Vocal Voices

I can understand the anger at the murder of George Floyd. I can also understand the frustration at another black man being killed in such a way by the police, and I understand the need for answers and action. What I do not understand is the rioting and looting.

Minneapolis city officials summarily sacked the three officers involved, and one of them has been charged with murder and manslaughter. That is just the beginning, now is the time for investigations and answers.

Unfortunately, all the civil disobedience is doing is taking away the resources needed for the investigations the very same people are clamouring for. They are hindering the very thing that they are so desperately wanting to happen. I just don't get it.

I must admit I never got it. If the police are stonewalling then demonstrations are a way of getting movement. But routing and looting get them nowhere

It's like call and response. Nothing changes.
Black guy dies in police custody, then it's looting, burning and rioting in 3, 2, 1, zero.

When Eric Garner was killed under similar circumstances in New York there was confusion, delays and endless excuses, so it was no surprise when there were demonstrations and the rise of the "Black lives matter" movement.

That has not been the case in Minneapolis. The authorities acted immediately in sacking an official and three police officers and charging one of them with murder. This is now looking like an excuse for communities to 'go off on one' and they are doing it in Atlanta, Phoenix, Portland, Chicago and New York as well as Minneapolis.

It seems as though there is something else going on and it does not feel good. It has gone past playing the race card as many other ethnicities are joining in. It looks as though there is a social and economic inequality undercurrent to what is happening. The US tearing itself apart? Who knows?

Or they are sick of lock down and it is a convenient excuse.

Workingman wrote:It seems as though there is something else going on and it does not feel good.

Imo in both the US and the UK hate has been legitimized.
That may seem a strange thing to say give the rise of hate speech laws, but it isn't really.

Because although it is illegal to hate a person on grounds of race, religion and so on, other forms of hate seem to be not only perfectly acceptable, but to be actually encouraged by the media.

It's perfectly OK to hate Trump or Johnson. Or Bolsonaro, or Salvini. In fact in liberal London circles and the UK media it is probably obligatory!
To me it is a dangerous road to go down. People may feel that they have a perfect right to hate Trump etc. But it is raising the temperature of the debate. Are Trump supporters allowed to hate other people too?

I had a mate at Uni called Richard Jones. He went on a rugby tour of Canada and the USA circa 1976-77. When he came back he said that they might as well give black and white people different states to live in, because they hated each other so much. It seems like things have only got worse since then.

There is still vast simmering racial resentment and tension in the US, and it is on both sides. Which is not something that the media wants to admit.

Down the years I have spent quite a bit of time with the RAF and other work in the US and Canada and never really noticed the race thing .... All I ever got was "Oh, you're from England. Leeds eh? I have a friend John / Jane who lives in London, do you know them?"

Those rioting at present seem to be from all sides - white, black, Hispanic etc. - and the focus, if there is one, is anything or anyone in officialdom.

The anger is being mostly directed against the authorities, yes. But there was a report from Detroit that someone has fired into a crowd of rioters, killing one.