The majority of the scenes that I remember from La Haine are all set in the high-rise apartments and ugly places in the outskirts of Paris where lower class people and immigrants are living. Such place can be the synonym of Bijlmer neighborhood in Amsterdam, which was built in 60s-70s as the town of the future. Another spitting image of Bijlmer can be Chatsworth in south of Durban which Hansen talks about in his article. Hansen tells that it was created in early 60s with the intention of having a new hygienic form of living; a modern and planned township. Large public housing estates, shopping complexes, play grounds and recreational spaces were built; but unfortunately Chatsworth have now become the battleground where civic organizations, city council and private security companies fight for the future character of the town. It can be said that the Dutch experience has been more successful about creating what it originally planned because objectively speaking; Bijlmer today cannot be considered as a total failure where there are constant gun fights and mess going on. The urban renewal in 1990s helped Bijlmer gain a better reputation and to become a liveable place for all kinds of people from different social classes. But still, there is a certain amount of violence going on in Bijlmer.

I don’t know whether it can be counted as a discernable feature but I think that anger plays a crucial role in shaping inequalities. We read from Hansen’s article that the promise of a non-racial future couldn’t be kept and today, racial segmentation of South African society still shapes the daily life of the postapartheid nation-state. Unfortunately, this daily life is based on a constant anger in which both Africans and Indians strengthen it with their speeches and behaviors. It is possible to feel such atmosphere in the schools, religious places, institutions, houses and urban plannings.  The constant anger helps both sides to shape different collective memories. While the African collective memory brands Indians as “parasites and collaborators with whites”, the Indians see their history as of a “white betrayal that unleashed the uncanny and unintelligible force of African wrath on them”. Due to the fact that these collective memories are full of biased stories, the issue day by day becomes a knot that cannot be untied. In the movie La Haine, the aggressive nature of racism characterizes the film’s atmosphere in which anger is spouting from every single character. Related to violence, a form of anger is existent in Bijlmer too. It was the 7^th of August 2009 that a couple of men, joking in their native Suriname, got out to pick something up after a barbecue they had attended. Three young men standing nearby thought that the joking was about them and argument started. One of the Surinamese men referred to the youngsters as ‘monkeys’ and then a youngster opened fire. 15-year old Gianluca Flamingo, who was sitting in the back of the car, was hit in the head and died. The biased mind of both sides and the meaningless anger costed a young boy’s life. A similar thing happens in the movie around a different story. In 2009, 22 shooting incidents have been reported in Bijlmer.

“Former borough president Hannah Belliot agrees: "In this environment of social-economic deprivation that form of protest is cultivated into viciousness and destruction: I killed that nigger."

 Ipek Sahinler