by Daniel Brown of MondoMix.com
“ When you’re treated like shit the hatred builds up in you every day…So, fuck it, they shouldn’t be surprised if we react the way we do.”
Biting words from a 15-year-old in the streets of the “Cité des 4 tours”, a council estate in the Blanc-Mesnil suburb of north Paris. Surrounded by a dozen friends, Kamel (for obvious reasons, all names have been changed) calmly enumerates why his generation has led the biggest street revolt in France since 1968. It’s a chilly Sunday night, and thousands of CRS riot police braced themselves for a 12th night of confrontation with the French youth from the most deprived areas of this financially opulent nation. I’m accompanied by Casey, one of the country’s most promising new voices on the hip hop scene. For ten years she’s been nourishing her hard-hitting songs with the realities she witnesses from her home in Blanc-Mesnil.
Comas and ulcers in our guts
Traumatised kids that are gilded
And these salaries we lose on horse races
The economy where the man on the dole is the enemy
And those end-of-months when we die anonymously
Closed shops
Armed chemists
Parents as alarmed as disarmed
Regrets reproaches guilt
And a record rate of anti-depressants…
This extract of Casey’s “Dans nos histories” underlines the omnipresent angst hanging over French suburbs only a ten minute drive from some of Europe’s most elegant cities. “There are so many reasons why these kids are in revolt,” she calmly explained as the night chill enveloped us. “The precarious jobs their parents hold, revenge for the daily humiliations by the cops, an absence of family structure. But can these adolescents really articulate these things? When I was 15 all I knew was that I was being excluded because I’m black. I was a typical teenager, it was only later that I could really put into words the feelings of isolation and exclusion we feel in our ‘banlieue’”.
There are some 750 “Sensitive Urban Zones” in France.These soulless council estates share the same handicaps: unemployment, hostile policing, dire infrastructure, ghetto-isation, social rejection, boredom and severe cutbacks in the budgets for social actions. Since the right came to power in 2002, it has chosen to invest heavily in its police forces. Many of the CRS and BAC (Anti Criminality Brigades) sent into these sensitive areas are inexperienced and come from the other side of France. Episodically then, these ghettoes have erupted into spontaneous violence but nothing like the scenes witnessed during this mild month of November. The two accidental deaths on October 27th of Zyad and Bouna, 17 and 15 year old respectively, probably would not have led to the eruption of violence had not Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy reacted with such verbal vehemence. Branding the suburb youth “racaille” (scum or yobs), he promised to clean up the cités “au Kärcher” (with a high-powered industrial hose).
“Those are disgusting words, they come straight out of World War II,” bespectacled Brahim explained in a calm baritone voice that belied his 16 years. “Sarkozy threw down the gauntlet, we picked it up. But there’s no hatred in us, we don’t want to burn up these buses and cars. It’s just that it’s the only way to be heard.” Yet they are heard in the media far too infrequently. The reductive nature of western media continues to make caricatures out of the somber yet complex realities in ghettoes journalists rarely venture into. The tinderbox which has been stoked up over the past five years was waiting for a spark to explode, yet mainstream media refuses to consult informed specialists and actors in their coverage. “It’s the same stereotypes, the same so-called experts we see being wheeled out by TV,” sighed Edouard Zambeaux. He’s one of the most experienced journalists on France’s ghettoes, and his weekly programme “Territoires de Jeunesse” on RFI is one of the few that has mirrored the complex realities - most media perceive the ghettoes as no-go areas, spilling over with aggressive and mute teenagers.*
The reality could not be further from the truth. On Sunday, ten days after the violence began, Casey presented me her nephew and his school friends in a local supermarket carpark at the Cité des 4 tours. Dressed in the typical rap outfit that has become the fashion for an entire generation they leaned against the carcasses of two torched cars and respectfully gave their visions of the previous fortnight. “You know, we just want to have what everyone else has,” said Lilian, “Our schools are a mess, they send us the worst teachers, they’ve closed down all our sports clubs, the politicians never come to visit us, we’re stuck out here with little public transport. So, what do they expect us to do?” Added Mohammed: “As soon as people know where we’re from or what colour skin we have, they spit on us. We have no chance of finding work, even if we spend ten years at university.”
As we spoke, three cars surrounded us and a dozen CRS riot police piled out. “You see what we’re living every day,” yelled Kamel. He was then unceremoniously bundled against the wall of the supermarket by the burly CRS commander, who screamed at him for his papers. The others were lined up and frisked as the police showed scant interest for their French ID cards or my press badge. “He showed a lack of respect towards me,” the commander barked at me. “He used the informal “tu” when I always say “vous”, even to these teenagers! Now turn off that recording machine.” **
The incident was over in a matter of minutes and adolescents said it was a light version of what they’ve known in the past, maybe thanks to my presence as a journalist. But a cold anger now seethed from the adolescents. “That’s been our lot every day for the past fortnight,” exclaimed Brahim. “These free massages are given out like clockwork, I’ve written it into my timetable of things that’ll happen as long as this “hagra party” (humiliation) goes on.”
“I know it sounds exaggerated,” said Casey after we left them. “But every time I’m frisked like that I think of my ancestors and how they were felt up by the slave traders when they arrived in the New World. It’s humiliating, it’s racist, and it only fuels our anger. People of my generation are fighting to say we exist with words and studies. Our younger brothers and kids are using street guerrilla tactics to do the same thing; they possess a cold anger, they’re afraid of nothing. But will this incredible energy lead to anything? I’m not sure and I’m torn by the results.”
“We want Sarkozy’s head and we’ll fight on until he falls,” said out Sylvain as he left. “But sometimes I wonder if it’s not playing into the hands of someone worse than him, like Jean-Marie Le Pen (leader of the extreme rightwing National Front). Yeah, sometimes I wonder if we’re doing the right thing. Only time will tell.”
November, 2005
* Broadcast every Saturday, it can be heard in French at www.rfi.fr
* *Which I refused to do, as can be testified by the special report in this week’s French version on www.mondomix.com.
Daniel Brown
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