss France, born to an African-American mother and white French father, said Sunday she wish for to publicize her country's diversity on the world stage.

Chloe Mortaud is not the first nonwhite champion of the beauty pageant; however she is joining a growing chorus of French public figures breaking customs by speaking honestly about race.

"I desire to go to people and make clear to them that fear of the other is unfounded," she told The Associated Press the day following being crowned. "I wish for to incarnate ... today's French diversity" at international beauty pageants.

France has championed a colorblind standard that notices all citizens as just French, despite of ethnic origins — an idyllic meant to make everybody feel equal. But it has failed to execute out racism, mainly against immigrants from ex- French colonies in Africa. Discrimination in part fed riots in 2005 by basically minority youth in French housing projects.

Days after Barack Obama's voting last month, foremost French figures published a manifesto urging assenting action-like policies to expand opportunities for millions of blacks, Arabs and added minorities. First woman Carla Bruni-Sarkozy said she hoped the "Obama effect" would reform France's political and social elite.

Mortaud, a twofold French-American citizen, said her mother was born in Mississippi however grew up in California, and her father’s tradition is ethnic French “as far back as we could mark out the family tree.” Mortaud said she and her brother were the just children of mixed cultural locale in the small town where they grew up in the French Pyrenees, where she said “everybody knows each other and respects each other.” Mortaud, 19, is a student in global business in the southern city of Toulouse, and speaks Chinese.

Source: iht.com