Rioting is the correct response to the wrong question

I understand rioting. I understand being really fucking mad about something. Anger is a natural and valuable response to certain conditions. If a lion is trying to eat your kid, for example, a sudden burst of anger that drives you to kill that lion or die trying is totally reasonable. In the modern world, we have a lot fewer lions, but there are still plenty of threats.

So if you really believe that your people, your community, your extended family, people who look like you, etc., are under literal, homicidal attack, then the most sensible thing to do is get mad as fuck about it. The sensible thing is to get so damn mad that no one will risk killing any of your people ever again, because if they do, you’ll burn their city the fuck down.

So rioting is perfectly sensible.

The only question is, do the police actually target any particular groups of people?

Well, no. They don’t. We’ve got some pretty good data on the subject (victimization surveys, etc.,) and the police really don’t seem to disproportionately kill black guys. Police have a very high encounter rate with blacks, yes, but this is largely due to blacks committing a lot of crime. (Again, victimization surveys indicate this.)

I read a story the other day about a white man who died after a police officer shot him in the stomach for not showing his ID while dropping a cat off at an animal shelter. I don’t see any riots for this guy, even though his death is just as awful as every other police brutality death.

I really do hope for less police brutality. But the narrative is a lie.

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