It’s Time for the Liberal Mainstream to Understand Riots

“A riot is the language of the unheard.”

-MLK

In a country built on stolen land, using violently exploited slave labor, it should come as no surprise that our economic, political, and prison systems place the value of private property above that of human life. So it should also come as no surprise that every time protests against the egregious, dehumanizing, and often lethal violence of the police state lead to the destruction of private property, the conversation quickly pivots to one not of justice and human dignity, but to one of “respectability.”

Respectability politics are pervasive in our society, a crucial tool in the maintenance of the status quo, ever-ready to be weaponized against the anger and indignation of the oppressed. And well-intentioned liberals, the same ones, like Amy Cooper, who imagine ourselves to be for racial equality, are very often deeply complicit in the weaponization of respectability.

In the wake of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, protests have turned to riots. Minneapolis has seen more buildings set ablaze than any American city since 1992, when the acquittal of the four LAPD officers responsible for beating Rodney King sparked the Los Angeles riots.

Nearly 30 years later, police violence is unabated, yet protesters are still cast as brutish and self-interested. Predictable voices of white moralizing from Tomi Lahren to Donald Trump have taken to Twitter to defame the Minneapolis protestors as looters and thugs. The President of these United States tweeted “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” The familiar and centuries-old white characterization of black anger and grief as ‘animalistic’ simmers, barely unspoken, just below the surface of every call for ‘civility’ — a luxury which black people are too rarely afforded by the police.

It is important that we take this opportunity to push white people, liberals, and “moderates” further to the left in this arena. The destruction of private property is not something to be merely tolerated at times like these; it is not our place as white people and as liberals to express sympathy for the grief and anger that we refuse to see as our own.

We must take the next step in understanding the context in which property destruction and looting occurs. We must see it not only as the appropriate response to violent colonial white capitalism that it is, but also as a valid tool in the struggle for our collective liberation.

It is no secret that black people have been categorically excluded from the economic growth that defines our identity as a country. Even Covid-19 has disproportionately affected black communities for a variety of intersecting reasons all related back to the relentless economic oppression and marginalization black Americans have experienced for centuries.

Furthermore, the modern police force as we now know it, and as many (even those who consider ourselves liberals and leftists) implicitly take for granted, is a relatively new invention, born of the white capitalist need to protect and control their property, including their slaves. The state has a monopoly on legalized violence, and that violence is deployed to protect private property — not human life.

Stores like Target, which pay low wages, push out smaller businesses, and even cooperate with police forces (specifically the Minneapolis Police Department) to enhance surveillance and control of the population, are archetypal examples of the short-term-profit-oriented capitalism that treats human dignity as more negotiable than the bottom line. This is not new, this is not isolated, this should come as no surprise.

And what more appropriate response can one possibly imagine than to storm a Target, use the goods to provide necessities to protestors, and burn the building to financially burden the company. The corporatists and the capitalists have shown again and again that they only care about one thing — why would we NOT want to hit them where it hurts?

Property destruction is not a new means of protest. The Boston Tea Party is a foundational event in the history of America’s rejection of both British rule and financial exploitation at the hands of powerful British corporations. Our history textbooks glorify the events that led to the American Revolution, yet we fail to see how these events are paralleled today in the riots incited by police violence.

Thankfully, this idea does seem to be catching on — this time around, I’ve been seeing a lot more tweets and posts and memes and articles pointing out that property destruction is not an unexpected, inappropriate, or ineffective response to police violence. I also found this piece from 2015 by Mattias Lehman that makes the exact parallel to the Boston Tea Party that sprung to my mind now, five years later. Lehman explains:

“The Boston Tea Party was a riot that precipitated a violent and impactful revolution aimed at righting the wrongs of the day. Ferguson and New York and Baltimore are not isolated pockets of violence amidst a peaceful coexistence. They are but the front lines of a fundamentally violent expression of discontentment with a violent and oppressive system. They are a modern day Boston Tea Party for black America.”

It is past time for white liberals and white moderates to move beyond impotent sympathy and towards true solidarity. Even the great Martin Luther King, Jr., whom white people, liberals, and moderates so love to reference when seeking to shame leftist and black outrage and demand that all resistance be “peaceful,” said:

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”

No justice, no peace.