*There are times in every society in which reasoning and humanity is cast to the wind and mob rule reigns. This phenomenon is called a riot. During these dark days crowds of human beings move not unlike a hurricane, destroying all in its wake.
There are many excuses used to justify this course of action: better wages, discrimination, the assassination of a beloved leader or other perceived injustice. But the one excuse that proves to be the most infuriating for this writer is revolution.
The very definition of a revolution is change. A brief listing of riotous situations, and their respective aftermaths, will find they resulted in such a small amount of positive change that it cannot be measured.
The Attica prison riots took place in Attica, New York on September 9, 1971.
Prisoners had several reasons for rioting, better living conditions, showers, education and vocational training and a less rigorous visitor screening process.
The riots began amid conditions in which each prisoner was given a bucket of water a week as a shower and one roll of toilet paper a month. The original request for change was given to prison authorities in the form of a letter prior to any action rioting began. But the powder keg blew when rumors began to spread regarding the torture of a prisoner by prison officials.
In the end 39 people lie dead, most at the hands of police that stormed the compound, but the prisoners' plight at least saw the light of day. I imagine prisoners at Attica are getting real showers and much TP these days. Lives were sacrificed because desperate people had no other recourse.
Not unlike prisons, the ghettos of this great country have been the site of many supposed uprisings. During the late 1880s through 1930s the United States saw many riots. The rioters were, for the most part, not African Americans. Mostly the descendants of poor European immigrants battling one another, or native born Americans or some corporate/federal institution, in one combination or another. Irish vs. Italian, native born American vs. Italian, poor vs. the rich, anarchist vs. government, and so.
There were also many ugly race riots in which African Americans were the helpless targets of rabid white crowds thirsty for blood. The Tulsa Riots of 1921. The story goes, black merchants in the city's Greenwood section (aka Negro Wall Street) were prospering during the great depression while their white counterparts struggled. The situation was set off over a black man who supposedly assaulted a white women. During the 16 hours of rioting, over 800 people were admitted to local hospitals with injuries, an estimated 10,000 were left homeless, 35 city blocks composed of 1,256 residences were destroyed by fire, and $1.8 million (nearly $17 million after adjustment for inflation) in property damage. Thirty-nine people were officially reported killed, 10 of whom were white. The actual number of black citizens killed during the riot was estimated at around 300, the number shown in the Red Cross report. Other estimates range as high as 3,000, based on the number of grave diggers and other circumstances.
This act of barbarism succeeded in accomplishing several negative things. It destroyed many black-owned businesses, which affected that population's economic stability, causing many African American to flee that city, and it reminded African Americans exactly how much their neighbors resented them.
Today Tulsa is a lovely southern town, but while passing through I could not help but think about the riots that happened there nearly 50 years prior to my birth.
At one time the term race riot was synonymous with other ethnic groups rioting over a black person's right to even exist in peace. But that term has certainly changed in modern times.
One can say the term 'race riot' was being leased by other ethnic groups like a car, then sold to blacks when it was old and used up. And, boy, we have certainly taken the term for a spin over the past 40 years or so. At the time of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's untimely death, many African Americans felt that they could see the light at the end of the tunnel. The good doctor was slowly changing the conscience of America and the claws of Jim Crow were being peeled away from black people's throats like so much calloused skin.
When that great leader was killed the black nation let out a great yell and began to cry violently. A rolling, self-injurious, thrashing display of disappointment is what the urban riots of 1968 were. Brooklyn, Newark, NJ, Detroit, Chicago, Louisville, Trenton, NJ, Watts, CA and, so it seemed, every other city were black people dwelt suffered a riot.
Have you ever gotten so upset that you did something stupid, like punch a wall, in the spur of the moment? I know I've been guilty of doing that, but afterward I grab my hand in agony. Those days are not my brightest, nor were these riots the brightest times in our history. The reasons for the riots were just. The police brutality, poverty, unemployment, racism and utter, burning disappointment over the assassination of Dr. King were but a few of the contributing factors. However, we now know these riots hurt the neighborhoods in which these riots took place more than anything else. The rioters themselves are the ultimate losers. Especially during the riots of 1968. While there were a great number of black business at the time, the growing desegregation of many communities were actually putting black businessman in full competition with their white counterparts for the black dollar for the first time. Despite this the number of black business werestill significantly higher than today. But, as was customary back then, many insurance companies balked at insuring black owned business, so said my Grandpa. He lost a printing press and a steak shop in the Trenton Riots of 1968. After the wave of violence that swept the summer of 1968, greater numbers of urban dwellers, including blacks, fled from inner-city business.
Most national brand business left the inner-city. many black business were destroyed and this left a services void in many black communities that is only now, with the onset of gentrification, is being filled. What did this change? It appeared to hasten the demise of the black-owned business as an economic center piece in areas populated by African Americans.
Though the Rodney King Riots of 1992 took place nearly 25 years later, the reasons for the riots remained the same minus the assassination of a beloved leader. This time around we had a drug-addict getting his ass kicked on national television as the triggering fuse in Los Angeles. There were few black businesses to burn, but black homes were destroyed and mostly black people were hurt and killed.
According to the LA Weekly, thirty five individuals were killed by gunfire,
8 were killed by the police and two by the National Guard. Two were killed with sticks or boards, two were stabbed, two were killed by hit-and-run and six died in car accidents. Of the 57 people that lost their lives 25 were African Americans. What did the riot change? The officers that were acquitted during the Rodney King trial had federal charges brought against them. Two officers were found guilty and two were acquitted. Justice is served, half served anyway. But was it worth all that death and chaos?
A thing that I do not understand is individuals who look upon these black race riots as good things. Perhaps the term 'good things' is too strong a phrase. They say the riots were "insurrections" and "uprisings" and looked upon them with a sort of morbid pride. Insurrections and uprisings are things often associated with revolution. And what's so revolutionary about settling scores and robbing furniture stores while the police aren't looking? What's so revolutionary about destroying your own neighborhood? Any gain humanity has ever gotten out of mindless violence has always been a painful gain not equal to the amount of blood spilled to achieve it.
For those of us who have forgotten what a revolutionary is I offer the following. The Black Panthers were revolutionary, the Deacons of Defense were revolutionary and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr was revolutionary. Who else but Dr. King could lead using non-violence as its platform when some in the black community craved and advocated armed struggle? But riots as "uprisings"? Are they joking? The only thing that has changed is the living room of the people that hit Walmart up. Police brutality gone yet? I don't think so. Has poverty gone on a vacation? Nope!
During a speech presidential hopeful Barak Obama warned America of an impending "quiet riot" of disenfranchised Americans, namely African Americans,who are ready to explode. I say to those that are ready to explode, watch were you spray your shrapnel. If you want to be revolutionary, go vote. Join the PTA in mass! Wonder why teachers don't care about black kids' education? Because most black people don't care. Perhaps that is a bit overstated and is not truly the case, but that is how it seems. Sure, we pay lip service to it, but don't take the necessary steps to make change happen! We don't have to march or join in with the poverty pimps of the world. The hard part has already been done for us. All we need to do now is muster enough strength to reach up and grab that brass ring. Vote, and we need to do it at a rate greater than 35 percent and politicians will take notice. I bet my appendages on it! Feel like "rising up"? achieve the highest level of education you can possibly muster.
Yes, there are reasons and excuses to riot. But no riot has ever done African Americans any good. When the Junior Senator from Illinois spoke of a coming storm he was warning white America, but black American's need to be listening too. Riots are not worth the outcome. Even if that outcome is a leather sectional and a big screen television.
Ricardo Hazell is a Dallas, TX based freelance writer. You can respond to him at rick_hazell@yahoo.