The Double Standard of the American Riot

Think back to March 5, 1770, when Crispus Attucks, a man of African and Native American descent, became the first casualty of the American Revolution. Attucks was one of a handful of protesters killed by British forces during the Boston Massacre. The lawyer tasked with defending the British soldiers in their American criminal trial was none other than Adams. When presenting his case, Adams described the men those soldiers killed as “a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes and molattoes [sic], Irish teagues and outlandish jack tarrs.” He built his defense of the British soldiers on the charge that Attucks struck the first blow and led the “dreadful carnage.” Adams concluded the “mad behavior” of Attucks provoked the soldiers’ response, claiming that Attucks’s group was “under the command of a stout molatto fellow, whose very looks, was enough to terrify any person.” Some 250 years later, Adams’s words still underline a central truth in American disobedience: Freedom through violence is a privilege only possessed by whites. Seminal moments in U.S. history which historians have defined as patriotic were also moments that denied patriotism to black people.

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If violence is a political language, white Americans are native speakers. But black people are also fluent in the act of resistance. Attucks stood up to British tyranny. The numerous slave rebellions led by Gabriel Prosser, Charles Deslondes, and Nat Turner were all attempts to gain freedom with force. Throughout the 20th century, black Americans armed themselves in the face of white mobs and organized protection for their freedom marches. Accordingly, when George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others were killed by police, black people and their allies chose to rise up.

Americans like to harken back to the civil-rights era as a moment of nonviolence and civil disobedience. But that movement was an orchestrated response to violence. Violence at the voting booth. Violence at the lunch counter. Violence that bombed a church with four little black girls inside. Violence that left a bloated black boy in an open casket. Violence that left a black husband and father murdered in his driveway. The movement ended with the violent death of Martin Luther King Jr. And his death ignited riots in more than 100 cities.

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It is easy to dismiss the rock thrower; Attucks himself was accused of throwing sticks. But those who rebuke violent responses to injustice should ask themselves: How should the oppressed respond to their oppressors? How should the nation respond to political dissent? How do the oppressed procure power? Throughout history, black people have employed violence, nonviolence, marches, and boycotts. Only one thing is clear—there is no form of black protest that white supremacy will sanction. Still, black people understand the utility of riotous rebellion: Violence compels a response. Violence disrupts the status quo and the possibility of returning to business as usual. So often the watershed moments of historical record are stamped by violence—it is the engine that propels society along from funerals to fury and from moments to movements.