I live in Milwaukee, and over the past day or so, I’ve gotten calls and text messages from friends and relatives elsewhere wanting to know what’s happening in Milwaukee. The riot that broke out on the night of Saturday, August 13th has made headlines around the planet.
This blog isn’t about politics. But I’m a scholar, and at the moment, my professional research is focused on student violence at the University of Oxford in the Middle Ages, so I tend to notice things about riots these days. And while I’m a medievalist and not a scholar of contemporary America, I think I have something to add to the discussion about the riots in my home city. So I hope you can forgive me for digressing from my normal topic of historical movies for a post. As a scholar, I feel I have a duty to offer the perspective my research provides on contemporary events.
Urban riots seem shocking to modern Americans. At least up until the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO in August of 2014, there was little discussion of them in the media, and you might be forgiven for thinking they rarely happen in the US. In reality, however the United States experiences at least a half-dozen riots every single year, because college students riot with almost predictable regularity in this country. Let me demonstrate with a survey of just the past two years.
In March of 2014, several hundred students at the University of Arizona mourned the loss of a NCAA tournament game by throwing fire crackers and beer bottles at police.
In April of 2014, students at Iowa State University rioted during the university’s annual Veishea celebrations. Students flipped at least three cars, pulled down three lamp poles and a number of street signs, and threw things at police. One man was knocked unconscious when he was hit with a light pole. Rioting is something of a tradition during Veishea; previous riots happened in 1988, 1992, 1994, 2004, and 2012 (when a student fell to his death). In 1997, a student was murdered during Veishea.
The same month, University of Connecticut students celebrated a basketball victory by lighting fireworks, flipping cars, smashing the windows of businesses and at least one academic hall, and pulling down a street light. The defeated University of Kentucky students rioted in Lexington, KY, lighting at least 38 fires, including 19 couches, 18 trash cans and a vacant house. Similar riots happened in Lexington in 2012 and 2013. The 2012 riot involved a reported 10,000 students and at least one shooting.
Also in April of 2014, about 200 students at Colorado State University shouted and threw objects at police after a party spiraled out of control. No injuries or property damage was reported.
Also that same month, a crowd estimated to be about 15,000 UC-Santa Barbara students (and others) tore down at least 6 traffic signs, lit small fires, attacked a car, and threw things at the police. Several dozen people, including 6 officers, were injured. This was to celebrate the university’s Deltopia Spring Break event.
A flipped car at the Deltopia Riot
(Photo: AP Photo/The Boston Globe, Jeremy Fox)
In October of 2014, University of New Hampshire students rioted during Keane’s annual Pumpkin Festival. Students set fires, tore down street signs, tried to flip a car, and threw rocks, pumpkins, skateboards, and bottles at the police. At least 30 people were injured.
The same month, about 5,000 students at West Virginia University caused an estimated $15,000 worth of property damage by starting fires and pulling down street signs and threw things at police and firefighters. WVU students are famous for doing this after athletic victories. In the past 15 years, athletic events have provoked 1,799 street fires and 633 dumpster fires. In 2012, they lit cars and light poles on fire.
On Nov 1st, a series of Halloween parties in Berkeley, CA got out of hand. An estimated 3-5,000 students rioted. At least three people were assaulted, a car was vandalized, and someone drove a car into a lamp post.
A smashed windshield at the Berkeley Riot
(Photo: Atreyue Ryken)
In April of 2015, our student friends in Lexington, KY rioted again after losing an NCAA game. They lit lawn furniture on fire and threw things at riot police.
In May of 2015, an argument at a formal night event at Plymouth State University turned into a riot of about 300 people when students began throwing things at police who arrived to break up an argument.
In January of 2015, students at Ohio State University rioted to celebrate a football victory. A crowd of around 8,000 started a dozen small fires, lit several dumpter fires, forced their way into the stadium after the game, and tore down a goal post.
A street fire during the Ohio State Riot
(Photo nbcnews.com)
On May 24th of this year, a crowd of 200 to 250 students at Colby College, ME used furniture to make a bonfire in the street and started a dumpster fire the night before commencement. When firefighters and police arrived, the students brawled with them and threw bottles. Burning furniture and similar items is apparently something of a tradition at Colby at graduation.
This list leaves out riots that developed out of political protests of various sorts. If I had included those, the list would have been much longer. And I could easily have gone back further than 2014. When I was a graduate student at UW-Madison in the 1990s, the annual Halloween party often reached near-riot levels, with windows on State St being smashed and cars tipped. My husband has told me about the annual St. Patrick’s Day riots at UW-Oshkosh; that a decades long tradition was only ended when the university changed its Spring Break to coincide with St Patrick’s Day. Ohio State has a tradition of arson accompanying games against rival Michigan; in 2002, a single game triggered 10 dumpster fires. And as I’ve noted, some of the riots on this list are part of a tradition of rioting going back years.
The Milwaukee Riots
Now let’s talk about the Milwaukee riots. Let me say that I have no first-hand knowledge of these events; my knowledge comes entirely from the local news media and a few discussions on Facebook. So I am reporting the facts as best I know them, but some of the details may be wrong, because the reporting on the events is still developing.
The Milwaukee riot started on August 13th, when police officers pulled over a car in the Sherman Park neighborhood. Sylville Smith, a black man who was reportedly carrying a gun, fled the car on foot, but apparently was cornered in a back yard by a pursuing police officer (who is black), who fired two shots into the man and killed him. The incident was reportedly caught on the officer’s body camera, but the footage has not yet been released. A crowd of about 100 black protesters gathered later that day, and the protest escalated into violence. Several cars were set on fire, a gas station was looted and set on fire, three other businesses were set on fire, and at least one other business was looted. Objects were thrown at police officers, shots were fired, and at least four officers were injured.
On the 14th, a peaceful protest occurred at the police station, and a large group turned out to help clean up the damage from the previous night. That night, there was more violence, with rocks being thrown at police and shots being fired; four more officers were wounded, as well as a young man. Governor Scott Walker activated the National Guard on Sunday night but it was not actually deployed. Here is a summary from Wikipedia, which links to numerous news stories on the riots.
(Photo: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Comparing the Riots
What does this have to do with student rioting? On the surface, nothing. So far as has been reported, the Milwaukee protesters were not university students. The cause of the riot was something far more serious than student athletics. At least two businesses were looted and shots were fired, neither of which seems to have occurred during any of the riots I’ve noted above. The student riots tend to be one-day but often semi-annual events, whereas the Milwaukee riots happened two nights running.
But the scale of the Milwaukee riots is far smaller than the student riots I’ve mentioned. The crowd was 100 or so people, whereas the smallest of the student riots was 200-300 people, and the Santa Barbara riot was an estimated 15,000 people. These student riots tend to be much larger in scale than the rioting we see around various police killings of black men.
While the looting of businesses does not typically happen during student riots, buildings certainly get vandalized, fires are lit, city property destroyed, and police officers are assaulted. Most of these riots triggered dozens of arrests.
Now here’s the key point of my post. You’ve probably never heard about most of these student riots. They get local news coverage, but most of them don’t make the national news. The only one that I recall seeing a major news outlet cover was the Ohio State riot. So the media treats student riots as minor affairs, even when they involve thousands of people, multiple fires, cars and other property being destroyed, and police officers being injured. The impression this gives is that when white, middle-class college students riot over trivial things like football games or Halloween parties, it’s nothing serious. It’s just students being students. A little student violence is nothing to get worked up about, even if it perhaps results in the death of a student (as in Iowa), flipped or torched cars (many of these riots) or arson (most of these cases). In fact, news organizations are sometimes reluctant to call these events riots; sometimes the word riot is put in quotation marks, suggesting that these aren’t really riots, no matter what they look like.
But when a comparatively small group of black people violently protest a very serious issue, the killing of a motorist, it’s treated as world-level news. The governor thinks seriously about calling out the National Guard. The national news media suggests that the whole city is in flames (as I said, I’ve gotten worried messages from friends and relatives who were concerned for my safety).
Milwaukee-area police have killed at least four black men in the past two years. In April of 2014, a police officer shot the unarmed, mentally ill Dontre Hamilton 14 times during an altercation in a public park, killing him. In July of 2015, police in suburban Wauwatosa fatally shot a mentally-ill black man who was brandishing a sword. In June of 2016, Wauwatosa police fatally shot Jay Anderson, who was sleeping in a car in a parkway at 3am; he reportedly had a gun. And now this weekend, Sylville Smith. Regardless of whether any of these shootings were justifiable or not, many black Milwaukeeans are concerned about police violence toward their community, and the tendency of police officers to kill black men during traffic stops and for minor crimes like selling cigarettes is obviously an issue of serious concern nationally. And yet somehow it is the black riots over police violence that are seen as unacceptable, and not the student riots.
As a scholar, it’s hard for me to escape the conclusion that there is something seriously out of balance in the way people respond to these two very different sorts of riots. When white people riot over small issues, it’s barely news, no matter how large the crowd of rioters may be. When black people riot over a genuine issue of human lives, it’s treated as an alarming offense. Middle class white people apparently possess some unnamed right to engage in rioting that black people don’t possess.
That is not in any way to defend or justify this weekend’s violence. The destruction of businesses and the injuring of police officers and ordinary citizens is a serious matter, and those who committed crimes should be prosecuted. Nor is this to deny that some of the student rioters were prosecuted for crimes and suspended or expelled; typically these riots seem to produce one or two expulsions. My point is entirely about how we as people and the media as a body respond to these events in drastically different ways.
Because right now, the media seems to be suggesting that the lives of black citizens are less important than university students’ right to be upset about a football game.
Next time, I promise I’ll get back to posting about something far less important.
Correction: an earlier version of this post incorrectly identify the Veishae riots as occurring at the University of Iowa; in fact they occurred at Iowa State University. My apologies for the error.
An Historian Goes to the Movies 
VEISHEA is at Iowa State University NOT U of Iowa, fyi. Folks at either school will be quick not to be confused for the other. 😉
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Thank you for the correction. I’ll change that. As I put the post together, I was aware that I was pulling together a whole of data in a short time and was praying I wouldn’t screw up any of the basic facts. Getting the wrong university is a pretty big goof. My apologies.
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I’ve grown up in the Milwaukee area my whole life. If you need any information, I could probably answer any questions for you. I do contract work with the city assessor, and believe me, I know oh too well that area.
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The first VEISHEA riot was in 1988. There was a minor incident in 1987 where several floats on display in front of fraternity houses were damaged the evening after the parade. The 1988 riot was sparked by police shutting down a house party at 10pm, by midnight there was a bonfire in the street with couches for fuel. At least one lamp post was knocked down.
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So I guess the point here is that the Milwaukee/Ferguson/Baltimore riots aren’t so bad, because students riot too? Is this really comparable?
1. Look at what is really happening in those student riots. “Three cars were flipped”, “students attempted to flip one car”. “10 dumpster fires”. That doesn’t remotely compare to the damage in Milwaukee, Ferguson, etc. The biggest example on your list were the 5000 student rioted at WVU, causing $15,000 damage (which is only $3 damage per student!). That doesn’t even come close to the millions lost in these race riots. And not just the short term costs, but the long term economic damage is devastating, because no one will want to build new businesses there.
2. Those student rioters aren’t quite as “white” as you think. Have you been on a college campus lately? The rioters are pretty much as multicultural as the student body.
3. Student riots generally come and go very quickly. These race riots usually last for days.
4. I have never heard of the National Guard being activated to put down a student protest.
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No, that’s explicitly not what I’m saying. As I say in the post, those who committed crimes ought to be punished. So please don’t offer straw man arguments.
My point is not that the Milwaukee Riots are ‘not bad’ and student riots are. My point is that the media is selectively choosing which riots to be alarmed about. If 100 people rioting in Milwaukee is national news, why is 15,000 people rioting in Santa Barbara not much bigger news? Clearly the scale of the riot is not a factor.
To address point 1, I am not arguing that race riots and student riots are the same phenomenon; clearly they have some strong differences. Race riots often last more than a day, while student riots are short lived. Race riots (at least recently) have been triggered by police violence against black people, while student riots are triggered by predictable occasions such as Halloween and sporting events. Race riots are sometimes accompanied by the looting of business, while student riots seem to be more focused on destroying public signs and smashing windows. Since I don’t work on modern American riots, I don’t know what sort of scholarly analysis there is of the implications of those details, but i would hazard a guess that race riots are expressions of long-term economic and political frustrations. Student riots seem to fall into a category that scholars call ‘ludic’ violence, that is, violence that is seen as having an element of play to it.
To answer point 2, yes, I’ve been on campuses quite regularly for 30 years. I’m university faculty and get to know my students every semester. Statistically, about 15% of all university students are black, so they are still a fairly small group, though obviously the percentages will vary from university to university. For example, at UCSB, it is 4%, 4.5% at WVU, 2.6% at ISU, 2.1% at New Hampshire, 7.6% at U of Kentucky, and 3% at Berkeley. Student rioters, so far as I can determine (and I have not studied the arrest data for specific riots) are not likely to be black. So one obvious pattern here is that when poor black people riot (and we even have a special name for that, a ‘race riot’), it’s something to become immediately concerned about it, but when middle-class white students riot, it’s not a matter for serious concern.
As to answer point 4, google ‘Kent State Shootings’ It’s decades ago, but it’s one of the most famous student protests in American history. Your comment also raises the question of why California didn’t call out the National Guard over 15,000 rioters, why West Virginia didn’t call them out over a 5,000 student riot, why Connecticut didn’t call them out over 10,000 students rioting. Remember, many of these riots are annual affairs rooted in tradition–they’re quite predictable, and so the argument could be made that state governors ought to be proactive in addressing this violence.
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Another reasonably well known case of the National Guard being deployed to bust heads at a student protest was in Berkley, CA, on May. 15 1969. Ronald Reagan, then governor, deployed the Guard to end the occupation of a vacant plot of land owned by the University of Berkley that students were trying to turn into a park. One student was killed and over 100 others were injured. In days and weeks afterward the National Guard deployed so much tear gas from helicopters that the wind blew it all over the city, affecting people miles away.
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Thank you for reminding me of that.
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I think the lesson is that as much as race has to do w/ our media’s uneven fixation, there’s an element that has to do w/ riots associated w/ political action v. riots associated w/ mindless celebration. Maybe we worry more about riots meant to effect political change bc we see them as a threat to the longterm status quo and even stability of the system. These student riots in the op were more like liminal bacchanals. Student riots like Kent presented a different kind of threat – one more frightening to the average American citizen: that the system itself is broken and falling a part and if we don’t act to establish stability we are going to have total system collapse.
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That’s perhaps the most astute comment anyone has made on this post. Yes you are correct that perceived motivation or challenge to the social and political order may well be a factor in how people react to these different types of riot. The riots I’ve focused on a ludic (or as you say ‘bacchanalian’) in nature, which may make them seem less threatening because they are not directed toward any particular goal other than ‘fun’.
However, some people have talked about how the inner city rioters didn’t have a real cause and were just making trouble, so at least some people perceive the Milwaukee riots to have a ludic element to them. If you’re correct, that ought to diffuse some of the anxiety around those riots. But when black teens engage in ludic violence (rampaging through a local mall or causing trouble at the State Fair or the Festival grounds), it’s not excused, but rather seen as a need for crackdown, for the imposition of law and order. So I would speculate that racial issues (or perhaps class issues) causes people to categorize white student rioting as ludic but black people rioting as a threat to the social order. So once again, we seem to come back to race and class as key factors in people’s perception of the events.
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The governor didn’t just willy nilly call for the national guard. The national guard was requested by the county sheriff. Also, the governor had the national guard on stand by and would only be allowed to take action if a city official requested it. Not the county sheriff, but a city official.
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Thank you for that information. Could you provide me with a link to a news story confirming those details?
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I definitely agree with that last point. IIRC, the Boston Police are well prepared and do everything in their power to maintain crowd control when a Boston team is participating in a championship event.
I think the most important clue is this… media aside, we as a society react differently to situations where the actions are similar, but there are cultural differences involved. Case and point: beefing up a police presence during a championship game is a smart move but goes relatively unnoticed. Beefing up a police presence on the off-chance there might be a riot generally evokes claims that their First Amendment Rights are being threatened or that the cops are out to get them.
The problem is that I can only see two basic reasons for a riot… the first being short-lived stupidity and the second being long-lived anger. The latter is and has has always been more noteworthy from the media perspective.
I think most college kids will wake up the next day with a “wtf was I thinking” attitude and go on about their business… but the angry person is still angry.
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That’s a fair observation. Certainly the motivations behind student riots are quite different than those behind reach riots over police killings, and that certainly affects how the riots play out.
In my personal opinion, I find a riot over pent-up anger and frustration about long-running grievances more understandable than a spontaneous burst of violence for fun. To me, the latter is more reprehensible because it’s less justifiable (not to suggest that rioting is truly justified).
But the college student faces fewer consequences and less social condemnation.
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John Rohan I never got that point.
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Thank you for this very thoughtful and thorough piece. I know it’s not your usual bill of fare, but I appreciate it. 🙂
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You’re welcome. As I said in the post, as a scholar, I feel that I have a duty to speak up when I think my research has a bearing on current events. I don’t claim that I somehow have the key to understanding the whole problem, but I think my work on student violence puts recent race riots into a new perspective.
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Are you a scholar?
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Yes. You can read a bit about me on the About Me page. And the essay links to a post about my recent research
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Thank you for your research and well-reasoned points. I have a question: since, as you said, this riot was over a genuine issue and not a football game, does it not make sense for the media to cover it more thoroughly?
The media are so vilified these days–but if their function is supposed to be to inform us about our communities, it seems like they are doing good work in highlighting the frustration of these protesters in a bigger way than they highlight the frustration of students who lost a basketball game. The marginalized protesters’ frustration is being heard around the world because of the media. It is up to everyone else to listen to them and improve the awful divide, not just dismiss this as misplaced violence.
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That is one way to interpret the facts. But if that were the reason for the focus, I would expect the reporting to emphasize the shooting, not the riots, and I’m not sure that’s where the emphasis in the reporting is (based purely on my personal assessment–perhaps a media study would show I’m wrong).
What strikes me is that based simply on the scale of the riots, student riots ought to get much more coverage than they do. But the fact that the media apparently considers them a story of only minor and local note is incongruous with the comparative scale. That’s why I’m trying to point out.
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Thank you for posting this. It highlights important parallels with other incidents happening in our society.
I am unfortunately not a scholar and so I regret that my points will likely not be as well reasoned as yours, but upon reading your post I had much the same question as the one raised above. It seems to me that one of the main functions of the news media is to report on new things that have the potential to change the way people see things in our society. In this case the new thing was (unfortunately) not the fact of a police shooting, but rather what happened afterward. As a result, it makes a certain amount of sense that the reporting would focus on the aftermath.
Taken a step further, it seems that this would also explain why the news media do not prominently report on student riots, drug violence in Mexico, or suicide bombings in Lebanon. These sorts of things happen relatively often, and within a fairly well-defined narrative of the American experience. On the other hand, events in Milwaukee represent a meaningful change in status for an evolving national discussion on race and policing that has gotten a lot of attention in recent years and that may have been turbocharged by the tenor of the presidential election.
This is why, as uncomfortable as the situation in Milwaukee is, I can’t help but feel that I prefer seeing the articles in the news than not. In a way, I think I would be more concerned if race riots started getting lumped in with starving children in Africa and other things people don’t seem to care much about in this country.
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That’s an interesting way to read the facts. I am not trying to suggest that the Milwaukee riots are less important than the student riots. It’s important that they are covered from a variety of angles. I wouldn’t want the media to ignore them. My city has some serious problems that I desperately want to see addressed.
I think, however, that your analysis has a flaw in it. You compare student riots to drug violence in Mexico and bombings in the Middle East. But I think most people are well-aware of those as issues–few would be surprised to learn that suicide bombings are an issue in the Middle East. In contrast, I don’t think people realize how common student riots are in this country. I certainly didn’t until my study of medieval student violence caused me to start noticing them here in the US. so I don’t think the media’s attitude is “oh, another group of rioting students. Let’s find a fresher story.” I think it’s more “(white) students will be students. No story here.”
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I think you should keep posting “important” things. Educated and well thought out views re very valuable in today’s watered down news reporting!
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Thank you for the vote of confidence. If I think my scholarly research gives me room to say something, I will.
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This is very interesting, thought provoking and true. I plan on sharing it with others. For me, the media coverage of Ferguson opened my eyes and my mind. I found myself being judgmental, knowingly judgmental. It didn’t feel right and caused for pause to pray. A few days later a friend posted a class called Hard Conversations: An Introduction to Racism 37 days. This class changed who I am and how I think. I think covering the riots due to police shootings are more important than a college student riot. The problem is the focus is just on the riot and only a mere mention, if that, on the reason. Two years have passed since Ferguson. Why isn’t there coverage on what steps have been taken in the city to stop the shootings of unarmed black men? Why isn’t there coverage of the citizens of Ferguson to ask if they feel safer and if police and the city has taken steps to prevent this. Oh, I feel myself hopping on my soapbox so I will stop here for now.
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I think it is very challenging for white people to think about racial issues because we’re taught to not think about race, which causes us to assume the society we live in is race-neutral, when in fact it tends to be weighted toward us.
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Hello,
First I have to say I really love the data, and different viewpoint you offer here. I have lived in MKE for over ten years, and can say the situation is tense. There are multiple people killed every weekend it seems, the Friday before the riot I believe the number was five. The area this took place in is a dangerous neighborhood. I believe that is why the national guard was brought in, there are a lot of guns in the area, and statistics show the young men from there are willing to use them.
I agree the riot got more coverage because it was race related, and that topic sells seats. However, the rioters were yelling something along the lines of, if they white, get em.
This part is what has so many tense here in MKE. Heavily armed men with little to lose, no fear of the law, and a perceived view of their community behind them.
Ross
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I’m glad you found the essay useful. My goal here was to offer another perspective on the riots, not to deny that the riot was a bad thing or justifiable. You are certainly right that inner-city Milwaukee is a dangerous place, and I think that many young black men feel a lot of anger over the situation and resort to gun violence too quickly. I don’t believe the National Guard actually was brought in though. At least, I haven’t seen any reports of that.
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Saturday, August 13 (not 15)
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That was a total typo–I knew it was the 13th. I must have fat-fingered when I was typing. Thank you for catching it.
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Reblogged this on schreckenbergschreibt and commented:
Hochinteressanter Off-Topic Beitrag von A. E. Larsen, einem meiner Lieblingsblogger. Bitte lesen. Und während ihr das lest, fragt Euch doch mal, wie oft ihr in letzter Zeit Berichte über Kriminalität von “Flüchtlingen” oder “südländisch aussehenden Menschen” gelesen habt. Wer glaubt, das läge daran, dass diese Menschen besonders oft kriminell würde, schaue hier.
Very interesting off-topic post by A. E. Larsen, one of my favourite bloggers. Please read. And while reading, ask yourself, how often you have read about crimes commited by „refugees“ or „southernish looking people“ lately. Whoever thinks, this results from these people commiting crimes remarkably often, look here.
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Thanks for this. To note Michigan State students have rioted numerous times in East Lansing in recent decades, most notably after NCAA tournament losses in 1999, 2003 and 2005. The worst of these came in ’99, when 132 people were arrested and $250,000 in vandalism damage was incurred.
But of course, there are no sweeping character assumptions made about white people in any of the above situations.
The double standard is staggering.
I don’t condone violence by any means, but if you keep suppressing a people this is what happens. I’m all about equity because equality just isn’t a reality. The media is and has been complicit in this narrative for decades now. Studies of Americans’ unconscious beliefs shows that most people — white and black — think black people are dangerous and both average folks and police are quicker to shoot black than white people.
Where does the cognitive belief that black people are dangerous come from?
Partly, it comes from the media. A Color of Change study found that, while 51% of the people arrested for violent crime in New York City are black, 75% of the news reports about such arrests highlighted black alleged perpetrators. I’m all over the map here, but you have me thinking, I wish others would do the same and thanks.
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Yes, we don’t hear white students being derided as ‘thugs’ or ‘animals’, the way black rioters sometimes are. In fact, if you browse through the linked articles, you’ll see some of them even resist labeling the event as a riot. Sometimes it’s put in quotation marks.
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I’m failing to read in this entire article where it says whites were beating every African-American that came down “their” street and where it says that whites would be taking their anger, burning and destruction to their cities and neigjborhoods. This article is irrelevant. Not one of these is a race war that’s trying to be started. I have no problems with any race of any kind. But when you threaten to come to my neighborhood, and potentially put my children and family in danger. That’s why I have a problem. Im not quite sure you are seeing all reporting being done.
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I fail to see how this addresses the points I made in my essay. Your argument seems to be that since the rioters did some bad things, that means…the media doesn’t privilege white student riots? As I say in the article, I am not suggesting that the Milwaukee rioters didn’t do anything criminal. My point is entirely that the media treats this riot quite differently from student riots. Nor do I claim that I am offering a comprehensive description of everything that happened during the riots.
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Also, for what it’s worth, claims that black protesters assaulted white people stem from a deceptively edited video posted on right-wing blogs. You can see the debunking here: http://www.snopes.com/black-protesters-targeted-whites-in-milwaukee/
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To say the video is debunked is a huge leap. There were attacks on white people, police were not able to get there in time – police couldn’t even get to the gas station and it had to burn for 2 hours before they were able to secure it for MFD. If you’ve ever been in a riot in Milwaukee, being white makes you a target. I was involved in one when a festival was over and they were forcing people out. A group of black kids ran through the lot, damaging cars, using racial slurs and beating up me and my two white friends because of our skin color. It was a group of about 30 kids, but I’m sure by your loose definition of riot, it would fit. It was not reported on the news, nor did I stick around to make a police report either.
I don’t know anyone who thinks white riots are okay. The media reports what it wants to, it leaves out white people killed by police as well. You can’t condone one and disapprove of the other. There is not a war on black people by the police – lately (thanks to BLM), black people have felt emboldened and justified in fighting with the police. It is acceptable to reject the police and those that are uneducated in what the law is, think they know better. BLM has made it more dangerous to be black – rather than open EQUAL dialogue and gather facts, it is encouraged to jump to a narrative that is repeated until it believed as fact. I heard two rioters talking, and neither one knew what the riots were about – they just joined in. Like the mob mentality on campus – neither cause was more profound than the other.
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Forgive me, but you seem to mostly be expressing your own sense of frustration than responding to my post. At no point does my essay condone the Milwaukee riots, nor did I say that there is a police war on black people.
I’m sorry that you were caught up in a small riot. That must have been a very frightening experience, and I’m glad you weren’t seriously harmed (at least, from what you say I assume you weren’t).
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You are saying there is a police war on black people by only talking about the police shootings of black people.
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No, I’m not. I’m pointing out that the black community in the city has some reason to be concerned about police killings. If you read that paragraph again, you’ll see that I explicitly refuse to pass judgment about whether those killings were justified or not.
If you think that I’m claiming there is a police war on black people, it’s evidence that you’re projecting your concerns onto my essay.
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When you don’t present both sides of the stat, it leaves out context. In this case, the way I have seen your article shared as support for a police war on black people.
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I’m not sure what the “other side of the stat” would be? The number of black people they haven’t killed? What do you mean?
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Some good insights into the perception differences between “similar” events with “different” participants. I’m wondering if there are “differences” beyond skin color that would justify different reactions between the two types of similar events. For example, what percentage of the participants are armed with a deadly weapon? I would suggest that there is a higher % in the racial clashes (would also apply to KKK rallies, biker gang standoffs, etc). What percentage of the participants knew their father, were raised by single parents, completed high school, have an arrest record of more than one incident? As you break down the groups by different characteristics that correlate to “risk” of violence or predictability of an outcome, I believe any reasonable person would view the two events much differently and describe them as such. And when the “predictability of an event is violated, such as took place in Madison some years back with a stabbing death (I believe it was a non-student out-of-towner (Michigan?) that was charged and also a non-student victim, the latitude given in future “events” is restricted.
I believe there is racial bias in our society and racial inequity in our justice system. However, the youth justice system is clearly broken in Milwaukee and is contributing to the problem due to excessive leniency. Conceding that, where is the sense of responsibility for actions in the African American community? Let’s try not getting girls pregnant out of wedlock – at least cut it in half. Because only animals “mate on instinct” and even most of the animal species involve both parents in the raising of the young. The difference between humans and animals is that human beings possess self awareness, imagination, conscience and independent will. Examined in this light, I think there are distinct and fundamental differences between the “events” you use to make your point, but more importantly the cultures or subcultures that you are comparing.
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Your point that there are other differences than just skin color is a very reasonable one. There are clearly a number of strong differences in these two groups of riots: size, race, class (which I think is probably as important here as race), weapons vs non-weapons, looting vs non-looting, and so on. I do not pretend that my analysis is an exhaustive one–as I acknowledge, my wheelhouse is medieval student riots, not modern American race riots.
However, I would point out that in your comment, you compare black people to animals, which is perilously close to outright racism. When you metaphorically dehumanize a group of people that way, you are unlikely to understand the factors that motivate them.
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While I do not normally follow the drivel of self appointed scholars, I find this one particularly insulting to law enforcement. Let me expound on scholars such as yourself.
1.a learned or erudite person, especially one who has profound knowledge of a particular subject.
2.a student; pupil.
3.a student who has been awarded a scholarship.
Perhaps you need to stick to the lawless era of which you claim to have knowledge.
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Your skepticism about my education is noted. It’s entirely irrelevant to my claims, but duly noted. The fact that you chose to try to refute my essay by insulting me suggests you lack a factual basis to do so and thus resorted to the Internet equivalent of sticking your tongue out at me. Have a nice day.
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Hi! I’m an editor at the Huffington Post. I just your fascinating post. I think our readers could really connect with it. Would you be interested in re-posting this piece on our site? Feel free to reach out to me at hayley [dot] miller [at] huffingtonpost [dot] com. Hope to hear from you!
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Usually, people like yourself who (repeatedly) refer to themselves as “scholar” or some other elitist label are blithering idiots. A real scholar would not have mentioned it, but would prove it through inciteful commentary. I have a PhD by the way – what degree do you have Mr. Scholar?
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I have a doctorate in medieval history and 18 years of experience teaching and doing research. So when I say I’m a scholar, I mean that in a literal, professional way. As I say in the post, I am studying student riots in the Middle Ages, and that’s made me notice how frequent they are these days. So I do not pretend to be an expert on modern American riots. Whether you think my commentary is insightful enough to prove my qualifications to you is for you to decide.
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I sincerely apologize for being an ass, I did not realize that this was your personal blog page. I just clicked on a link and was directed to this page commenting on the riots. I appreciate your cool-headed response to my flaming rant. You are a better online person that me. Please keep up your commentary. I actually appreciate and agree with some of your comments. However, I got the feeling that you were downplaying the seriousness of what happened in Milwaukee, a town which I lived in for 8 years and really love. At least some of the rioters/protesters were explicitly out to harm white people even though it was a black policeman that shot the victim/criminal. In the college riots you mentioned, the students were not roaming the streets looking to harm anyone (at least as a group – there are always a few bad apples in any crowd), especially someone of a particular race. There have been similar instances of black students in Atlanta at their festival which gets out of hand sometimes, and the media treats it as such like other student “riots”. It seems you are looking to equate the two very different situations, Since you do have alot of experience looking at student violence, I will concede you have a right to comment on things like this. I just hope you don’t go so far as implying it is OK for people to be violent in response to violence. I think the BLM movement has lots of justification for being angry and wanting change. But I also know that in Milwaukee black racism and anger is real and leads to black-on-white violence that is real, unprovoked and unjustifiable. Like Rodney King, I hope we can all just get along.
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Apology accepted. You had every right to ask about my qualifications.
I am by no means trying to minimize the seriousness of the Milwaukee riots. Rather I am critiquing the disparity between how we (particularly the media) respond to white people rioting and black people rioting. But violence is a serious problem and deserves to be treated seriously whenever it occurs. Nor am I trying to suggest that these two types of riots are the same thing; they are clearly different phenomena in a number of regards. But I do find it interesting that white people keep seeking alternative explanations for the disparity, offering all sorts of things other than race. Given how huge an issue race is in America, we desperately don’t want to look at it.
In regard to claims that the Milwaukee rioters were looking to injury white people, that claims is at least in part false. According to http://www.snopes.com/black-protesters-targeted-whites-in-milwaukee/, although protesters did talk about it, they do not appear to have actually done so, at least not in the video that is being circulated.
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I greatly appreciate the time and effort put into providing this perspective. I think the people who are getting upset are missing the point you are trying to make, which is why, as a society, do we respond so differently to the same behavior in different contexts? I was unaware of this disparity because I was unaware of the nature and frequency of student riots. Now I am aware and I appreciate being more informed.
I also live in Milwaukee- I have my whole life. I am aware of the perceived racial tensions and segregation. I’ve been unable to wrap my head around the idea that Milwaukee doesn’t provide enough opportunity to the lower socioeconomic residents because I grew up going to MPS and my family was in the lower sector of “middle class,” which is basically poor but not in complete poverty- they could just barely make ends meet and we had no luxuries (even though both my parents worked). Yet somehow I managed to get my education and now have a professional career.
I do disagree with your response above that states “Milwaukee rioters were looking to (injure) white people…is at least in part false.” There is a 15-minute video online, seemingly recorded by one of the rioters, where one rioter is yelling about blacks and whites not being able to live together, so one “has got to go.” There’s a separate video of Sherelle Smith attempting to incite the rioters to take the violence to the (presumably white) suburbs. There’s also the statement Ald. Khalif Rainey made during a press conference implying that the violence would be taken to areas of development downtown if the city didn’t make immediate rectifications to the black community. The rioters seemed to be bent on injuring white residents- just because they didn’t actually find a significant group of white people to injure, doesn’t nullify their intent.
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I think it is very hard for white people to see just how hard it can be for some black people to live in the US. Privilege means not having to see how the system benefits us. That makes it hard to see through.
As far as injuring white people is concerned, it’s clear that some rioters were angry and chose to blame white people. But the video you refer to has been shown to be selectively edited to exaggerate the degree of threat and violence. Snopes.com has an article debunking it. Ive also heard from a few white people who witnessed the riot and denied seeing any threatening behavior (although that doesn’t mean it can’t have happened elsewhere).
To me, to the degree that threats were directed toward white parts of the city, it is a sign of how profoundly frustrated black people are by what they perceive as wildly unequal treatment. That’s not to excuse it, merely to analyze it.
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I appreciate the discourse. I have a couple of friends who live in the Sherman Park neighborhood. They love their neighborhood and are active in the community, but they did feel threatened and afraid over the weekend.
I also am fully aware of the concept of white privilege. As a social worker, part of my education was extensive reading of articles and books, discussions, and papers on this topic. I do agree that white privilege exists in many forms, but I do not believe there is as little opportunity for advancement in Milwaukee as some minorities and/or people of lesser means proclaim.
As a single, white woman with no children, I can guarantee you the “system” does not work in my favor, either. I pay more taxes, work more hours, and because I work in a field that is predominately female, make less money (which, btw, is the real issue of “equal pay for women”- not for example, a female attorney or professor making less than a male attorney or professor- it’s that female dominated professions have much lower pay scales than male dominated professions…shall we call it male privilege?).
Nonetheless, I do appreciate your article as I think it was very informative, prompts thought, and I’m sure I’ll be sharing what I learned from your article with friends as the discussions about last weekend’s events continue.
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I entirely agree with your critique of social workers’ pay. There is a strong tendency for work that is gendered female to have low pay and social status. When a formerly male profession gets regendered as female, it tends to see a drop in income and status–my understanding is that in post-Soviet Russia, as medicine became gendered female, there was a steep drop in pay for doctors of all sorts.
I’m glad you feel the article had some value in terms of stimulating thought. That’s what I was hoping for.
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p.s. The 15-minute video was non-stop for about 9 minutes during daylight hours, then made a jump to an additional non-stop 6 minutes once it was dark and the violence started. The video of S. Smith and Ald. Rainey was aired live.
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Your analysis and your calm response to commenters are exemplary.
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One of the many benefits of being an academic is that it teaches you how to disagree with someone calmly and rationally, and I think the internet needs a lot more of it, so I try to model it for others. I can debate the merits of my argument without feeling like I am being personally attacked. But thank you for the compliment.
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Really, my comment was censored. It was about “get whitey” which is the main point to be drawn from this.
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I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t edit or censor comments made on this blog.
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Thank you for taking the time to put this together.
Early on in college, one of my professors emphasized that in doing research something we should always be asking is, “Compared to what?” To appropriately understand things, we shouldn’t be taking them out of the context in which they occur, and a comparison with similar events is part of that context.
That advice has served me well in my academic career and in my professional work, which also involved news. While some news organizations are genuinely concerned about keeping the public informed and getting useful information out there, other institutions that purport to be reporting news are actually about engineering perspective and promoting what politely would be called propaganda.
The way riots like those in Milwaukee are reported by such organizations requires that the general public NOT be aware of all these other riots that you mentioned. Because if the public knows about them and remembers them, then that comparative perspective about Milwaukee undermines the message that they want to put forward, that the Milwaukee rides are completely out of control, completely without reason, and animalistic. And if they can get you to think that way, then they can prevent you from wondering about the underlying factors that are really causing the problems in this country.
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I had thought about including a discussion of the language the media uses with these two different types of riot, but decided that would require more work than I had time for.
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Thanks for this well researched and well thought-out article.
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Your overall premise that college riots are way worse than the Milwaukee riots is terribly flawed. As a result, it’s inappropriate for you to compare how the media has reacted to the Milwaukee riots in contrast to the student riots you referenced. You indicated,
“But the scale of the Milwaukee riots is far smaller than the student riots I’ve mentioned”. According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, the word scale is defined as “the size or level of something in comparison to what is average”. When considering the “scale” you primarily focused on the number of people rioting. That’s a myopic way to discuss the size/level of a riot.
Wouldn’t it make sense to also consider the the number of lives affected by the rioting? Wouldn’t it make sense to consider the geographic span of the locations of rioting/looting/arson (which was several square miles). Wouldn’t it make sense to also take into account the severity and extent of the damage and violence as well as some of the other quantitative and qualitative factors below?
-at least 8 buildings were set on fire including:
BP Gas Station, 3114 N. Sherman Blvd.
O’Reilly Auto Parts, 3405 W. Fond du Lac Ave.
Jet Beauty Supply, 3501 W. Burleigh St.
BMO Harris Bank, 3536 W. Fond du Lac Ave.
PJ’s Supermarket, 3079 N. 21st St.
MJM Liquor Store, 2229 W. Fond du Lac Ave.
A to Z Wholesale Liquor, 2233 W. Fond Du Lac Ave.
Big Jim’s Liquor, 2161 W. Hopkins St.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2016/08/16/damage-weekend-fires-millions/88863366/
A vacant home on 50th and Wright was also ablaze under suspicious circumstances.
http://fox6now.com/2016/08/16/red-cross-assisting-5-adults-1-child-following-house-fire-near-50th-wright-in-milwaukee/
Fire companies from multiple communities were called upon to assist the Milwaukee Fire Department (e.g., Wauwatosa, North Shore, West Allis, Oak Creek)
-the BP gas station that was set on fire was done while three employees were inside. http://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/watch-crowd-burns-down-bp-gas-station-with-employees-trapped-inside
Rioters danced outside knowing that the employees were trapped inside a burning building. Firefighters could not fight the fire because they were getting shot at.
The employees were only able to evacuate when an armored vehicle was brought in.
-the damage from the fires alone is estimated in the millions…the highest figure related to damage in the many riots you referenced was $15,000
http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2016/08/16/damage-weekend-fires-millions/88863366/
-a bystander who happens to be white was shot in the neck
http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2016/08/18/after-miracle-teen-reflects-random-shooting/88967162/
-motorists were targeted simply for being white
http://m.liveleak.com/view?i=595_1471182513
http://m.liveleak.com/view?i=5dd_1471150626
-shots were fired at multiple police cars
-bricks (not just rocks) were thrown at multiple police officers. One officer sustained a head injury when a brick was thrown through his windshield.
-the sister of Sylville Smith called for rioters to set fires in the suburbs.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/milwaukee-riots-sylville-smith-sister-sherelle-smith-rioters-burn-down-the-suburbs-police-a7195371.html
-multiple businesses were looted (e.g., Clark’s Liquor, Jet Beauty, BP gas, Milwaukee Metro PCS, other liquor stores as well as a supermarket)
-many vehicles were set on fire including those of both citizens and police officers
-reporters and a photographer were attacked
http://www.cbs58.com/story/32755037/cbs-58-reporters-were-attacked-while-covering-bp-gas-station-fire
http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2016/08/13/report-1-dead-officer-involved-shooting/88689152/
-police had to barricade the entrance to the District 7 police station
-The National Guard was called up
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/us/violent-crowd-confronts-police-in-milwaukee-after-fatal-shooting.html
Most importantly, when comparing the riots in Milwaukee to other riots it is crucial to consider the number of lives affected. In Milwaukee, many many lives were significantly affected by this, far more than any student riot. Let’s start with the law abiding citizens in the communities in which the rioting took place who were terrified at the anarchy they saw around them. Think about the children that had to witness that despicable behavior and how some were likely traumatized (e.f., hearing/seeing gun shots, seeing people getting beaten, seeing the aftermath of the bystander shot in the neck, seeing multiple buildings ablaze). Consider the injured police officers and their families, the bystander who was shot and his family, spouses and children of emergency workers who were watching the events unfold live on t.v. while hearing reports that emergency responders were getting shot at, the business owners (some of them who are minorities) who have to start all over, the employees of the businesses destroyed who are likely out of a job and will struggle to support their families while they search for a new job, or the officer who shot and killed Sylville Smith ostensibly in self-defense while doing his job. The officer involved has had to go into hiding due to having his name and image spread by “news” agencies and the multitude of death threats that ensued.
The consequences of the riots in Milwaukee are far reaching. And unfortunately, as we all know perception tends to become reality. With this in mind, consider the suburbanites who volunteer in the inner city who are now having second thoughts about continuing to do so. Consider that there will likely be teachers in Milwaukee who look for a job elsewhere. Consider how some current Milwaukee residents will move to suburbs. Consider how some prospective Milwaukee residents just changed their mind about buying a house within the city limits. Consider how property values in Milwaukee as a whole will likely be impacted from all of this.
Last point I’ll make, you seem to tout the fact that you’re a “scholar” yet you cited local news, Facebook, and Wikipedia as your sources of information on the Milwaukee riots. Do scholars really trust local news, Facebook, and Wikipedia as sources of “scholarly” information? Why was there no attempt to independently verify any of the information you were quick to use to support your deeply flawed assumption that student riots (and their associated dumpster fires, cars flipped, broken windows, and firecrackers) are way worse than what happened in Milwaukee. Why didn’t you seek publicly available information such as police reports or calls for police service? How come a regular guy like me – not being a gifted scholar – was able to find a far greater breadth of information than an esteemed professor of medieval studies such as yourself?
I could go on with more information and sources to refute your laughable thesis but I have a wife and kids I have to get back to. Unfortunately, I don’t get paid to bloviate like a “scholar” does.
TL,DR: If you’re going to weigh in on topics like the riots in Milwaukee, all I ask is that next time you would do so in an intellectually honest manner.
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You make a lot of points here, but I only have time to respond to a couple; I apologize for having to be selective.
1) You’ve entirely misunderstood the point of my essay. I am not arguing that the Milwaukee riot was not serious. I am saying that the national media routinely ignores far larger riots by white college students. There is a very big difference between a group of about 100 people and a group of 15,000. If the former deserves national media attention, so too does the latter. I am critiquing the media, not defending the riot. So if you want to accuse me of intellectual dishonesty, you ought to first understand what I’m saying.
2) your arguments about law-abiding citizens and children being terrified of the violence in Milwaukee can easily be applied to student riots as well.
3) I _am_ a scholar, both by education and profession. So I’m not a “scholar”, I actually am one. The sources I cite are not scholarly, but primary sources such as news reports are by definition not scholarly. A ‘scholarly source’ is one written by a scholar following rigorous methods of analysis, reviewed by other scholars, and publisher in a peer-reviewed press. By definition no blog post is scholarly under any circumstances. So you’re misunderstanding what a scholarly source is. I make no claims that this essay is scholarly, only that it’s written by a scholar whose research has made him notice something.
I linked to the Wikipedia article because, as I say in the essay, it contains links to many news stories about the riot; in other words it was a quick way to get my readers to multiple relevant stories. Nor was I attempting to survey the whole events of the riot, merely summarize them for my readers before moving on to make my main point, which is that rioting is much more common than most people realize. So when you compare the sources you link to with mine, you’re comparing apples to oranges; I’m making a rather different point than you are.
4) this is my personal blog, published on my personal time. I do not get paid by my job to do this, any more than you got paid to post your comment.
5) I’m happy to discuss the merits of my argument, but if you want to do that, you’ll need to leave out the insults and sarcasm. I require a minimum standard of basic politeness, and at the end of your comment you fall below that minimum standard. In serious debate, name-calling is not acceptable behavior, because personal insults do not determine whether or not my argument is strong.
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You miss the most important point. The blacks involved then targeted white people specifically for violence against said white people.
A racist hate crime of violence. With the BLM being funded by Soros and gang…and the white house “wake up in a house built by slaves” apparently wanting a race war, well I think you need to look deeper.
This goes beyond excited people acting stupid.
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Reports of black people actually attacking white people seem, so far as I can determine from reliable news media, to be entirely fabricated by right-wing bloggers.
I have been unable to find any reliable media reports demonstrating that black people actually attacked white people. Perhaps you know of some that I missed.
On the 14th, Sherelle Smith did angrily tell people to take the violence to the suburbs. That was wrong of her. However there are several points to note about that. 1) she was upset about the killing of her brother not long before. 2) she said that after the violence on the 13th, so she did not invite the violence of the 1st night. 3) The larger point she seems to have wanted to make is that the violence that was going on in her neighborhood was destroying resources the community needs. She seems, from what I can tell from the footage of the speech online, to be suggesting that the suburbs can take damage more easily. It was not an appropriate way to express a call to stop hurting the neighborhood, but that seems to have been her point. 4) On the 15th, she said in an interview that she did not want violence. She invited white people to get to know her neighborhood, participate in its events, and end segregation. She did not, however, apologize for what she said the day before.
From all of that, she seems to have been speaking from anger and grief on the 14th and more calmly on the 15th issued a call for peace. That does not justify what she said on the 14th, but I do think it makes it more understandable. If someone killed one of my family members, I’m not sure I wouldn’t express similar thoughts the day afterward.
And the White House was, in fact, built by slaves. I’m not sure what that has to do with the Milwaukee riots.
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I think everyone can agree that OF COURSE riots are terrifying, cause a lot of damage, and are generally undesirable. I have been in the middle of political riots in Europe and I was genuinely afraid that I might die – to be really honest I was more afraid of the police in those situations. But I want to make it clear that I am not defending or justifying riots right up front.
What is interesting to me in the comments here that are critical of aelarsen is the background assumption of the just system. In other words, my interpretation of the counter-argument to the blog is that the system: law enforcement, property owners, law abiding citizens, and so forth enjoy a monopoly on rights. Rioters, by virtue of rioting, forfeit all of their rights and have no moral justification for their rioting because they attack things like property and law enforcement, and of course threaten white people.
There is a lot of focus on the details of the damage, the exact scale of the riots, the potential negative impact of the riots on people who were not involved in the riots – in general that these riots have disrupted the just system that prevails. But from the perspective of the rioters the system itself is the greatest source of violence.
An analogy would be Iraq. The United States destroyed Iraq and yet in the American media and discourse the discussions focus on the negative impact of the Iraq war on America. The objection to this analogy I imagine would be the argument that white people did not destroy the black community – but I would argue that the slow violence of historical racism in the United States has a similar impact to bombing and occupying Iraq. And notice there have been discussions in America about the Iraqis being ungrateful to the United States for invading it. In our just system assumption: we did Iraq a huge favor by destroying it.
I agree with the interpretation that student riots are more acceptable – and less newsworthy – because they do not challenge the assumed justice of the dominant social system. People get annoyed by student rioting, but people seem to get angry about black rioting. Black rioting is so offensive because it forces the surrounding white society to confront the plight of black people: I say it is a mirror of white privilege. My interpretation of some of the responses is that people feel an underlying “how dare they!” How dare the rioters make me uncomfortable! How dare the rioters disrupt the just social system which is not easy for me either! How dare these “thugs” make me think about uncomfortable things like racism and my own whiteness (notice too that student rioters are never called thugs).
I think what is happening is that when black people challenge the system’s monopoly on force and violence – white people get angry and nervous.
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You make some very good points. MLK Jr called riots “the language of the unheard”. The point he was making is that the violence is often resorted to by people who feel they have no other way to express their grievances because the powers that be ignore all other means of communication. Emmaline Pankhurst made a similar argument for the violence of the Suffragette movement.
Riots are an exceptionally complex phenomenon–why they start, how they pick the targets of their violence, what brings them to an end, and so on. Most of the negative comments about the riot have resisted seeing it as the expression of a complex set of grievances and frustrations.
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Exactly. But that just takes me back to my statement about cultural differences. If I had been anywhere near a riot in my college days, my mother would have “smacked me into the middle of next week” as she used to say. Somewhere along the line, we’ve been conditioned to believe that these are just kids being kids. That only makes me wonder about all the other areas in which we’ve been conditioned in ways that have done significant damage to our relationships with our communities.
Point being… I agree with your observations, there is often no logic in reality and emotion is a powerful motivator for both right and wrong.
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More precisely, we’re conditioned that it’s just white kids being kids. Imagine how people would react if 5,000 black college students tipped police cars and lit dumpster fired after a sports game. I think society would label them ‘thugs’ and ‘animals’ and claim they were looking to rape white women and so on. Ever since the days of slavery, white people have been trained to find black men, even as young as Tamir Rice, physically threatening.
My point is, there’s a strong racial component to ‘boys will be boys’.
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And there’s the proof right there. You and I are sitting here having a great exchange… and although I’m sitting here making a conscious effort to characterize things correctly… my own conditioning got in the way. You’re absolutely right.
I was on a plane a few months back when a young black man sat in the seat next to me. He didn’t make me nervous at all, but I could hear the rap music blaring from his head phones and he was a really, really big kid so I was thinking that two hour flight was going to be really uncomfortable.
I get nervous during take-off so as soon as the plane started to roll, I grabbed my husband’s hand. This kid immediately says “I’ve never flown before… can I hold your other one”. I thought he was going to squeeze my fingers off, but eventually he let go and said “I think I’m okay now”. Being squished in the middle seat and listening to the rap bleeding from his head set didn’t seem quite so important.
Slinking back to my corner to ponder some more 🙂
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Thanks for sharing that story. The important thing is not that you that badly of the boy but that when he asked you for a little help, you gave it. We can’t control the various negative thoughts we have. But we can control the way we act on them, and you did the kind thing despite being uncomfortable.
They say that being brave isn’t the absence of fear, but acting even when your afraid. Perhaps there’s an analogous concept here–eschewing racism isn’t about never having bad thoughts toward other races; it’s about treating them as humans regardless of what the voices inside might say.
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Oh, hey, are you a scholar? I couldn’t tell from the article or the comments section. Maybe you should mention that fact in your writings in case readers would like to know.
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I mention the issue in the essay where I think it’s relevant. I have mentioned it in the comments section only when other people have questioned whether I was a scholar or not. I fail to see why you find that objectionable.If you have a problem with it, you’re welcome to not read my blog.
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Fortunately for us readers, rioting is a CRIME so there are many laws to guide our thinking on the subject without resorting to conjecture. The willful destruction of property for purposes of amusement is usually called vandalism; it carries a lighter sentence than willful destruction of property for purposes of revenge or political expression, which is usually considered felony destruction of property.
Motive matters, in court and in the newsroom. On its face the response may seem biased because of the respective colors of those involved, but when properly thought through, weighing the societal cost of “college riots” vs “race riots” reveals, I believe, a fair and consistent sense of proportion in the response.
A proper and thorough accounting of race riots in the US goes back far beyond 2012, and as recently as the 1992 LA riots. They point to a wellspring of anger and frustration which has the potential, if unchecked, to destroy American society from the inside. When properly investigated, this is a newsworthy story. A college riot – no matter how large – seems to be more or less the random, motive-less destruction wrought by many drunk young people being in the same place at the same time.
Unless you’re prepared to make the case that college riots point to a deeper issue that might potentially threaten the country’s cohesion (which you certainly could do, but it would be a stretch), then you must acknowledge that race riots are a far more important issue, and thus media coverage (while still awful, because our media is terrible) is at least relatively proportionate.
Properly thought through, there’s no need to write this story.
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I am skeptical of your claim that student riots are motiveless. Human beings rarely take action with no motive at all, and the idea that 15,000 people would simultaneously take action with no motive seems extremely unlikely. Given that this phenomenon is centuries-old, it seems to me essentially impossible that it has no meaning at all to those engaging in it.
In the case of medieval university students, I hypothesize that rioting functioned as a way to resist the pressure to conform to socially prescribed roles while simultaneously internalizing those roles. Modern college students occupy a nebulous zone of simultaneously being adults and not-quite adults; this sort of violence allows them to demonstrate their adult capacity for violence while simultaneously not being adult in their ability to control themselves.
Medieval students also used violence to express contempt for the townsmen around them, and it is possible, given the divide between college-educated and non college-educated people that there might be elements of that going on as well.
Finally medieval students rioted in part because they could; they enjoyed legal privileges that generally meant they would not suffer serious consequences in court. This too seems relevant, given the low level of legal consequence most of these rioters seem to encounter (although I haven’t tried to pursue the court records on modern rioters and may well be mistaken on this point). But the tendency to view student rioters as ‘kids being kids’ seems relevant here, especially given the mildness of the media reaction. And medieval students understood they ran few legal risks and seem to have been willing to use rioting as a tool of intimidation.
I did not explore this avenue in the article because I’m still working it out for students in medieval Oxford; I lack the data to build that argument for modern students, since that’s not where my research focuses.
Certainly student riots in the 60s were perceived as threatening society, so your argument has some merit. But that raises the question of what has changed in student rioting. Is it a sense that it has no political agenda? Is it that the current generation of adults may be more sympathetic to it, since they lived through the 60s? Is it the growing tendency to view college as an extended adolescence, and therefore riots are just kids being kids? I think this is a more complex issue than you think it is.
Thank you for your thoughts.
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There’s another reading of the reporting on the Milwaukee riots over and against a bunch of student hooligans. In journalism, it’s called Continuing Story – and it’s a good thing.
The USA’s entry into WW2 came very late in the war, 1942, really – Pearl Harbor is Dec 7 1941. The fascists wars had been going on in one form or another since the Japanese began their invasion of Korea and Manchuria in 1920s. The Nazis open their first concentration camps in 1933. Jewish refugees come pouring out of Europe and are refused entry into the USA. The New York Times soft-pedalled these stories:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buried_by_the_Times
During the era of lynching in the USA, that would be the 1880s through to 1968, we really aren’t sure how many black people were lynched, because it wasn’t always reported. Most estimates run close to 4,000 black people. Though the NAACP tried to make a Continuing Story out of the lynchings, they never really succeeded. It wasn’t until Dr. King (and there were others) taught the civil rights to use the press effectively that the press began to report on lynchings and murders.
But more cynically, it wasn’t under the deaths of white kids, Jewish kids to be precise, and one black kid, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner, in 1964, that the press got serious about reporting on violence against black people.
The FBI under Hoover had long been suspicious of the civil rights movement, believing them to be a hotbed of communists (and truth was, there were a few) – anyway, the FBI and Hoover and especially Robert Kennedy finally had enough of the Klan and jumped into Neshoba Mississippi like stink on doo-doo. Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner weren’t the only bodies the FBI and Navy divers found. There were at least eight other bodies.
So when I read – “Because right now, the media seems to be suggesting that the lives of black citizens are less important than university students’ right to be upset about a football game.” – I am an old guy now, I find that deeply stupid to the point of having to laugh – it’s that or cry.
The Milwaukee riots got a ton of coverage because this nation, for all its blindness over the years, for all its failings and cruelty and racism – treats the Milwaukee murders as part of a Continuing Story, one with the same cast of characters, abusive police officers and black people – and this jackass is complaining about the coverage?! That’s asinine. Black Lives Matter may not have achieved its goals yet – and may God speed the day when they do get over Jordan to the Promised Land – but they have achieved this much: every black man shot dead by a police officer is now part of a Continuing Story.
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Jackass here–thank you for laying out the idea of a Continuing Story. It’s a new concept for me, but I think I get the idea.
However, it seems to me that the concept is morally neutral. In other words, being part of a continuing story is not necessarily good or bad. For example, if the Continuing Story on the riots is that the Milwaukee riots are another example of a problem between police departments and the black community that has to get resolved, that would presumably be good for everyone involved. But if the Continuing Story is that the Milwaukee riots is another example of black thugs endangering police lives and protesting unreasonably, then that’s a bad thing from the perspective of the protesters. Certainly that second frame is how many on the Right, particularly the Hard Right, approach the story.
My post, then, is about trying to provide additional perspective on the Continuing Story that offers a comparative perspective.
But thank you for your thoughts.
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I ought to apologise for using that word, but I must confess to an outburst of deepest anger at your conclusion wherein “the media” considers black lives less important than the casus belli of a mob of university students. If you know the history of Universitas Oxoniensis as well as I think you do, you are aware of Piers Gaveston and the Bullingdon Club, including the trashing of the White Hart pub in Fyfield, a pub I know fairly well. The university proctors can do nothing about them because Bullers are immune from the sorts of punishment which other, less well-connected students would receive. That sort of rot has been ongoing since the Middle Ages: when Walter Spryngeheuse and Roger de Chesterfield started the St Scholastica Day riots, the University wouldn’t do anything about them, either. The term “Privilegium Scholasticum” won’t be lost on you either, I dare say – wherein students were tried by their masters and not the civil authorities.
In the USA, the excesses of law enforcement have likewise been treated as one-off incidents, excesses of zeal, with much ginning-up of mitigating factors and little exculpatory commissions conducted from within, producing no changes. The City of Oxford still resents the University.
The St. Scholastica Day riots led to the lasting hatred called Town and Gown in Oxford. This isn’t “the media’s” problem. Milwaukee has been boiling over for well over two decades. It’s one of the USA’s most segregated cities:
https://themilwaukeedrum.com/2010/01/24/race-matters-in-milwaukee-how-segregated-is-milwaukee-2/
As for the right wing press outlets, once they start reporting on anything, it’s just so much fearful screeching and bellowing. The Hard Right, as you put it, should be afraid, at least as afraid as the students of Oxford were, routed out of the town leaving dozens of their fellows dead in the streets. And like the students of Oxford, who were never punished, the Hard Right fully expect the agents of the law to exact reprisals upon the Town. Well, it won’t happen. This time round, BLM has made a Continuing Story of this cycle of violence.
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Apology accepted. It’s a pleasure to talk with someone who understands some of the background to my approach here. University students did indeed enjoy an enormous set of privileges, which I theorize is one of the reasons that the St. Scholastica Day’s Riot happened–town frustration over those privileges finally produced a 3-day-long orgy of violence that killed about 40 people. Thinking about those issues is part of what got me thinking about contemporary student riots, which seem to according a sort of extra-legal privilege of being deemed ‘no big deal’.
You’re right that the causes of the Milwaukee Riots aren’t due to the media–as you say they are decades old. I remember hearing about the police killing of Ernest Lacy when I was growing up. When I moved back after getting my doctorate, the big story was the Frank Jude case.
However, I do think that the media contributes to part of the issue by treating student riots and race riots as sharply different things. For example, why isn’t there a Continuing Story about the annual student riots around football championships? So my point in the essay isn’t really about the Milwaukee riots themselves, it’s about the disproportionate treatment of these two groups of riots.
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Here’s why these riots are different: it’s a systemic problem, which I would expect someone who knows the St. Scholastica riots to understand. Edward III backed the clerics because they were too politically important to treat as the lawless criminals they were. In the USA, a police officer can testify to a grand jury without defence counsel being present. Not even a judge is present. The USA also has an adversarial form of trial, with the State’s Attorney and Law Enforcement on the same side of the courtroom. How can American citizens reasonably expect the State’s Attorney to go after the police officers? With a special prosecutor, perhaps? All these factors add up to a sum of systemic injustice, wherein police misconduct is routinely excused.
You may find this of interest:
Click to access Crowds.pdf
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The Scholastica Riots are rather more complex than that. Although the students appear to have started the riot (the only document that we have is from the town’s PoV and offers that story, whereas the university’s narrative glosses over what triggered the riot), it is clear that both sides took extreme actions. The townsmen, for example, looted student housing, disemboweled at least one student and scalped another, and broke up a eucharistic procession that was seeking to re-establish peace. The students illegally seized control of the town gates and shut them, until a large force of peasants battered them down. Both sides lit buildings on fire. In the long run, the alliance between the townsmen and the peasants overwhelmed the students, who were forced to flee. Edward did not declare the students blameless, although he chose not to punish them, whereas he aggressively punished the town in a variety of ways. But in doing that, he was following royal policy that stretched back more than a century. The town simply had nothing of value to offer comparable to the substantial social prestige Edward derived from the university.
That speaks to the systemic issues in policing students today. Universities bring considerable economic benefits to the towns that host them, as well as a degree of prestige. If a town becomes too hostile to the university, students can chose to go elsewhere for their education. This creates a significant challenge for policing students, especially when a large-scale riot breaks out.
As I say in my essay, I am not a scholar of modern American riots. I have studied very little Riot Theory (if that is a thing), and have only done light reading about things like the Kent State shooting. I don’t pretend to have any answers about the situation based on my scholarship. You may have noticed that my blog is about historical film, not contemporary American politics.
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I am not sure what leads you to conclude Edward III attached any blame to the students. In point of fact, Gown got control of the bread and drinks trades and Town was symbolically punished in perpetuity. This isn’t a facile question. Edward’s commission does more than choose not to punish them – he immunises all the clerics from prosecution for felonies, robberies, arson and trespass. From this we may suppose the commission acknowledged the crimes but chose not only to immunise the clerics but to punish the Town – and has to repeat it all, several times, before anyone quite believes it. Takes quite a while to get the students back from Stamford into Oxford.
I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. And what’s more, the only relevant parts are how we’re to interpret the outcomes of the Milwaukee and St Scholastica riots. The police will get away with this because no state’s attorney in Scott Walker’s state would dare to prosecute them – and for the same reasons Edward III punished the City of Oxford. Some are more equal than others.
Milwaukee is a horribly segregated town. I studied in the Special Collections at Marquette, many years ago. Taum Santoski of blessed memory was something of a friend. And Milwaukee was bad back then, in the 80s. Hasn’t improved since. The only strange part to the latest riots are why they haven’t happened before now.
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Edward revoked all the university’s privileges and then regranted a short time later. The fact that he took this step was clearly a statement that he considered the students culpable to some extent in what happened, and he wanted them to realize that they enjoyed their special status only at his pleasure.
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