Otis R. Taylor Jr.: Shedding light on discriminatory system that paved way for riots, looting adds vital context.
You’ve most likely seen the images of people running out of stores with whatever they can carry in Oakland, San Francisco, Richmond, San Leandro and other cities in the United States. That’s all our president wants you to see. He doesn’t want you to see the largely peaceful, nationwide demonstrations against police violence in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis for what they really are: people rallying because they’re fed up with a system that disadvantages communities of color.
Sadly, the brutalization of black and brown people doesn’t get the same attention as looting does. But when cities burn, elected officials listen.
In Vallejo, Sean Monterrosa, a 22yearold Latino, was fatally shot by a Vallejo police officer for allegedly looting a Walgreens store early Tuesday. This is a city where, for more than a decade, officials had been dismissive of calls to reform the Police Department. But on Friday, Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced a “review and reform agreement” with the city and its embattled Police Department. The protests are working. Before I continue, let me be clear: I don’t condone the destruction or theft of personal property, but I understand why it happens in moments of unrest. So does Alameda County Public Defender Brendon Woods.
“Whatever people are taking is taken because of need,” he said. “That’s the reality. A small segment is doing it just to do it, but most people are doing it out of need.”
The narrative that outside agitators incite destruction and looting has been popular since the uprisings in the 1960s. The narrative was pushed during the uprising in Los Angeles in 1992 after four Los Angeles Police Department officers were acquitted of using excessive force in the arrest and beating of Rodney King.
The same was said about the protests in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014 after Michael Brown was fatally shot by a police officer.
The narrative crumbles under the weight of America’s history. Ask yourself this: Why are the demonstrators who destroyed an entire shipment of tea, an act that sparked the American Revolution, hailed as patriots while the people protesting systemic racism are vilified?
“I think one thing that a lot of white folks will do in a moment like this is they’ll look at it and say, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t think the problem was this bad, but I don’t understand why the response is this violent,’ ” said Vicky Osterweil, who will publish “In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action” in October. “What people who have that kneejerk response need to do is they need to look at what they think peace looks like, because black people have never known peace in America.”
Chante Griffin remembers the unrest of 1992 in her native Los Angeles. King’s beating was videotaped and broadcast. It was the first time many white people were introduced to the violence police inflict on black people.
“How could I blame those who rioted for speaking a language ladened with violence and robbery when it was the same language that the officers who beat King spoke,” Griffin wrote in Ebony for the 25th anniversary of the L.A. uprising.
In an interview, Griffin said rioting and looting are easily captured.
“What’s not so easy to capture are the circumstances that lead people to riot and sometimes loot,” she said. “We don’t get to see all of the police brutality that happens in the community, but the riots and some of the looting are the results.”
It pains me that people have been hurt during recent demonstrations, because there was a golden opportunity to address the reason for the protests — systemic racism — five decades ago. In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson appointed the Kerner Commission to investigate the cause of race riots. That summer, there were more than 150 uprisings in black and Latino neighborhoods.
The commission’s report found fault with state and federal governments for housing, education and social policies that kept blacks shackled by poverty.
“White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it,” the authors wrote.
The report was dismissed. Here we are a half century later,
and this country might finally be on the cusp of addressing systemic racism.
In his 2017 book, “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America,” which was in the top five of Amazon’s bestseller list for much of last week, Richard Rothstein connects systemic racism to the inequality that persists in neighborhoods and schools today. He told me that the police have operated without consequence because the improper behavior often occurs in neighborhoods where white people don’t live.
“What white people do not understand — what a majority of this country does not understand — is that this is not an aberration,” said Rothstein, a distinguished fellow of the Economic Policy Institute, referring to Floyd’s death. “If we were not concentrating the most disadvantaged, young black men in single neighborhoods, police would not be trained to be an occupying force. And that translates into their behavior throughout the community when it comes to African Americans.”
Instead of reserving ire for looters, I urge you to question the system that’s historically refused to acknowledge human rights violations until property is damaged.
“I want people to pull back and understand that the police brutality is the spark, but it’s so much deeper than that,” Woods said. “It’s about economic deprivation. It’s about health care. It’s about education. It’s about how racism has infected every single aspect of America, and how the structure behind that is white supremacy.”