Once Upon a Time, Some People Actually Thought about Black Riots, and Published Their Thoughts

Excerpted by Nicholas Stix

https://vdare.com/posts/rioting-mainly-for-fun-and-profit-what-edward-banfield-actually-said-in-1970-policymakers-take-note

In 1970 [1968], Edward Banfield’s The Unheavenly City described the causes of rioting in ways that were condemned by the pro-riot Left at the time, and are still being condemned.

Rioting Mainly for Fun and Profit

“Picketing and marching ain’t getting us anywhere, man,” said Byron Washington, a 16-year-old nth-grader who was arrested during this week’s riots for having a rock in his hand.

“The whites got to face it, man, this is a new generation. We aren’t going to stand for the stuff our mamas and fathers stood for.

“Look at me, I’ve got a B average, but I can’t get a summer job. And if you don’t work, you can’t afford to go to college.”

— New York Times report from Waterloo, Iowa, July 14, 1967

In the law of most states a riot is a lawless act engaged in by three or more persons and accompanied by violence or breach of the public peace. If the rioters are Negroes it is usually taken for granted that the riot is in some sense racial. Probably the most widespread view is that Negroes riot because they can no longer contain their pent-up fury at the mistreatment they receive from whites. The Watts riot, we are told “was a manifestation of a general sense of deep outrage, outrage at every aspect of the lives Negroes are forced to live, outrage at every element of the white community for forcing (or permitting) Negroes to live such lives.”¹ On this view it follows that the way to end rioting—the only way to end it—is to stop mistreating the Negro and, so far as possible, to repair the damage already done him. “Doing such things as punishing police misconduct, providing decent housing and schooling, ending job discrimination and so forth are essential, but the problem goes deeper than that. The ghetto itself, with all the  shameful economic, social, political, and psychological deprivation it causes, must be done away with once and for all. The riots have ‘let America know’ that this is what must be done. Now America must do it.”²

This is not the view that will be taken here. The assumption that if Negroes riot it must be because they are Negroes is naive. If one rejects this as a starting place and looks at the facts instead, one sees that race (and, incidentally, poverty as well) was not the cause of any of the Negro riots and that it had very little to do with many of the lesser ones. Indeed, it is probably not too much to say that some of the riots would have occurred even if (other things being the same) the people in the riot areas had all been white and even if they had all had incomes above the poverty line. The implication of this view is, of course, that punishing police misconduct, providing decent housing, and so on will not significantly affect the amount of Negro rioting. The causes of rioting, it will be argued, will continue to operate for another twenty years or so no matter what is done. But although more and possibly worse riots are to be expected, rioting will not destroy the cities. Dr. Kenneth B. Clark’s warning that “The dark ghettoes now represent a nuclear stock-pile which can annihilate the very foundations of America,”³ need not be taken very seriously if his metaphors refer to rioting of the sort that has occurred in recent years.

• Two thousand juveniles break windows after an amusement park closes early, leaving them without transportation.
• A gang of hoodlums robs a clothing store and smashes the display windows of three other stores, stealing watches, cameras, and rings.
• A young man has been shot and killed by the police during a burglary, and a crowd, shouting “This is for Willie,” pelts the police with rocks, bottles, and fire bombs.
• Following an inflammatory speech by a racist politician, a mob overturns automobiles and assaults motorists.

To that strict behaviorist, the man on the moon, all four of these events probably look alike: all are “riots” and, if the rioters are

Negro, presumably “racial.” But to an observer able and willing to take motives into account (that is, to take note of the meaning of an act to the actor) the events are very different and some are not in any sense racial. The first is a rampage by frustrated teen-agers who happen to be black. The second is a foray for pillage by young toughs who find “taking” things the easiest way of getting them. In this case, too, race is not a motive and is in fact irrelevant to behavior: the toughs are Negro, but they could as well be white. The third event is an outburst of righteous indignation on the part of people who have witnessed what they think is an act of gross injustice. The young man who was killed was black and the policeman who killed him was white, but it is possible that the indignation the crowd feels is mainly or even entirely against the police rather than against whites as such. (In September 1962, Negroes in the all-Negro village of Kinloch, Missouri, rioted when a Negro policeman shot a Negro youth.) Indeed, some members of the crowd may be indignant at whites, others at the police, and still others at both whites and the police, and so it might be impossible to say whether or not the riot was “mainly racial,” even if one had full knowledge of the subjective states of all rioters. In the final case, the event is a demonstration carried on for the express purpose of calling attention to a political position; since the position is a racist one, the riot can easily be called racial.

Each of these four motivations implies a corresponding type of riot. (This is not to say that a certain type of riot is caused by a certain type of motive; as will be explained later, it is more useful to look elsewhere for causes.) The four types are as follows:

[Read the rest at VDARE.]