A simple post to close out a long Tuesday. Yesterday the Daily Caller published a series of man-on-the-street interviews. The gimmick here is that their reporter was speaking to people in two different locations. The first was Brooklyn Center where police officer Kim Potter shot Daunte Wright. The other was Washington, DC.
As you’ll see, there’s a very different response in the two locations. The respondents closest to the “unrest” aren’t very tolerant of the idea that riots and looting are acceptable forms of protest. In fact, they suggest the people who are doing those things are outside agitators and opportunists. Meanwhile, the folks who answered in DC repeatedly defend rioting as the last means of expressions for groups trying to make a point.
The subtext here is that most of the respondents in Brooklyn Center, the ones who aren’t rioting fans, are black. “When something like this goes on the opportunistic people come out and they try to dehumanize this,” a man wearing a “veteran” cap said.
Meanwhile, most of the respondents in DC, the ones defending riots, are white women. “I mean, I think that all violence is bad violence but in the case when systems aren’t responding to any other forms of change, I can understand people getting frustrated to the point that they need to take other avenues,” one woman said.
I don’t know if they’ve left a few examples to the contrary on the cutting room floor but there’s clearly a pattern which seems believable. Riots and looting in your own neighborhood is different from the idea of riots and looting somewhere else.
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