Rebels With a Cause
by E. Randolph Hull Jr.

It has been a brief year since the death of Russell Jones, the Ol' Dirty Bastard and founding member of the hip-hop clique Wu-Tang Clan. More recently, the eruption of the ghettos of Paris in flames fanned by institutional discrimination against North African and Arab immigrants brought the legacy of the hip-hop absurdist to mind once more. But while the teenagers of France's low-income cités grew up listening to the New York hip-hop of Ol' Dirty and his contemporaries, and their riots bear some resemblance to our own racial strife in the early '90s, there are important differences between the two.

Ol' Dirty embraced the absurdist's acceptance of meaninglessness in the wake of the so-called crack epidemic. For whatever reasons — be they differing methods of immigration, differing social supports, differing circumstances or differing time periods — the riots in France were fundamentally different than the expressions of outrage many African-Americans articulated in the early '90s. Ol' Dirty and his contemporaries expressed themselves through their music and lifestyles. Their expression was often nihilistic. Notorious B.I.G. was Ready to Die. He wasn't alone in that sentiment. But the riots in France portend a passion for an improved society that was absent among indigent African-Americans of the early '90s. The most important difference between the two may be hope and despair.

While the addictive nature of crack was certainly overstated in the American media, the effect of the crack industry's turf battles and cultural pathology is obvious. If the devastation of the crack industry might have been observed in inner cities throughout the United States, it can undoubtedly be observed through music produced at the time. In 1992 Dr. Dre released his debut solo album, The Chronic. In 1993, Snoop Doggy Dog followed with his own debut album, Doggystyle. New York hip-hop, under pressure to match Dre's Death Row ascendancy, produced 1993's Wu-Tang debut, Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers. In 1994 Nas and the Notorious B.I.G. released their debut albums, Illmatic and Ready to Die. Five classic hip-hop albums that irrevocably reconstructed the genre were released in less than two years. Each dealt explicitly with the business, lifestyle and consequences of crack culture and its impacts on the black America. These artists were moved by what they saw as adolescents growing up, often in poverty, against the backdrop of crack culture.

While hip-hop on the US coasts was evolving into the popular music of today, Los Angeles experienced its own "creative explosion" during the 1992 Rodney King riots. Like today's French riots, high unemployment in South LA was a critical factor in the violence and destruction that ensued that week. Both riots can also be traced to tension with local police. In LA, the acquittal of the four police officers accused in the beating of Rodney King fostered a perception of excessive force and racial profiling. The riots in Paris were triggered by the deaths of two teenagers in Clichy-sous-Bois, a poor community in an eastern suburb of Paris. The immigrant suburbs of Paris, as opposed to LA in the '90s, are lawless. The zones de non-droit are policed through checkpoints at the outer fringes. Police do not enter these immigrant zones as a matter of French policy.

Still, despite the lack of police presence, unemployment and institutional segregation in France, the rioters, French citizens, carry entitlements that afford them a level of humanity most destitute US citizens can only dream of. In France, a typical poor family of four has much of its rent subsidized by the government and can receive over $1,200 a month in various government benefits. They enjoy universal national healthcare, generous retirement benefits and even more help if they're unemployed.

Moreover, while the crack epidemic in the United States is open to debate, there has been no such epidemic alleged in France. Between 1992 and 2002, less than 2.2 percent of French 15-64 year olds reported experimentation with or lifetime use of heroin, LSD or crack. As a result, the nature of the two riots, and the cultures of post-crack US and today's French cités, are fundamentally different. While thousands of vehicles were burned in France, it appears that the rioters killed only one person. Reports on the LA riots estimate between 50 and 60 lives lost. Two of the defining characteristics of the LA riots were looting and the theft of luxury items. In France, the rioting was targeted toward the destruction of vehicles and civil disobedience itself.

What the cultures of post-crack US and present-day France share is an exclusion of the underprivileged. So it's no surprise the American media have looked on the French riots with marked interest. We've seen this before: in LA, in Watts, in New York. We saw what happened when the underprivileged were excluded in New Orleans. The inclination for schadenfreude concerning the French riots has been muted by fear that today's Clichy-sous-Bois is tomorrow's Prince George's County, Maryland.

The rioters in France may have had an easier go of life than African-Americans after the crack wars. Unemployment benefits from France's social welfare system afford French youth benefits that most poor in the US do not enjoy. An official policy of segregation coupled with no discernable neighborhood police presence and pervasive unemployment are, on the other hand, no walk in the Tuileries. Still, today's French rioters have shown they are more interested in drawing attention to their plight than in the destruction of lives. Their uprising is social upheaval, lashing out against what they perceive to be injustice. Ol' Dirty and impoverished blacks in the '90s — perhaps too jaded or scarred by their worlds — could not move past the self. Hopefully, France's leaders will be able to tell the difference between the '90s revolt of the meaningless in the US and France's current revolt of the optimistic.

E-mail Randy Hull at eversonrhull at hotmail dot com.