PARIS LETTER: The most surprising thing about Tokia Saïfi's participation in the interim French government is that it is such a surprise. France's north African Arab immigrants and their children number at least five million; more than 8 per cent of the population.
But in the 40 years since decolonisation, not one French citizen of north African origin had become a deputy in the National Assembly, a senator or a cabinet minister.
Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin changed that on May 7th, when he named Ms Saïfi (42) Secretary of State for Sustainable Development. Some commentators regretted that the appointment was so long in coming, or that Ms Saïfi was made "only" a junior minister, answerable to the Minister for the Environment, Ms Roselyne Bachelot. The choice has nonetheless been hailed as symbolic, historic, "a Republican fairytale".
Ms Saïfi's father Korichi came from Algeria to work in a steel factory in north-eastern France in 1945, and brought his bride Yamina from Biskra seven years later. Tokia is the fourth of their 10 children. Both Saïfi parents were illiterate.
"When I got a bad grade at school, my father would tell me, 'Tomorrow, you'll bring my lunch to the factory'," Tokia's brother Abdelkrim recalled in an interview with Libération.
"I had to go into that deafening noise, the smell of hot oil, the dirtiness. A hard, dirty, awful world. He'd say to me: 'Is this what you want? I want you to wear a white shirt and work in an office'."
None of the Saïfi children was allowed to watch television or sleep late in the morning. The 1983 marche des beurs made a deep impression on Tokia. After a young Arab was shot by police in the Minguettes suburb of Lyon, the protest march headed for Marseilles and continued all the way to Paris.
Ms Saïfi studied law in Lille in the mid-1980s, then founded an association called Espace Intégration in 1987. She became disillusioned with the socialists when she realised that Francois Mitterrand's policies helped the extreme right-wing National Front, with the goal of splitting the right-wing vote. She briefly joined an ecologist party, and did not lose heart when she twice lost municipal and regional elections. The economic liberal, former finance minister Alain Madelin gave Ms Saïfi her first big political break in 1999, when she won a seat in the European Parliament on his list.
Ms Saïfi says she grew tired of "the left's inability to do more than talk" and its habit of offering immigrants "welfare, welfare and more welfare". In the wake of Lionel Jospin's election defeat, prominent north African Frenchmen - including the professor Azouz Begag and Jean Djemad, the director of the Black Blanc Beur hip hop music company, who campaigned for Mr Jospin - have criticised the left for missing the opportunity to involve immigrants' children in politics.
Malek Boutih, the son of a Moroccan worker and the president of SOS- Racisme, has spoken out against the socialists' leniency towards delinquents. "Why should I treat a rapist as a victim?" Mr Boutih said. "Why should I understand someone who throws a Molotov cocktail into a school? Why should I forgive those who burn cars? I can't understand that." The jobless rate among university graduates of north African origin is 20 per cent - compared to 5 per cent for other French people. Often, social work is the only employment available to them.
Farid L'Haoua, who was the spokesman for the marche des beurs, says their plight has worsened in the past two decades. "Racism is expressed much more freely," he says. "And it's worse since September 11th, and with the crisis in the Middle East". Even if north African French people find jobs, they usually cannot move out of the banlieues because no one will let flats to them.
More than 50 per cent of the population of the Saïfi's neighbourhood are north African immigrants, and the National Front scored nearly one in two votes there. The "Saïfi clan" have been active opponents of the right-wing mayor of Hautmont, Joël Wilmotte, who is under judiciary investigation for racial discrimination. The Human Rights League has 14 witnesses who testify that Mr Wilmotte uses the city's right to pre-empt transactions to thwart sales to anyone with a north African name.
So was Tokia Saïfi's appointment mere window-dressing, a clever electoral tactic in the run-up to the legislative elections? Perhaps, but no one has questioned her qualifications or determination. As with other urgent issues they ignored, the socialists are kicking themselves for not thinking of it before the right did.