The spark was a brutal death but the riots are fuelled by fears of an uncertain future in a virus-hit land
The riots in Minneapolis and dozens of other towns and cities in the US are alarming, both to people in those areas and to the wider American population. The case of George Floyd has reminded those who needed reminding that his death is one in a long line of black men killed by white men. But the riots themselves are part of a history in the US of popular protest, against violence, segregation, war, bad housing, poverty and joblessness. The riots are part of an American tradition of protesting in the streets – even during the period of the revolution.
Older Americans remember the Sixties, a period of incessant and violent clashes between communities and the police. They were not all about race relations. This was the period of anti-vietnam War protests, primarily of college students but also of older people. The Democratic national convention in Chicago in August 1968 saw a police riot, with running battles between thousands of students gathering in a park close to the convention and the Chicago police, all caught on television.
What sticks most in the memory, however, are the race riots, not least because of the brutality of the policy and the outraged response of those protesting against racial violence. During the Sixties, there were hundreds of smaller or larger incidents, but 1967 saw an eruption: the Long Hot Summer of 1967 saw 159 riots in three months. The following year, the assassination of Martin Luther King on April 4 1968 sparked nearly a dozen large, bloody and burning riots across the country over the following 10 days, notably in New York, Washington DC, Chicago and Detroit. Thanks to television, riot sparked off other riots, and conflagration and running fights between the rioters and the police leapt from city to city.
Probably the worst of the race riots took place in Los Angeles in 1992.
Rodney King had been beaten for 15 minutes by four policemen, which was captured on video and televised. The following year, the policemen were acquitted of using excessive force, and three hours later a riot lasting five days erupted. Fifty people were killed, there was a dawn-to-dusk curfew, postal deliveries ceased, and many skipped school or work.
Thus far, events in the US have not reached the level of those in 1967 and 1968. Many of the causes remain the same, particularly violence by the police against black men, violence which is seldom punished. Indeed, impunity seems to rule. But in the case of Minneapolis, as well as in the other places where fires have broken out, the upending of the economy and the uncertain nature of knowing whether there really is a deadly virus secretly attacking people and, if so, what to do about it, provides a context. The spark was the brutal, and public, death of Floyd, but the uncertainty about jobs, whether people can pay for food and housing, or can afford to go to the doctor if they fall ill, exacerbates a situation already fraught with fear on both sides.
The current uprisings, however, have another driver, and this is social media. People knew immediately what had happened to Floyd because a bystander videoed and uploaded it. The wider public outcry against the Vietnam War was a response to pictures and films on the 6pm news, but now television runs after social media to find out and report what has happened.
In this election year, a constant question is, how will events affect the outcome? Donald Trump, after a telephone call to Floyd’s family and a tweet telling the world about it, has returned to his preferred stance as a man who takes a hard and even brutal line, and who plays upon the apprehensions of those who fear that their business or their house will go up in
The upending of the economy and the uncertain nature of a deadly virus provides a context
The Vietnam War had the 6pm news. The current uprisings have another driver ... social media
flames. This fear, indeed, affects those who might not normally be Trump supporters, symbolised by the Latinamerican store owners who stood guarding their premises against the rioters. Trump hopes to sweep them up into his coalition.
Joe Biden took the opposing stance. Where Trump is divisive, Biden tries to unify; where Trump condones violence, Biden encourages reconciliation.
Trump needs to look like the strong leader who will protect his followers and other Americans. He has to widen his coalition. Biden has to be the leader who can build a coalition that is nearly as complex as the Democratic coalition from the Thirties to the Seventies, which every four years brought together segregated southern states and northern unionised industrial states. That was not easy, and nor will Biden’s task of bringing together minorities, suburban women, Democratic progressives, liberals and conservatives.
The riots may have helped, rather than hindered him, however: as does Biden, most Americans prefer neighbourliness to confrontation.