Concern 3

But the Looters… How Can You Condone Violence?

This section explores the delineation that is often made between good protesters and bad rioters, between nonviolent protesters and supposedly violent looters; a narrative which often works to replicate the criminalization of Black youth. It also covers the way the media’s hyper focus on looting and property damage often overshadows the goals of the protests and effectively moves the discussion away from the underlying causes that have led up to this point.

01

James Baldwin: How to Cool It

Interview by Esquire (July 1968; republished online August 2, 2017)

This extensive Q&A with author and activist James Baldwin, originally published just after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., outlines the underlying inequities and systemic racism in American society that lead to civil unrest.

“What causes the eruptions, the riots, the revolts—whatever you want to call them—is the despair of being in a static position, absolutely static, of watching your father, your brother, your uncle, or your cousin . . . who has no future.”

“I object to the term "looters" because I wonder who is looting whom, baby.”

“He doesn’t really want the TV set. He’s saying screw you. It’s just judgment, by the way, on the value of the TV set. He doesn’t want it. He wants to let you know he’s there.”

“The mass media—television and all the major news agencies—endlessly use that word “looter.” On television you always see Black hands reaching in, you know. And so the American public concludes that these savages are trying to steal everything from us. . . . After all, you’re accusing a captive population who has been robbed of everything of looting. I think it’s obscene.” 

“We call it riots, because they were Black people. We wouldn't call it riots if they were white people.”

02

There Isn’t a Simple Story About Looting

Interview by Terry Nguyen, Vox
(June 2, 2020)

This interview with UCLA Dean of Social Sciences Darnell Hunt directly addresses the concerns about looting that many moderates raise, and shows how they’re used to delegitimize protesters’ demands and distract from the systemic causes of civil unrest.

“Protesters are not indiscriminately burning things. They seem to be more focused on chain stores, like Target, or specific cultural icons that represent a system people feel has not served them.”

“You also have other people who aren’t necessarily proponents of either philosophy, who see the moment as an opportunity to get ahead for whatever reason. Typically, these people feel economically marginalized and don’t have a lot to lose. People with a lot to lose don’t do things like that. The question you have to ask yourself is: Why are there so many people in our society who don’t have a lot to lose?”

“There are problems in our economy and problems in our social safety net right now. People don’t know when their next paycheck is coming. Things have been thrown into question recently. These instances show a breakdown of legitimacy. People are basically saying, the system is no longer legitimate. From the perspective of the authorities, people are breaking the law because the law no longer has legitimacy.”

“In some way, it doesn’t matter where the people are coming from or why they’re doing it. The fact is a moment was created that could be exploited by people, no matter where they’re coming from. That is what’s more important. Why is it that we got to the point that agitators from other communities could come in and “agitate”? That’s the point. What created this moment and how are you going to deal with that?"

03

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In this Instagram interview with @kimberlylatricejones by  @djones media, author Kimberly Latrice Jones uses a poignant Monopoly analogy to highlight the systemic injustice behind criticisms of looting.

"We never get that economics was the reason that Black people were brought to this country, they came to do agricultural work in the south and textile work in the north.”

"Now, if I right now decided that I wanted to play Monopoly with you and for 400 rounds of playing Monopoly I didn't allow you to have any money, I didn't allow you to have anything on the board - anything - and then we played another 50 rounds of Monopoly and everything that you gained and you earned while playing those rounds was taken from you."

"At this point the only way you're going to catch up in the game is if the person shares the wealth and now what if every time they share the wealth, there's psychological warfare against you to say 'oh you're an equal opportunity hire.'

"How can you win? You can't win, the game is fixed! So when they say 'why did you burn down your own neighborhood? Why did you burn down the community? It's not ours, we don't own anything!”

04

In Defense of Looting

By Vicky Osterweil, The New Inquiry (August 21, 2014)

This article attacks objections to looting, arguing that in America property and racism are inherently intertwined. Blackness was defined essentially as a means to determine who could be property. Furthermore, while some people object to the looting of the protesters’ “own community,” Osterweil makes the point that the locals in these neighborhoods are not operating the corporate chain stores. It ends with the assertion that looting is not an apolitical act, but a focused attack on the system of private property that oppresses Black people most of all. In other words, looting is not separate from the protest— looting itself is political protest. 

“In trying to correct this media image—in making a strong division between Good Protesters and Bad Rioters, or between ethical non-violence practitioners and supposedly violent looters—the narrative of the criminalization of Black youth is reproduced. This time it delineates certain kinds of Black youth—those who loot versus those who protest.”

“As Raven Rakia puts it, ‘In America, property is racial. It always has been.’ Indeed, the idea of Blackness was invented simultaneously with American conceptions of property: via slavery.”

“The specter of slaves freeing themselves could be seen as American history’s first image of Black looters.”

“Indeed, although you might hang out in it, how can a chain convenience store or corporate restaurant earnestly be part of anyone’s neighborhood? The same white liberals who inveigh against corporations for destroying local communities are aghast when rioters take their critique to its actual material conclusion.”

“The mystifying ideological claim that looting is violent and non-political is one that has been carefully produced by the ruling class because it is precisely the violent maintenance of property which is both the basis and end of their power. Looting is extremely dangerous to the rich (and most white people) because it reveals, with an immediacy that has to be moralized away, that the idea of private property is just that: an idea, a tenuous and contingent structure of consent, backed up by the lethal force of the state. “

05

9 Historical Triumphs to Make You Rethink Property Destruction

By Jesse A. Myerson and José Martín, Rolling Stone (Originally published October 2014; updated May 29, 2020)

This article forces the reader to reconsider the condemnation of property destruction—which has a long and effective history as a tactic of resistance—citing historical events such as the Boston Tea Party and the end to apartheid.

“Workers had produced that tea, capitalists had risked investment on it, and it was not the colonists’ to destroy, but they said “fuck property rights” and did it anyway. Today’s conservatives don’t seem bothered by this inconvenient history, though, because think of the dress-up opportunities!”

“In the early 1960s, Mandela organized the Umkhonto we Sizwe (the MK) guerrillas alongside the South African Communist Party. The MK bombed the communications, transit and energy infrastructure that helped run the Apartheid economy … For this, Mandela was branded a terrorist by Western governments, which have in the intervening decades gotten no better at accurately applying that label.”

06

This article is framed as a Q&A where Gowan responds to whether looting should be condemned. His answer is yes—we should condemn “the looting of the Global South by Western militaries and multinational corporations,” and “the actual looting of public coffers” by politicians and the billionaire class. 

“Should we blame working-class Black people for lashing out at a government and economy designed to repress, exploit, and subdue them; during a pandemic in which capitalism has made it near impossible for them to survive?”

“If you care about looting, turn your eyes to the militaries, the police, the pharmaceutical companies, the private equity ghouls, the landlords, the real estate speculators, and the billionaires. And demand that a world once looted from the vast majority be now returned to them.”