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Civil Rights Leader Rev. Sharpton Plans International Protest Against Cosmetic Heir Who Used the N-Word

Rev. Al Sharpton, president of the National Action Network (NAN), has strongly denounced the use of the N-Word by a cosmetic heir on French television and has accepted an invitation from anti-racism activists in Paris to speak there after the November 2 U.S. elections.

“The fact that Jean-Paul Guerlain felt comfortable enough to use the N-word in public, coupled with a recent United Nations report showing that racism is on the rise in France, illustrates the depth of racism not only in France by throughout Europe and around the world,” Rev. Sharpton stated.

French perfume designer Jean-Paul Guerlain touched off a firestorm recently with remarks he made during a local television interview. He was discussing how the perfume Samsara grew out of a discussion he had with his wife.“One day I told her – and I still call her Madame – ‘What would seduce you if one was to make a perfume for you?’ and she told me, ‘I love jasmine, rose and sandalwood.’” Guerlain continued, “And for once I started working like a nigger. I don’t know if niggers really worked that hard.”

Rev. Sharpton said, “Even if the N-word were not used, it still would be an insult. To question whether Blacks work hard, whether in France or anywhere else in the world, is beyond debate. No group has a monopoly on brains or hard work.”Jean-Paul Guerlain headed the fourth generation of family members to lead the House of Guerlain since its founding in 1828.

Though Guerlain has not been an employee in the business since 2002, he remains a consultant to LVMH, the company that purchased the cosmetic empire in 1994.

“I have written a letter to Mr. Bernard Arnault, the chairman and CEO of LVMH and I have also requested a face-to-face meeting to discuss this insulting incident and other steps the company should take to make sure this corrosive attitude does not infect his company’s corporate culture.”

Rev. Sharpton said he has accepted an invitation from Patrick Lozes, president of the Paris-based Representative Council of Black Associations in France (CRAN), to speak to activists in France.

The N-word -negre in French – is defined by Merriam-Webster dictionary as “perhaps the most offensive and inflammatory slur in English.”

Under fire from anti-racism activists in Paris, Guerlain later issued an apology via e-mail. He said, “My words do not reflect in any way my profound thoughts but are due to an inopportune misspeaking which I vividly regret.”

The Reverend Al Sharpton

Rev. Al Sharpton Biography

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Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1954, the Reverend Alfred “Al” Sharpton has been preaching since age four. He was licensed and ordained at age nine. In 1971, he founded the National Youth Movement and for seventeen years led the organization, registering young people to vote and giving them job opportunities. His direct-action and civil disobedience campaigns have brought attention to injustice in many areas.

Sharpton has pursued other interests while continuing to preach: in his teens, he established a close bond with James Brown and developed a father-son relationship, eventually recording the record God Smiled on Me with him. In the 1970s and early 1980s, he worked as a youth organizer with boxing promoter Don King while learning more about African American politics and entertainment.

However, Sharpton never strayed far from activism. He formed the National Action Network in 1991 to fight for progressive, popular-based social policies by providing extensive voter education and registration campaigns, economic support for small community businesses, and by confronting corporate racism. That same year, Sharpton was stabbed in a Bensonhurst schoolyard. This represented a turning point for him. Eventually, he met and reconciled with his attacker.

Sharpton has never hesitated to act in support of African Americans, from candidates for public office to Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant brutalized by Brooklyn police in 1997. Now he is also seeking to build a national multicultural, multiracial movement addressing a range of issues. To that end, in 1999 Sharpton, former New York City Mayor Ed Koch and Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree formed Second Chance, a program to serve nonviolent felony offenders after their release from prison. Sharpton also orchestrated a massive protest when police shot unarmed Amadou Diallo 41 times in 1999. In 2001, Sharpton protested the U.S. Navy’s bombing of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. Attempting to fight injustice wherever he finds it, Sharpton is following in the footsteps of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Reverend Jesse Jackson.

Bibliography
Sharpton, Al. Go and Tell the Pharaoh: The Autobiography of Reverend Al Sharpton. New York: Doubleday, 1996.
Sharpton, Al. Al on America. New York: Kensington Pub Corp, 2002.
Marcovitz, Hal. Al Sharpton (Black Americans of Achievement). Philadelphia: Chelsea House Pub, 2001.