Drawing from Stuart Hall's notion of the "Black Triangle" and his designation of "America" as a signifier for migration and cultural hybridity, this paper analyzes the role of "American blackness" in Mathieu Kassovitz's seminal banlieue-film La Haine (F 1995). On both a film aesthetic and cultural-historical level, Kassovitz utilizes key elements of African-American culture, namely HipHop and boxing, in order to establish a path of empowerment for those residing outside of the French mainstream. This positive reception of African-American culture confronts the exclusion and discrimination of Africans in the French urban sphere, with "(Black) America" ultimately functioning as a powerful metaphor for unification in a space of cultural and political conflict.
