France, Miss Obama, and the “new” black

No, Miss Obama doesn’t refer Michelle Obama (and who would have the nerve to call her such a thing anyway?!). No, “Miss Obama” is what France has dubbed Chloe Mortaud, the first woman of African descent to be named Miss France. So I guess she’s Barack Obama’s sister!?

But, no, the “new” also isn’t about Mortaud being mixed race and bi-cultural, with a white French father and an African American mother. If she’s Obama’s sister, it’s in the good ole fashioned political sense. And that, I think, is a big step for France, which officially adheres to policies that do not  acknowledge racial difference. (Race riots? What riots?) 

But back to Miss France.

W. Hassan Marsh over at The Root has an interesting take on French race relations via Mortaud’s ascendency as Miss France 2009. According to Marsh, there are a few things “new” to talk about, particularly how her crowning is yet another indicator of how Obama’s election has affected France: “Thanks in part to the Obama effect, French blacks who have traditionally been divided by designations like Caribbean, African or mixed ancestry, have started to make claims on transnational “blackness,” a feeling of a mutual experience if not shared origin.”

Funnily enough, I think that means that America becoming post-race would in fact mean us becoming exactly that which Europe is hopefully coming to see as a kind of denial! And when people say post-race, don’t you find it suspicious that they never say post-racism?

Marsh rightfully picks up on Asad Haider over at mugwump jissom, in “Is Fey the New Palin”: “The Sarah Palins of television had better move over, because it’s time to celebrate a new mainstream. Black is the new America.”