Posted on 10/20/2003 12:36:50 PM PDT by Pharmboy
The management company that runs Paris's famed Moulin
Rouge cabaret on October 17, 2003 lost its appeal
of a $11,600 racial discrimination fined levied by a
court for refusing to employ a Senegalese man outside
of its kitchen. Abdoulaye Marega said he applied for a
job at the cabaret in January 2001 but was told by employee
Micheline Beuzit that 'the Moulin Rouge doesn't take
blacks in the theater, only in the kitchen.' The exterior of the
club is shown in an undated photo. (Reuters - Handout)
PARIS (Reuters) - The management company that runs Paris's famed Moulin Rouge cabaret on Friday lost its appeal of a $11,600 racial discrimination fined levied by a court for refusing to employ a Senegalese man outside of its kitchen.
Abdoulaye Marega said he applied for a job at the cabaret in January 2001 but was told by employee Micheline Beuzit that "the Moulin Rouge doesn't take blacks in the theater, only in the kitchen."
An investigation by state prosecutors found that the Moulin Rouge, whose scantily-clad can-can dancers are a huge tourist draw, had not hired a person who was not white as a performer or waiter for 40 years, though many are employed as kitchen staff.
An original fine of $3,480 against Beuzit following last November's ruling was halved by the appeals court.
Nestled in Paris's seedy Pigalle district, the Moulin Rouge had its 19th-century heyday as a bawdy vaudeville and nightclub, depicted most recently in a film musical of the same name starring Nicole Kidman.
Growing tamer with age, the club now draws coachloads of foreign tourists and groups of well-dressed executives to its nightly dinner and dance shows, famed for their lines of chorus girls with ostrich-feather head-dresses and racy high-kicks.
The club's staff manager told the court last fall that since the case opened, the Moulin Rouge had hired two non-whites in its auditorium.
Reuters/VNU
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Just about the time America passed the Civil Rights Act and Josephine Baker left the French stage. Plenty of black faces in the US Congress, going all the way back to Reconstruction. But still no black faces in the French national legislature. Of course, these facts don't stop the French from clucking their tongues and pointing their fingers at America, do they?
An outfit called SOS-Racism did an expose on Moulin Rouge's discriminatory practices. Hidden videos, interviews with employees, the whole enchilada. Then they released it to the media. The courts were embarassed into correcting this. The manager of the MR, some creep named Andre Poussimore, stated that no blacks have been hired as waiters in the past 40 years because "no black candidate has ever presented himself." Uh huh.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Nice one...
That's it! Without the rice, of course!
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