Jonathan Bean: Riots after Floyd death similar to 1960s riots – liberal response repeats mistakes of past

By Jonathan Bean. He is a professor of history at Southern Illinois University. Excerpt:

"The 1960s riots occurred against a backdrop of civil rights protests. African-Americans had legitimate complaints about schooling, employment discrimination and poor housing, among other concerns. Yet black people in the riot zones overwhelmingly opposed what was going on.

In a Harris poll taken in the aftermath of the Detroit riot, 68 percent of African-Americans surveyed characterized the looters as “criminals.” The same percentage felt that violence hurt the cause of civil rights.

Many white liberals, on the other hand, conflated the riots with civil rights protests, failing to make any distinction.

In a March 1969 interview, White House aide Harry McPherson – President Johnson’s favorite speechwriter – recalled that the White House would issue statements denouncing rioters but adding “'an apologetic 'Of course, we understand why you rioted. . ..' It was that ambivalence of the liberal.'"

Today’s liberals seem to have lost any such ambivalence.

Yet those on the left have much to lose if Americans reject the romanticizing of violence – just as liberals lost in 1968 with the election of “law-and-order” Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon.

Just last week, President Trump said that “I am the president of law and order.” He no doubt hopes to ride to reelection on that label, just as Nixon was first elected 52 years ago.

That’s why today’s liberals would be wise to listen to former President Barack Obama, who wrote June 1 in the online magazine, Medium: “Let’s not excuse violence, or rationalize it, or participate in it. If we want our criminal justice system, and American society at large, to operate on a higher ethical code, then we have to model that code ourselves.”

One of the saddest outcomes of riots is the destruction of small mom-and-pop businesses that have little chance of starting over. The riots of the 1960s involved the looting of at least 10,000 businesses, according to research in the African-American studies journal Phylon.

With the riots in the 1960s and also since Floyd’s death rationalized as “protest” – and the police for several days told to stand down in many communities (“it is better to let them loot than shoot,” the saying goes) – merchants watched as their stores were emptied and then often burned.

Rioters were and still are in some places granted a moral holiday. Their neighbors – the merchants and their customers – are forced to pay the price.

Then and now, store employees lost their jobs, merchants their livelihoods, and consumers the convenience of nearby places to shop. One difference today: rioters loot Walmart and torch Target – discount chains that didn’t operate in black neighborhoods in the 1960s.

Civil rights activists complained then that the “poor paid more” because chain stores avoided the inner city. The looting of Target, headquartered in George Floyd’s Minneapolis, is thus an ironic demonstration of the progress made in consumer choices for residents of low-income neighborhoods. But as they say, no good deed goes unpunished.

It’s time to retire the worn-out riot ideology of the 1960s. Riots are not a form of protest; indeed, they hurt the cause of civil rights and are a source of injustice to those who suffer from the looting and arson.

Few of those living in the midst of the riots share the easy illusions of those who hammer the unrest into a civil rights framework. If it is too much to ask President Trump to speak eloquently on the subject, we need to hear from those like President Obama and the residents themselves who cry out for this not to happen again."