Chapter three is entirely about riots as a frame for understanding people who are intentionally locked out of the political process through white supremacy and segregation.
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I write: "King was clear that political delay produced a racial climate that exacerbated white anxiety and black despair, leading to riots."
This is similar moment of white anxiety and black despair, intentionally created by public policy that destroys public welfare.
This is similar moment of white anxiety and black despair, intentionally created by public policy that destroys public welfare.
King's oft-quoted comment that "Riots are the language of the unheard" was a precise assessment of how exclusionary the US public sphere is for Black people.
Riots are an expression of political exclusion and white resource hoarding.
Riots are an expression of political exclusion and white resource hoarding.
Riots occur when there is no clean water available, when cops kill with impunity and are fired and not imprisoned, and when social services are undermined and collapse.
Riots are A SIGN THAT A DEMOCRACY IS FAILING.
Riots are A SIGN THAT A DEMOCRACY IS FAILING.
Riots happen when there is no political hope available and they are a response to punitive, racist public policy.
Rhetorically, white policymakers conflate PROTEST with CRIME to criminalize riots as a way of undermining the speech and political activity of activists of color.
Law-and-order rhetoric asserts white statism as the only permissible loyalty and effectively harnesses white anxiety and anger toward ending any possibility of black equality through the law.
Trumps's EO about Twitter is about FORCING compliance with white supremacy.
Riots attempt to produce and propel the political will to transform racial psychodynamics and material segregation.
For example, the 1967 Detroit riots would be illegible without Detroit’s fugitive slave riots b/t 1815 & 1865. Designed to protest runaway slaves in the city, these riots still shape the psychological &e motional landscape in Detroit.
For the Watts riot in 1965, the omnipresent historical force shaping riot discourse was not slavery but migration and labor rights. Employment, wages, and migration shaped the social tensions there.
Because riots are often led by POC, riots are described pathologically & are compared to fire, suggesting their danger, mutability, and contagion.
Riots are read as a dis-ease that can spread through the body politic, ultimately undermining its stability and legibility.
Riots are read as a dis-ease that can spread through the body politic, ultimately undermining its stability and legibility.
This isn't surprising because white supremacy has always used contagion metaphors to encourage eugenics and racial extinction of Black and Native peoples.
