But isn’t this the price of progress? Isn’t there a long tradition of using violence to throw off the shackles of white supremacy, going back to the Haitian revolution and the American Civil War? Didn’t the urban riots of the late 1960s wake Americans up to the fact that racism did not end with the Civil Rights Act of 1965?
To start, any analogy to slave rebellions or justified revolutions can be dismissed immediately. Taking up arms directly against those enslaving you is one thing. Looting clothing stores or destroying grocery stores is something else entirely. We must be careful not to confuse the protesters with the rioters. The former are committed to nonviolence. The latter are simply criminals and should be treated as such.
As for the riots of the late 1960s, progressives should not praise them for shocking Americans into action without also noting that they helped elect Richard Nixon president, which progressives certainly did not intend; that they directly decreased the wealth of inner-city black homeowners; and that they scared capital away from inner cities for decades, worsening the very conditions of poverty and unemployment that the rioters were supposedly protesting.
What’s more, the case for violence rests on the false notion that without it, little progress can be made. Recent history tells a different story. In 2018, the NYPD killed five people, down from 93 people in 1971. Since 2001, the national incarceration rate for black men ages 18-29 has gone down by more than half. Put simply, we know progress through normal democratic means is possible because we have already done it.
Al comes off like Sargon when he sees a woman with dyed-pink hair talking about Warhammer.
