thisishutch:

notalexus replied to your post: london’s burning

But the looting is a direct consequence of creating an underclass that has nothing to lose. When people r denied basic rights and respect, why would they show that same respect to others? Empathy is learned. Im not excusing it,…

-The riots started about Mark Duggan, but they’ve expanded beyond that. I think they are literally rioting against the system. Against the injustice that has been shown towards them and their families, against the lack of opportunities and dismal life and future they are trapped in. The best way I’ve seen it articulated is by Laurie Penny, a London journalist:

“Violence is rarely mindless. The politics of a burning building, a smashed-in shop or a young man shot by police may be obscured even to those who lit the rags or fired the gun, but the politics are there. Unquestionably there is far, far more to these riots than the death of Mark Duggan, whose shooting sparked off the unrest on Saturday, when two police cars were set alight after a five-hour vigil at Tottenham police station. A peaceful protest over the death of a man at police hands, in a community where locals have been given every reason to mistrust the forces of law and order, is one sort of political statement. Raiding shops for technology and trainers that cost ten times as much as the benefits you’re no longer entitled to is another. A co-ordinated, viral wave of civil unrest across the poorest boroughs of Britain, with young people coming from across the capital and the country to battle the police, is another.” link

Is this the right reaction? No. But when you’ve been told your whole life that you are worthless, have no voice, are nothing but a mindless violent thug, that you are born bad and naturally violent, what is the tool you use to express your rage, rage that you might not even understand? Violence. I think there’s probably a lot to do with getting attention as well; no one payed attention when you were silent and peaceful, but they once you burn someone’s house down. Again, I do not think this is okay, or admirable, but completely unsurprising and understandable. Someone on a comment thread said roughly “why are people expecting these kids to have table manners, when some of them grew up without a table.” Empathy and “reasonableness” are learned. When you scream at someone to do the right thing, they don’t learn that the words are important, just the screaming.

Instead of critiquing the rioters actions, which I think everyone agrees are horrible, why not look at the situation that allows things like this to happen, that can produce young people who have so little regard for their neighbors. They didn’t spring fully formed and violent, they learned that behavior. Writing them off as thugs and saying this is doing nothing to help their cause (which is essentially reinforcing the ideal of the systematic oppression that got us here in the first place, and a real life version of the “tone” argument) is not going to prevent things like this from happening again. If only in the interest of having no more riots, I think the focus should be on what can we do to stop creating situations like this. A larger police presence is not the answer.

And, just because we live in democracies, does not mean that they are not oppressive institutions. Democracy does not equal non-oppresive, you can look at America’s history and see that. Government by definition is an institution, regardless if it is an elected one or no, and that is one of the ways institutionalized oppression is manifested, through government. In despotic countries it is much easier to see the way that government oppresses people, look! that one person has taken away everyone’s rights. In democracies, where we choose and elect our leaders, it is more difficult, but still quite possible, to see the ways legalisation and judicial systems work to unfairly regulate groups of people. But since we elected these people, and their beliefs, we have in some fashion enacted or at least said “ok” to those oppressive policies. No one wants to think that about themselves.

I also don’t understand what people covering their faces has to do with anything. If it’s an argument against anonymity in the face of opposition, then I would look at the longstanding relationships with police that the three groups have. The communities of the current rioters have a longstanding mistrust of the police and authority figures. When you live in an area where the color of your skin already marks you as a potential target for the police, regardless of if you’ve done something illegal or not, why wouldn’t you take more precautions when you’re actually doing something wrong? How many of the rioters in November have had constant run-ins with cops their whole lives, because of what they look like or where they’re from? And I think the comparisons to the Arab Spring are more to do with the discourse surrounding the two events, than the motivations of the two groups. I’m not convinced that all the Egyptian protesters went face uncovered, but they were also dealing with a dictator, not systematic oppression built into a democratic system. Their enemy was/is easier to see, which does not make their struggle more legitimate. Their methods, certainly, but not the basic injustice.

Nothing to lose means, that everything you have, including your life, is worthless, so might as well go for it. If you’ve been told, and shown, that your life means nothing, then what’s death? If you’re “worth more dead than alive,” what does it matter that you could get killed? There’s one less mindless thug to deal with.