Paris politician introduces ethnicity into municipal race

PARIS —  Felix Wu faces an uphill fight in today’s election to govern a neighborhood that includes this city’s Chinatown. As his name suggests, Wu is of Chinese descent and, indeed, he says he’s running to represent the Asians of the 13th arrondissement, or district.

This may sound routine to Americans used to immigrants breaking into politics through their ethnic identity.

But in France, Wu is seen as a revolutionary. Or more accurately, a counterrevolutionary.

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 voters of, say, Portuguese, Italian, African or Chinese heritage. The French are so committed to the idea of equality that it is against the law to survey the population about its race, ethnicity, or religion.

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 organizing along cultural lines.

Wu dismisses such a derogatory characterization. “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 African 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 will for the first time be people of color 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-honored French tradition, said 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 acknowledges that politicians of Italian or Portuguese descent whose families came here in the 19th century have had less trouble getting elected compared with mid-20th century immigrants who are black, Arab and Asian.

“Yes, sometimes people take our principles as an excuse not to admit they’re racists,” Maniere said. “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,” said Myriuam El Khomri, who was born in Morocco and is a council hopeful in the 18th arrondissement. “I’ll take care of everyone’s interests, because they are the same for everyone.”

Wu sees that as the ideal but says that 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,” he said.

The first record of a Chinese man in France dates to the 17th century, but it wasn’t until two centuries later that Asians like Wu’s grandfather, who came from Shanghai, began arriving en masse.

The Asian community experienced explosive growth post-1975, after conflicts in Southeast Asia, and Wu and others estimate that France, with a total population of about 60 million, now has 1 million Asians.

Unfortunately, Wu said, prejudices began spreading that Asians cared only about money, that their restaurants were dirty and their neighborhoods ruled by gangs, and that they were in effect shutting out the French in certain neighborhoods.

Last year, after a local paper quoted a resident in another part of Paris grousing, “You can’t even buy a baguette in this area anymore,” the local mayor enacted a law to block new Chinese wholesale clothing stores from opening, and nobody stepped out to defend Chinese interests, Wu said.

“We have no leader, no spokesman,” he said. “And in today’s media society, when in no time a rumor becomes a truth, this is dangerous.”

Clad in jeans, a black leather vest and a pinstriped blazer, with sunglasses tucked in his spiky brush cut, Wu describes himself as a model of the modern, bicultural, entrepreneurial Asian Frenchman who hates the political left’s alleged work-less mentality as much as the right’s strict immigration policies.

“People like me can be the bridge between Europe and Asia,” he said. “Instead, we are shut out.”

Born in Paris and a product of public schools, Wu started out working for his parents, who had opened a restaurant after years working in factories. At age 20, he began managing parties at nightclubs and in 1997 moved to Hong Kong to learn more about his heritage. He returned to France a year later, to again be in a place that respected individuality, he said.

Although he had never voted, he was inspired to run for office after the election last year of President Nicolas Sarkozy, the son of a Hungarian immigrant.

But Wu was disappointed that Sarkozy failed to appoint Asians to his “rainbow” Cabinet, which has a black woman, three Muslims and several Socialists.

“After seeing the ‘family picture,’ I realized someone was missing -- and it was me,” Wu said.

So he borrowed money from his skeptical parents and declared his candidacy under a new party and found 37 other candidates for the slate. About 20% are Asian, the same percentage as that of Asian residents in the 13th district.

His first proposal was to transform Chinatown into a cultural center, dressing it up with “gates at the entry just like in Los Angeles,” he said.

Jerome Coumet, the incumbent mayor, was appalled. A member of the Socialist Party, which dominates town halls across Paris, Coumet said his party had dutifully served the community and tried unsuccessfully for years to find an Asian to be on its slate.

Wu knows he doesn’t stand a chance to be elected mayor of the 180,000-resident arrondissement on the southeastern edge of Paris. The best he hopes for is to get enough votes in the first round today that another party invites him on its ticket for the second round March 16, and he wins a seat on the council that way.

But even if he falls flat today, Wu already has deemed his candidacy a success.

Not long after Wu’s face appeared on those ubiquitous posters, Coumet was suddenly able to find an Asian willing to run on the Socialist ticket. And suddenly there were Asians on every major ticket in the 13th, including Sarkozy’s center-right Union for a Popular Movement party.

“It’s a small thing, but I’m so proud of what I did,” Wu said. “Just because I had a poster, with my face, I showed that Asians in France are different than what people think of us, you know, the little guy in the high-collared jacket selling spring rolls.

“The world has changed. The battle is not hiding; it’s in showing.”

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geraldine.baum@latimes.com

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Achrene Sicakyuz of The Times’ Paris Bureau contributed to this report.