PARIS, Dec. 13 — The conference was supposed to be a day of healing, a way for Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister who wants to be president, to rid himself of his image as the enemy of France’s ethnic Arab and black African residents.

“When the minister calls people ‘scum,’ it doesn’t help us, because we cannot avoid feeling that we’re being targeted,” said Malik Meraoumia, an ethnic Arab businessman from Amiens. He added: “What he did, he split France in two. The impression I have is, there’s the France of the suburbs and there’s the rest.”

In a Cevipof poll in September, 49 percent of French voters who responded said they were afraid of him. Just last week, Mr. Sarkozy failed to show up for a dinner in Paris that brought together more than 300 Franco-African party members, sending a top aide in his place and opening himself up to criticism.

Reiterating his support for some degree of affirmative action in France, he added: “You are French exactly like the others, but you are burdened with a certain number of handicaps. We have to help you more than the others.”

Inclusiveness has also emerged as a major theme for Ségolène Royal, the Socialist Party’s nominee. It is high even on the agenda of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front who, in a recent poll, was supported by 17 percent of voters surveyed.

Mr. Le Pen, who has traditionally campaigned on an anti-immigrant platform tinged with racism, has changed his strategy this time.

In one poster, a young black woman with a long mane of hair and a bare midriff makes a thumbs down sign. The slogan reads: “Right/Left. They have broken everything!”

In a speech in September, Mr. Le Pen for the first time urged “French people of foreign origin” to join his movement. In a subsequent interview with a Web site run by suburb associations, he denied ever making a judgment about the “superiority of one race over another.”