After decades of rising racial tensions and growing socioeconomic inequalities, riots broke out in the streets of New York City. Army Pvt. Robert Bandy, a Black man, was non-fatally shot by police officer James Collins. After rumors of Bandy’s death spread through the crowd of 3,000 gathered outside of police headquarters, protesters erupted and destroyed many white owned businesses throughout Harlem. The date was Aug. 1, 1943. In the melee, six people were killed and over 600 arrested. The Harlem riot of 1943 was the sixth large-scale violent demonstration to take place in Black communities that year. 

Now, 77 years later, America once again finds itself embroiled in riots ignited by all the conditions that are too similar and caused mass destruction. These protests, especially in the last few weeks, have resulted in multiple deaths with no end in sight, and the American public is souring to them. Black Lives Matter no longer enjoys the general support that it did in the weeks following George Floyd’s death as opposition rises. 

The conservative bloc in the United States was always going to use the rioting and looting as a bludgeon to dismiss the political concerns of BLM. While that hostility can be frustrating, it is almost not worth mentioning, as polarized antagonism has just become the background noise to America’s political landscape in the last decade. All of that does not really bother me. What bothers me is the hand wringing and pearl clutching over the rioters and their so-called lack of civility by middle class Americans, some who might even be sympathetic to BLM rather than their usual country club apathy.

Here is a simple sociological fact: happy civilians who have their needs met do not riot and loot. It follows then, that if people are rioting, then the structures and institutions that are supposed to meet those needs are failing. So who, in this case, do we hold accountable for the burned buildings, destroyed property and death? If unrest is necessarily caused by specific socioeconomic factors, like 1943 Harlem, then how can the blame be placed on people acting out necessary effects? Should we not be focusing on the institutions that create the conditions which push people to violence? Do we condemn the battered housewife for violently lashing out at her abuser? I think not. 

When those people who live outside of the struggles that BIPOC face in America call for a return to civility politics, they are not crying out for peace. They are effectively demanding a restoration to an unjust status quo in which a significant portion of our population must suffer in silence. To those who go to bed clutching a handgun in their fist because some Black folk are marching in a city 300 miles from their suburban McMansion, and especially to those who start a post on their Facebook wall with, “I support BLM but…” I say this; if you actually want peace, and you actually want to quell the rioting, then you listen, actually listen, to the righteous indignation of your fellow countrymen and women. You do not dismiss and condemn, you listen. To do otherwise is to perpetuate this centuries old struggle and in 50 years time, people of your disposition will yet again hem and haw over the burned out remains of another Target superstore, while the state continues to execute civilians on the streets and in their homes.

Photo from Flickr