PARIS, April 25, 2006 (IslamOnline.net) - More than two-thirds of Afro-French people want "positive discrimination" to make up for their under-representation, especially in high rungs of the government's ladder, a new survey showed on Monday, April 25.

Fifty-seven percent of the polled believe that Afro-French deserve better political representation.

Around 68 percent of the respondents said it would be "impossible" to see an Afro-French in the Elysee.

There is no official number of people of African origin in France as laws ban census based on ethnic or religious grounds.

But unofficial estimates indicate that Afro-French represent 10 percent of the country's some 70 million population.

Cesaire snubbed a meeting with Sarkozy over a law glorifying French colonialism.

Afro-French leaders have long complained of being treated as second-class citizens.

Comedian DieuDonne has regretted that his fellow Afro-French were socially looked upon as inferior.

Afro-French leaders have recently established a representative council as an umbrella body for their sizable minority.

France has further touched a raw nerve when it adopted a law glorifying the "positive" aspects of colonialism in Africa, sparking massive protests both at homer and in former colonies.

Famed Afro-French writer Aime Cesaire snubbed a meeting with Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy unless the government reversed the controversial law.

Admitting that the law was "dividing the French," President Jacques Chirac intervened and ordered the National Assembly to write a new law that would maintain national unity.

He further set May 10 as a national day to remember the sufferings endured by Africans during the repugnant slavery era.