An American Uprising | Hacker News Reader

An American Uprising

newyorker.com

41 pointsomarchowdhury48 comments

The MLK quote the article leads with isn’t always out of context when invoked to talk about the rioting, but it is here. The gist of MLK’s point was that riots are, even if understandable, still unjustifiable and counter-productive. Whereas the view expressed in the rest of the article is something along the ones of: “why are you talking about property damage when someone lost his life?” Whatever this view has going for it, it’s inconsistent with what MLK said (and more largely, what he stood for). But MLK said that the police brutality needs to be condemned equally to the rioting. He didn’t say to ignore the rioting.

I come from a country that exists because we were able to violently overthrow our oppressors. Our problem of being second class citizens in our own country was decisively solved with guns. But MLK keenly recognized that this course of action was not on the table for African Americans in the United States, regardless of how justified or not it may be. Attempts to justify the violence ignore this sobering lesson.

Short of killing or permanently injuring people or destroying residences, I think the riots are morally justified, but they may not be practically justified. However, even the practical non-justification is becoming uncertain at this point, considering just how extreme and long-lasting the originating problem has become, how desperately severe it is, and how it has worsened.

I don’t see how it’s morally justified except with very narrow scope.

Riots for the most part affect people who had nothing material to do with whatever the complaint is. They’re virtually bystanders. It’s like the guy who has a legit complaint against his boss and decides “the whole office is gonna pay!”

How have things worsened since the MLK days? Of course there is injustice and lots we could do for fellow Americans to give people an equal opportunity at a decent life, but I can’t imagine opportunity has gotten worse?

Instead of rebuilding the Middle East or cruising through North Africa the previous decade, we could have ploughed that money into American citizens’ well-being and progress. We also have homelessness in addition to the above.

There's a distinction between 'people' and 'Target', though.

And the people who work at and invested their savings into running the individual store? Are their lives unaccounted for, unaffected?

Such tragedies are, of course, accounted for. Virtually nobody who is discussing this on HN is a monster who is not thinking of those people. Your accounting may differ, and you should express your thoughts on that.

> Riots for the most part affect people who had nothing material to do with whatever the complaint is

This is an interesting point that should be addressed. I’m not sure I’m the most qualified, but I’ll try.

Imagine you are trying to claim insurance on something but the insurance company has denied you. You believe you have rights to your claim but the only option they gave you is to call a phone number where an anonymous operator answers. They can only tell you the facts of the matter, and not transfer you up to a person with authority to revise the claim. What do you do? Do you get angry and direct your anger towards the operator, or do you calmly hang up, swear to your self for a day or two, and then forget about it? The first option is a normal human response, that most of us will do.

Now bump up the stakes by a million, and imagine you are a part of a minority that has received systematic injustice for decades. You are told you have the option to try to affect the system from within, elect the right officials, get legislation through, etc. But at this point you believe it has been tried for too long and it doesn’t work. Now something happens that makes you angry and really your only option at this point (outside of taking things silently and accepting how things are) is to direct your anger straight at the system, but the only face of the system that is doing all this injustice are storefronts and institutions in your downtown area. The natural (and the only real choice) is to smash it.

See looting is not just understandable action towards this injustice, it is also the natural response. And at this point, the only response.

Like I said above. It sounds like one trying to justify a person aggrieved by a boss and HR does nothing, boss doubles down, gets demoted -maybe it’s been relentless and one day they snap and they figure the whole office is going to pay.

Sure he was caged in, no one heard him, he got ridiculed.

As a society we don’t condone those outbursts no matter the self justification.

I’m not sure what you are getting at here. Has the employee been severely bullied this whole time? Has the boss physically attacked the employee? Is all the office aware that this is going on (and some even take the employee’s side)? And is the response to throw down computers and roll over desks?

If the answer to all of those questions are “yes”, then—as a society—we absolutely condone this outburst, and might even help the employee get legal justification in the process.

How is it morally justified to destroy a business if the people behind it had nothing to do with the subject of the protest? Collective punishment, which you are endorsing here, has many times been the justification for genocide by the millions and untold lesser injustices. It is one of the most evil and virulent ideologies humanity has ever indulged in. Please reconsider.

As history has shown in the 1992 LA riots, London riots of 2012 and now in this current unrest, there are those who have almost lost businesses due to rioters and looters attacking their property when they have nothing to do with the problem. [0]

The protestors are with in their right to protest but only done peacefully. I don’t know how one can begin to ’justify’ a riot when it leads to the destruction of businesses and other people’s properties and not expecting a forceful reaction from the state. Especially if you’re looting from your own communities. [0][1]

[0] https://www.westernjournal.com/black-small-business-owner-br...

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gFFaqyyYvTM

> London riots of 2012 and now in this current unrest

London riots of August 2011. not 2012.

MLK was the good cop, it was his role to say that.

You need the bad cop too, or the good cop doesn't get listened to.

This was the worst possible analogy you could have chosen to convey your idea

It’s a common language tool to use. It has nothing to do with policing. One parent is the good cop, the other parent the bad cop. It has nothing absolutely nothing to do with the image of police with badges and batons. One person plays the good role, one the bad. It’s the personification if the above. You don’t have to dissect everything to its bare bones.

Thanks. Appreciate the common sense, especially from someone who has a different good-faith opinion on the actual substance :)

You're allowed to think whatever you want to think. This particular thought is socially controversial and inflammatory to a relatively large population no matter how well you think you've reasoned it. There's not much else to say on the matter.

Have you found people who’ve interacted with the police sensitive to this common saying? I’ve known people who’ve been to prison for things and they have no issue saying good cop bad cop.

What..? No... the issue is not sensitivity to cops in general. The issue is saying the Martin Luther King, a cultural icon of black civil rights, needed a "bad cop" to get his message across, in the context of violent riots against cops casually killing black people.

I get it's just semantics. If you don't get why the semantics are extremely unpalatable to others... that's probably not good. If you feel strongly that it's not controversial, well whatever, you do you.

Everybody says it all the time about MLK and Malcolm X, ever since they were murdered.

It's closer to boring than controversial.

You are saying something identical to a sister comment that’s upvoted, just more bluntly, and are being downvoted, specifically:

“ MLK offered a non violent alternative to violence. He was a great leader, but he didn't succeed in a vacuum. He gave a peaceful political way to end the tension that, if ignored, would have continued to escalate in violence.”

The way I've always viewed that quote is to realize that looting or rioting is "assholes and criminals", but the frustration coming out in a violent way. So it's less to justify the rioting but to show that it's source is from injustice.

This article is very much trying to justify the rioting, though. It quotes a statement from John Lewis asking the rioters to be calm, and then explains why he's wrong and they should not be calm. "The human capacity for patience and endurance, in the face of blatant injustice, is not without limits", the author says. "We don’t have time to finger-wag at protesters about property", Garza says. I don't know how to read these statements except as calls to continue rioting.

It’s odd that they do that because I doubt the readership of the mag are actually gonna go down there and possibly get in harm’s way. So what’s the point?

Yes in 2020 we are arguing whether violence is justified :/

This is pretty reductionist and dismissive. Being an utterly pure pacifist is awesome, but it's hard to believe you actually think the violence question is a solvable problem that can arrive at a place where there is never another argument.

What? I live in a civilized world and use my words when I disagree or want something.

I see where you, the parent, the grandparent, and the article are all coming from. Initially, I thought that it might have been a confusion about the word riot, but a riot requires violence [0]. Instead, I think the point of contention is whether or not peaceful protests can continue to be held once rioting starts. Within a specific time and a specific place, I can see the answer being no if the group of peaceful protesters do not separate and move elsewhere to continue protesting peacefully. However, I disagree with the notion that violent outbursts by others disqualifies or disallows the peaceful protestors from continuing to protest overall if the reason for their protest remains ongoing.

If that sort of disqualification is allowed, then what would stop others from performing violent acts in an attempt to derail the peaceful protests? The G20 protests in Toronto come to my mind [1][2]. One person found that some people who were arrested had the same boots as the police arresting them; however, this source might be biased [3]. This sort of operation is known as a false flag [4].

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/riot

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_G20_Toronto_summit_protes...

[2] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/how-police-inf...

[3] https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-toronto-g20-riot-fraud-und...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag

Update: A false flag event did happen on Twitter: White nationalist group posing as antifa called for violence on Twitter - https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/twitter-takes-down-was...

And I completely feel where the protesters are coming from. They have every right to be angry and every right to protest. But when there are gangs of looters roving the streets, sometimes our rights have to be temporarily restricted to stop them.

> MLK keenly recognized that this course of action was not on the table for African Americans in the United States

MLK offered a non violent alternative to violence. He was a great leader, but he didn't succeed in a vacuum. He gave a peaceful political way to end the tension that, if ignored, would have continued to escalate in violence. Same with Gandhi. Not to imply that they were threatening this ultimatum or that they wanted violence on the side, but simply that that was the nature of the context.

The sobering lesson to learn is that continued oppression creates violent rage. We've convinced ourselves it is a disservice to non-violent resistance leaders to tolerate the uncontrolled expression of rage, and maybe it is, but it undermines the big picture pursuit of a more just world.

The rioters aren't justified, they're angry. Morality walks out the door when you're angry.

If anyone's interested, the track with Big Floyd and DJ Screw is on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv2bBdbvF20

I think this article, like much analysis I've seen, is unreasonably optimistic about the long-term prognosis of riots.

> Target will reopen. The stores will reopen. That’s assured.

It's not assured! In the riots of the 60s, many neighborhoods didn't see the stores reopen and took decades to recover. Multiple days of rioting is an existential threat to a neighborhood. Maybe that's a price worth paying, but you've got to own it, not pretend sustained looting is a temporary inconvenience.

And that’s on top of the pandemic, mass unemployment, and the long-term downturn in brick and mortar retail.

Everything is fine, the S&P500 is nearly back to its all-time high again.

(/s)

Still not even close... Who cares if Nordstrom will never open in downtown Seattle if it means we stop police killings?

Is there some plausible way that destroying the Nordstrom in downtown Seattle will lead to the end of police brutality? Usually these “ends justify the means” arguments depend upon the means actually conceivably achieving the ends in the first place.

That’s not what we are talking about. The OP quotes says:

“why are you talking about property damage when someone lost his life?”

Regardless of the justification for looting, people are still dying in the hands of the police, and that’s what we should be talking about. Rewording for the current situation: “Who cares about Target? People are being murdered!”

That’s pointedly not what you said, but sure.

The particular individual who got murdered here has a chance at justice. His murderer is in custody and facing murder charges.

Regardless, people are being killed in these riots now, so now you have permission to care.

We talk about the lessons of 1968. What does that period of unrest really teach us? It led to the election of Nixon.

I really think humanity is near checkmate in the battle against elite wealth. It will be complete when AI and automation render most of us obsolete.

Any battle against a militarized police force will be more hopeless than it already is.

Elite wealth is not a homogenous unit. The Magna Carta wasn’t a win for the little guy, it was a win for the rich and powerful against someone a bit more rich and powerful.

I remember the England riots in 2011 were strongly opposed by most people I know. I am surprised how much support these riots appear to have on social media. Rioting is a terrible, violent act.

> Rioting is a terrible, violent act.

So is being murdered by paramilitary police forces.

People tried peaceful protest and nothing changed.

Yeah in the U.K. we generally have decent police so I am biased in that respect. Still strongly believe rioting is never the answer

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