Comment from Najat Vallaud-Belkacem after cabinet promotion

(3 Sep 2014) A Moroccan-born Muslim politician in France has called for more respect after her promotion to education minister last week triggered a rash of racist slurs in the media.
Najat Vallaud-Belkacem spoke out on Wednesday against the right-wing weekly "Minute" whose next edition calls her religious and ethnic background a "provocation."
"I don't know if you know Pierre Desproges' manner of expression. It is much cheaper to read Minute than buying Sartre. For the price of one newspaper you have "Nausea" and "Dirty Hands," she said, responding to the attacks.
"Nausea" and "Dirty Hands" are a novel and a play by French philosopher and playwright Jean Paul Sartre.
She has also called for respect and repeated that racism is not an opinion, but a crime in France.
The same magazine faced accusations of racism last year when it put France's black justice minister on the cover with the word banana.
An anti-racism group, SOS Racism, has launched a petition to defend the education minister.
France's national human rights commission says that racist incidents have grown five-fold in the last 20 years.


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