A global audience is currently witnessing, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, vivid scenes of mass rioting by tightly packed groups of angry people, for whom social distancing no longer seems to matter. These riots broke out in the American city of Minneapolis on 26 May 2020, and were triggered by a video showing 46-year-old George Floyd, an unarmed and handcuffed African American man, being asphyxiated to death by prolonged pressure from a white police officer’s knee on his neck. His alleged crime was the use of a forged $20 banknote to a purchase a pack of cigarettes at a nearby grocery store. This incident took place on the evening of 25 May, in broad daylight and in full view of several members of the public, thereby lending itself to being recorded on smartphones. The officer’s knee maintained pressure for eight minutes and 46 seconds, long enough to ensure that Mr Floyd died on the spot and well before the pressure was released. It appears that the officer continued to press on Mr Floyd’s neck for two minutes and 53 seconds after he had stopped responding. Widespread indignation was provoked by these images, and the disturbances soon spread to many other American towns and cities, from Los Angeles to New York City and from Minneapolis to Houston. The eventual arrest of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis Police Department officer responsible for the incident, on 29 May, on a charge of third-degree murder-homicide without actual intent to kill-failed to put an end to the rioting, which continued in the face of unmet demands for the arrest of the three other police officers at the scene of Mr Floyd’s death.
Large-scale urban riots involving African American and Latino (Hispanic) communities in the US date back to the 1960s, and appear to have some features in common. These riots have usually followed isolated trigger incidents, brought about by unfortunate contacts with either the criminal justice system, when law enforcement officers attempt to forcibly arrest unarmed black men for relatively minor infractions of the law, or with the legal justice system, when those police officers held responsible for precipitating the incidents are acquitted by trial juries, sometimes without any obvious justification. Deaths at the time of arrest, or in subsequent police custody, are particularly powerful in provoking mass civil unrest. Once established, rioting behaviour spreads rapidly and widely, by a process of contagion, facilitated in recent years by the ubiquity of smartphones and social media platforms.
Racially-driven riots are based on altered power dynamics, in which predominantly white police forces enforce the law in predominantly black neighbourhoods. Deep-rooted mutual mistrust festers for decades, only to periodically rear its ugly head in the form of antisocial behaviour. An adversarial rank-and- file culture in many increasingly militarised police departments, coupled with a loss of faith of local black residents in police fairness and accountability, has created a toxic environment-a tinderbox ready to ignite at any moment, often at the slightest provocation. Although those involved in the trigger incidents are usually African Americans, today’s rioters are actually more diverse in their ethnic origins, frequently including Latinos, whites and Asians within their ranks.
It is important to attempt to understand the underlying causes for mass societal disturbances, so that action can be taken to prevent future repetition. Race riots appear to be a manifestation of profound and wide-ranging changes in American society, which have become more pronounced after the Second World War. The scene for these changes was set in the earlier part of the twentieth century. Poor living conditions, lack of jobs, disenfranchisement, legal segregation, and discriminatory Jim Crow laws initially encouraged an exodus of African Americans from the rural South- the “Great Migration”- to industrial cities in the North and the West, in search of low-paid and low-skilled jobs in factories, foundries and slaughterhouses.
Mass migration of black Americans from the South peaked between 1915 and 1970. These large movements of people gradually brought about major demographic changes in the North, transforming beyond recognition many once-thriving industrial cities. African Americans were forced into less desirable neighbourhoods, already in a process of urban decay, at a time of “white flight” to more desirable and newly developed suburbs. Inner-city ghettos were frequently subjected to well-meaning, but poorly enacted, slum clearance and urban renewal programmes. Densely populated public housing projects began to appear, often in the form of high-rise tower blocks, which were poorly provided with services and transport links. Even sprawling low-rise areas, such as South Central Los Angeles, underwent dramatic changes in character. The already prevalent social, cultural and economic divide between blacks and whites was perpetuated and worsened by an overt and deliberate policy of residential segregation along racial lines.
The inner neighbourhoods of deindustrialised American cities have become a fertile breeding ground for violent conflict. This is the end-result of festering tensions between law enforcement officers and black residents, with an ever-present risk of large-sale rioting at the slightest provocation. Inevitably, when riots do break out, the very communities in which they break out suffer the most from reckless looting and acts of arson and vandalism, often perpetuated by disaffected people, sometimes from out of town, who may be detached from the important debate around issues of community policing. In the end, there are no winners, and those least able to afford any losses from damage to property and facilities (shops, restaurants, banks) often end up suffering the most.
Race riots have been analysed by many Commissions of Inquiry in the past, all of which have come to broadly similar conclusions, with frequent references to economic inequality as an important underlying cause . Unfortunately, there has been a lack of political will in the past, from both Democrats and Republicans in government, to accept and then attempt to administer the recommended prescriptions. In either case, American society seems far too polarised to reasonably expect any simple and effective remedies to address widespread and overwhelming systemic problems in the near future, and the rioting season is far from becoming a phenomenon of the past.
Ashis Banerjee