The Mayhem Is the Message: If the aim of violence is to expose the racism of America, the worse the better

By William McGurn of The WSJ.

"Those promoting—and manipulating—the violence aren’t interested in debate or facts, least of all those that might contradict their narrative about a war on unarmed black men by white police. They are using the mayhem to shut down honest debate and bully anyone who dares offer the slightest criticism into confessing he speaks from a position of moral inferiority.

Robert L. Woodson says we must not let that happen. The 83-year-old Mr. Woodson is a veteran of the civil-rights movement who runs the Woodson Center, which for nearly four decades has done the hard work of trying to “transform lives, schools and neighborhoods from the inside out.” He rejects the worse-it-gets-the-better ethos of those hijacking peaceful protests to turn them violent, calling it a ruse to distract attention from, for example, the failure of black children in school systems run by their own people.

“There are a small group of people hell-bent on destroying this republic,” he says. “They are using our birth defect of slavery to devalue our founding principles and virtues, and using race grievance as its weapon. We must resist.”"