Miss France ‘embodies diversity’

THE new Miss France, born to an African-American mother and white French father, said yesterday she wants to advertise her country’s diversity on the world stage.

Chloe Mortaud is not the first coloured winner of the beauty pageant, but she is joining a growing chorus of French public figures speaking openly about race.

“I want to go to people and explain to them that fear of the other is unfounded,” she said the day after being crowned. “I want to incarnate... today’s French diversity”.

France has championed a colourblind standard that sees all citizens as just French, regardless of ethnic origins. But it has failed to snuff out racism, particularly against immigrants from former French colonies in Africa.

Mortaud said she and her brother were the only children of mixed ethnic background in their hometown 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.