Tim Wise
Let
me get this straight: if people of color respond to an unjust verdict in a
police brutality trial, not to mention years of racial and economic oppression,
by taking to the streets, burning stuff, looting stores and engaging in assorted
violence, it’s called a riot. But if white kids get angry at the thought of
paying $10 for a burrito during a three-day music festival, and decide to burn
stuff, loot ATM machines, throw human feces at camera crews, and engage in
assorted violence, that’s called "a disturbance," or likened to
"a frat party," or considered mere "youthful exuberance?"
And
whereas the first event is "raced"-that is, discussed as a racial
event, or "race riot,"-the latter is discussed as a "youth
melee," with no mention of the racial makeup of said youngsters. Welcome to
the color-blind world of 1999: where color is still quite visible, but where
whiteness remains unobservable to the naked eye; where deviance and anti-social
behavior remain individualized when the perpetrators of said mayhem are
melanin-challenged, but where race becomes the focal point of analysis whenever
the black and brown are involved.
And
while most commentators avoid discussing the conditions which contribute to the
first kind of uprising (as if mere irrationality causes "those people"
to lose control), they pay ample attention to the "root causes" of
white violence. In the case of Woodstock ’99, these included "conditions
that were animalistic," to quote one MTV commentator: among them, not only
the overpriced cuisine-including $4 pretzels and bottled water (oh the
inhumanity!)-but also the fact that trash wasn’t picked up for three days! To
quote another MTV spokesperson: "It was like A CONCENTRATION CAMP."
Indeed, Mauthausen and Dachau surely had nothing on the open field in Rome, New
York."
Excuse
me, but this is some bullshit. What happened at Woodstock was not a
sociopolitical rebellion against corporate greed and expensive foodstuffs (after
all, these same folks thought nothing of forking over $150 for tickets, nor
additional hundreds for beer, t-shirts, tatoos and body-piercings). And it was
not, as one of the organizers claimed, the work of "a few
knuckleheads," or better yet, "anarchists." This was a riot: in
fact, if the thing which makes a riot a race riot is the overwhelming
involvement of people of one race in the festivities, then this was a RACE RIOT.
99% of those involved were white, according to news reports. Compare this with
the muticultural riots in Los Angeles in 1992: 13% white, 25% black (betcha’
never heard that before), and 60% Latino/a. And yet, everyone considers that to
have been a race riot-in fact a black riot, which it was not.
So
let’s play a game: Let’s imagine that 225,000 black folks-mainly young
adults-were to gather for a three day concert. And let’s imagine that a
significant number of these were to flaunt drug use and underage alcohol
consumption, within sight of television cameras and security. And let’s imagine
that a sizable minority of these black youth-on the third day-began overturning
cars, ripping up tents and vendor booths, pulling down lighting stands and
scaffolding and setting fires throughout the venue. In this scenario, would
anyone refuse to call it a riot? Would there have only been 37 arrests (only
seven for activities connected to the rioting)-as happened at Woodstock-despite
the many thousands involved in illegal activity from the time the gates opened?
What’s more, does anyone believe that an event where 99% of the attendees were
people of color-even if it were one-tenth the size of the crowd at
Woodstock-would have been allowed to happen at all with no official law
enforcement presence? Because that’s what happened here: no police until 90
minutes after the rioting began. Prior to that, there were only security guards,
untrained to deal with a riot situation, not to mention the half-dozen or so
sexual assaults and rapes which apparently occurred.
Don’t
get me wrong: I’m not saying Woodstock should have been run like a police state,
nor that folks should have been busted for smoking pot. I’m simply saying that
this event was treated differently than would have been a "black
event," where most participants were of color. Consider the reaction during
the recent Hot 97 concert at the Meadowlands: according to press reports, when a
few members of an "angry crowd" of black folks began pushing security
guards after they were locked out of the hip-hop show-despite having
tickets-hundreds of cops descended on the venue immediately. According to the
New York Daily News: "An Army of state troopers, New Jersey Transit police,
and cops from a dozen nearby towns brought the outburst under control in about
40 minutes."
Likewise,
when black collegians gathered in Atlanta for the annual "Freaknik" a
few years back, the entire police force was mobilized, and the first sign of
lawlessness-including minor traffic violations-was met with the full force of
law enforcement: searches, pat-downs, ticketing, and arrest. Needless to say, at
neither event, nor the popular Smokin’ Grooves Tour in 1997-largely attended by
people of color-would folks have been able to sell $48 bongs (as was done at
Woodstock): after all, drug use and paraphernalia are illegal for those with
dark skin, as a brief look at who’s filling our jail cells will make clear.
And
of course that the race of the Woodstock rioters was a "non-issue"
from the beginning is unsurprising. Whenever whites engage in destructive
behavior, their race is seen as irrelevant, whereas the same acts engaged in by
Blacks or Latinos bring out the chorus of neo-eugenicists, clamoring to explain
how there’s something either genetic or culturally defective about the swarthier
types which causes them to act that way. So when white boys-and only white
boys-shoot up or blow up their schools, and when whites-and only whites-get
involved with some ritualistic, Satanic, vampire cult that kills folks and
cannibalizes them; and when white folks-at least 92% of the time-are the ones
committing serial murder, it’s as if no one can see skin color anymore. But let
black folks do some of that crazy shit just once, and see how long it takes for
the racial pathology police to flash their pseudo-intellectual badges.
And
Woodstock wasn’t the first white riot to be deracialized by the media. This kind
of thing happens all the time, with little comment from the larger society.
Since 1995, there have been riots involving white college students at Colorado
University, Iowa State, Penn State, the Universities of Wisconsin at Whitewater
and Oshkosh, Southern Illinois University, the University of Delaware, Michigan
State, Washington State, Plymouth State, the University of Akron and the
University of New Hampshire. And for what reason did these students decide to
burn, loot and destroy?-either because of the results of a football game, or
because of a crackdown on underage drinking. And so here I sit, patiently
waiting for Charles Murray to explain to me with scientific precision what it is
about white folks’ DNA that makes them riot for the sake of $1 tequila shots.
All
kidding aside, the fact is that our unwillingness to break out of well-worn
stereotypes about what danger looks like-and thus, our widespread adherence to
the notion that people of color are the ones to watch out for-makes us all less
safe and is the source of widespread injustice.
Most
obviously, it means that people of color will continue to bear the brunt of
discrimination by those who perceive them deviant and criminally-inclined: a
form of discrimination which many like Dinesh D’Souza have deemed
"rational," given the supposed disproportionate law-breaking by Blacks
and Latinos.
Likewise,
skewed perceptions of criminality cause us to let down our guards to many of the
most serious threats to public safety: not only the random violence engaged in
by whites, but also the calculated violence of wealthy whites in corporate
America-folks whose decisions each year contribute directly to injury, illness
and death. And that’s a kind of violence the "root causes" of which no
one seems interested in researching.
Yes,
it’s been a banner summer for white violence: Ben Smith’s shooting spree,
Woodstock ’99, the day-trader in affluent Buckhead, the delivery driver in
Gadsden, Alabama, and now the neo-Nazi who shot up the Jewish Community Center
in L.A. Surely this is enough of a trend to warrant a few hundred thousand
dollars from the Bradley foundation to study the phenomenon and a book deal with
the Free Press.
Tim
Wise is a Nashville-based activist and writer. He is the director of the
newly-formed Association for White Anti-Racist Education (AWARE), and can be
reached at [email protected].