French banlieues combined vibrant culture with crushing economic desperation

Evidence

The banlieues were, simultaneously, places of cultural electricity and mazes of economic misery. They rang with the soulful sounds of French hip-hop and North African raï and Gnawa music. But, for many, living there sucked out the very marrow of hope that the state was unwilling to fill. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 765