Bruce Springsteen is a major figure in the American music industry.
“The boss”, as he was nicknamed from the beginning, sang melancholy and despair by combining the most popular American musical genres, folk, country and obviously rock.

A- His beginnings
He was born on September 23, 1949 in New Jersey. It was then that Bruce Springsteen began his career alongside the E Street Band with guitarist Steven Van Zandt also called Little Steven, and saxophonist Clarence Clemons. He was then only 23 years old.
In 1975, he released a new album “Born to run” which was an unprecedented success and allowed the whole world to discover this small music band. Successes followed one another with “The river” in 1980 and the hit “Hungry Heart”.

B - A committed artist

Increasingly committed, the artist denounced the excesses of the American society and the politics in Vietnam with his album “Born in the USA” (1984).
A few years later, he was shocked by the attacks of September 11, 2001, so he wrote “The Rising”, largely inspired by the drama and the politics, considered to be disastrous, of President George W. Bush.
It is therefore quite natural that Springsteen embarked on a tour entitled “Voting For Change” in 2004, a few weeks before the American presidential elections. He shared the poster with REM, another famous band.
He was Barack Obama’s great support during his first presidential campaign; his song “The Rise” was chosen to be played when the results were announced.

C - What to remember.

Bruce Springsteen’s mission is to “measure the distance between American reality and the American dream” because, as he says, he is a man who is “sensitive to social injustice”.

American Skin (41 shots) is a song written by Bruce Springsteen in 2001 which is about the touchy subject of racism in the United States. It is based on the story of Amadou Diallo, a 22-year-old Guinean murdered on February 4, 1999 in the evening, at the bottom of his building, in the south of the Bronx. He was killed by four New York police officers : Edward McMellon, Sean Carroll, Kenneth Boss and Richard Murphy, who were all white.

According to the police version, these police officers were on patrol in the Bronx, to find a rapist they had been looking for for several weeks. When they saw Amadou Diallo around half past midnight, around the corner from his home, they followed him and intercepted him in the vestibule leading to his apartment. Although he was unarmed and simply looking for his wallet, the policemen, who were dressed in civilian clothes, misinterpreted his gesture. Thinking he was going to draw a gun, they fired 41 shots at him and 19 hit him.

Later, the authorities recognized that Amadou Diallo had never had any problem with the law, that he was unarmed and that the only thing they discovered in his coat pocket was indeed a wallet with his papers. But after a month of trial, the jurors retained the “self-defense” argument; the policemen were acquitted by a jury of twelve people (eight whites and four blacks) but were restricted to doing administrative tasks only. Immediately, demonstrations were organized all over New York because the verdict was experienced as an injustice. These facts notably inspired the song American Skin (41 Shots) by Bruce Springsteen.

This song was played for the first time on 4 June 2000 in Atlanta. The release of the song aroused many different reactions.
On the one hand, there were many positive reactions coming from Amadou Diallo’s family and from some part of the audience.
On the other hand, there were also many negative reactions coming from the police and the part of the audience who misunderstood the lyrics of the song.

A lot of newspapers went after Bruce Springsteen.
For example, in the “New York Pass”, the New York State Fraternal Order of Police insulted Bruce Springsteen and called him a “dirtbag” and a “floating fag”.
In addition, the policemen sent a letter to Springsteen which advised him not to play the song in concerts. Others refused to work as security in his concerts.
However, Amadou Diallo’s parents came to thank Springsteen for paying tribute to their son.

The fact is, this song is ambivalent and paradoxical. That’s why there are some people who misunderstood the lyrics and thought that it was a song accusing the police of racial crime; some other part of the audience understood the artist’s intentions. As a consequence, Bruce Springsteen was both booed and cheered at the same time. He kept a sweet memory about a woman who said “ They just don’t want to hear the truth”. Also, he won the respect of the black community.
To conclude, this song divided people, the black community and the police and those who understood Bruce Springsteen and those who didn’t.

A - Introduction
Black Lives Matter is an international social movement, formed in the United States in 2013. It was created to fight against racism and condemn the acts of violence toward the African-Americans by the police. In the USA, Black people are far more likely to be killed by the police than white people . They ask that society value the lives and humanity of Black people as much as it values the lives and humanity of white people.
B - The birth of Black Lives Matter
In 2013, Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, was shot by George Zimmerman, of German and Peruvian descent . Zimmerman had seen Martin walking in his neighborhood and called the police because he thought that Martin was looking suspicious. But unfortunately, he got into an argument with him, shot and killed him. He claimed in front of the law enforcement, that it was self defense and that he had been assaulted by Martin. At first, he was acquitted but as the shooting gained national attention in all the cities across the United States , he was finally charged with second degree murder and arrested in April 2012. However, at his trial in July 2013, he was acquitted, and this choice was perceived as a miscarriage of justice and it led to further national protests.
C- George Floyd : symbol of Black Lives Matter
In May 2020, an unarmed Black man, called George Floyd was killed by a white Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin. When the policeman arrested him, he tackled him to the ground and put his knee on his neck for nine minutes. George Floyd then died of suffocation although he was screaming that he could no longer breathe.
This event in particular mobilized the American population and induced public opinion to encourage the Black Lives Matter movement . In 2021 Chauvin was found guilty of murder. It was a rare case of police violence resulting in a conviction .

We can also add that the whole world, thanks to social networks, was in mourning and was horrified by the violence against African Americans. In support, Instagram users did not hesitate to replace their profile photo with a black background.

D - A movement that is criticized

However, the rallying of people has not escaped criticism. Some have even denounced its radicality, especially after a black reservist in the US army, Micah Xavier Johnson - claiming his membership in BLM- shot five white policemen in Dallas in 2016.

However, the leaders of the movement quickly condemned these facts. Several hijacked hashtags have been created such as #AllLivesMatter or #BlueLivesMatter, created in solidarity with the police.

“ Of course all lives matter, ‘’ replied Nicole Bacharan. “ When we say that, we are denying the specificity of the destiny of the black community because, every year, about 1,000 people are killed by the police and 26% of them are black”.

E - A movement still very widely supported

If Black Lives Matter has been criticized by some, it is also strongly supported by others. Indeed, we find for example this support in sport, especially in basketball. NBA players, coaches and referees put a knee down during the American anthem to protest against racial injustice, and to show their support to everyone in Black Lives Matter.

The NBA and the NBPA also worked collaboratively to allow players to wear a number of social justice messages on their jerseys during the remainder of the season. We could see messages like these on their jerseys :
“Black Lives Matter, Say Their Names, Vote, I Can’t Breathe, Justice, Peace, Equality, Freedom, Enough, Power to the People, Justice Now, Say Her Name, Sí Se Puede (Yes We Can), Liberation, See Us, Hear Us, Respect Us, Love Us, Listen, Listen to Us, Stand Up, Ally, Anti-Racist, I Am A Man, Speak Up, How Many More.”
There was also a large number of demonstrations by citizens, even in France, to support the movement, in the Place de la République in particular:

When talking about violence in the US, it is important to contextualize compared to other countries.
Sweden Police Killing: 1 in 2020
United Kingdom Police Killings: 3 in 2020
France Police Killings: 26 in 2020
Canada Police Killings: 36 in 2020
USA Police Killings: 946 in 2020
(From PopulationReview.com)
This helps us understand how violent the US police are compared to other countries without even mentioning the question of race.
From a historical perspective, from 1980 to 2018, 30 800 deaths are estimated in the USA.
A 2019 study by Esposito, Lee, and Edwards states that police killings are a leading cause of death for men aged 25–29.
For 2019, they reported a total of 1,004 people shot and killed by the police. According to the database, 6,600 have been killed since 2015, including 6,303 men and 294 women.
During an experiment with American police officers led by Lois James, a Professor of Washington University, scientists measured the reaction time to pull the trigger of their service weapon when faced with different scenarios; they then divided the results by race ( Whites, Blacks and Hispanics ). We can see that in the most difficult scenario, police officers tend to shoot 2 seconds faster when the suspect is black rather than white.
According to an analysis by the FBI in 2018, using data from several US cities, this reveals that, in 800 jurisdictions, the arrest rate for black people is five times higher than white people.Black people are 2.9 times more likely to be killed by the police than white people in a US research led by the NCBI( National Center for Biotechnology Information) with the goal of knowing what the difference of risk was between different races for being killed by the police per 100 000 individuals. With these statistics, we can analyze that the African-American population clearly has more risks of being killed than the other populations. Per 100 000 people, an African-American is four times more likely of getting killed by the police, than white a white person.

In conclusion, there are, of course, more than two types of police encounters in reality, and whether any of them involves deadly force will depend on many factors, such as whether the suspect is armed and threatening, and how many officers are on the scene.

The rate of police killings towards African-Americans is higher than towards other populations.
African-Americans in their 20ies are more likely to be shot and killed by the police. Even if, according to the stats, they are followed closely by Native Americans in their 20ies and 30ies, it shows the rough reality…
The study also documented a stark racial gap: Black Americans were 3.5 times as likely to be killed by the police as white Americans were. 60% of black people feel less secure when they see a policeman, against 22% of white people.

A- 41 one shots : Street rules

The song deals with the death of a black man, Amadou Dialo, shot by cops 41 times. “forty one shots and we’ll take that ride” is the very first line. In this way, from the beginning, the shots are acknowledged by the singer. During the song he will repeat “41 shots” over and over to echo the huge amounts of shots. He drums it out. The youngster was fired at 41 times by the officers in the vestibule of his building. However, the policemen were immediately “kneeling over his body”, either to give the victim first aid, or in a gesture that reminds us of a prayer. The paradox is that after shooting, they tried to save his life. The vestibule might symbolize a space in between life and death, which is basically the state in which Amadou Diallo was.

B- “Is it a gun / Is it a knife / Is it a wallet / This is your life” : The policemen’s voice

This verse voices the policemen’s point of view, it might be their internal voices. They first wonder whether the young man was about to pull a gun or a knife out of his jacket: “Is it a gun / Is it a knife”. Then they realize it’s only just a wallet. “Is it a wallet?”. A simple gesture cost him his life: “This is your life”. Indeed,, what they did take, was his life. The sentence is no longer a question. This verse could be about the policemen trying to justify their act using the danger of their job, and the pressure they have to bear while in the street: they might well have been targets, and their lives threatened by an armed criminal. However the death of Amadou Diallo can not possibly be regarded as accidental since they fired a rather enormous amount of time (41 times).

C- Second verse

In the second verse of the song, Layna, a mother, is giving her son Charles some advice; she reminds him of the mandatory street rules to follow for African-Americans. Those are not usual advice one would give to one’s children. Instead of telling him “don’t cross the road without looking” or “don’t speak to strangers”, she’s telling him to “always be polite”, “if an officer stops” him; “never ever [to] run away” if he’s questioned by them because it would be suspicious; to always “keep [his] hands in sight”, that is to say out of his pockets, so officers know he’s not armed…
She’s warning him so he doesn’t make the same mistake which cost Amadou Diallo his life. Here, through the mother’s point of view, we learn about the reality of the black community in America who’s living in constant fear, and the necessity of keeping a low-profile. Layna and her son act here as a representation of the African-American community, although it is never said that they are black. For that matter, the words “black, white, racist, racism” are never uttered. Which leads us to recognize that American Skin is fundamentally an ambivalent song.

C- An ambivalent song

To consider this song as blatantly anti-police would be wrong; indeed the goal of Bruce Springsteen is not to denounce police brutality but rather to criticize division and systemic racism all over America.
The criticism of the American society has become necessary; the US has built itself on a particularly violent history. From the very beginning the settlers have slaughtered the natives leading to a genocide, later on they have built their economy on slavery and then have legalised racial segregation until the late XX century; the American governement used the nuclear bomb twice, mainly on civilians in Japan during WW2. The ownership and the free circulation of firearms is part of the Constitution and finally, they have the quite odd tradition of assassinating their presidents. Sure every history is rather violent, it seems bound to happen, still the US has pushed it to an extreme.

Finally, to say that American skin is shamelessly black and white would be absolutely wrong. Because first it offers different point of views (the mother’s, the policemen’s and eventually the singer’s) which can lead to plural interpretations, and therefore ambivalent. The lyrics are also quite ambiguous, sometimes inclusive, not limited to a small part of the population, for example “We’ll take that ride”: Does it include everyone ? a generality ? all humanity ? Maybe only black people are included in the “we”, maybe not. The song denounces division, but advocates reconciliation (“we’ll take that ride / ‘cross this bloody river”) ambiguously: “We’re baptized in these waters / And in each other’s blood”. Does it mean that Blacks and Whites have a common destiny, that they’re baptized in the same waters as a promise of rebirth? Or that they are fundamentally joined in acts of violence: “each other’s blood”. The lyrics are beautiful in their many meanings and suggestive imagery.