Riots why are they happening

Without such understanding, we address only the outcome of a riot, not the source of it. Rather than questioning whether statues of historical figures should be removed , we need to consider why society has chosen to amplify the voices of individuals who enslaved and perpetuated the oppression of thousands of Americans.

While riots may cause chaos and may not directly or immediately produce social change, they have the power to initiate much-needed conversations around societal problems. In understanding the psychology behind rioting, we must look past the resulting violence and destruction and address the oppression that drives so many to take action. Ever wonder what your personality type means? Sign up to find out more in our Healthy Mind newsletter.

Library of Congress. The New York Times. Anderson M. Pew Research Center. Holdo M, Bengtsson B. Marginalization and riots: A rationalistic explanation of urban unrest. Hous, Theory Soc. Dewan S, Baker M.

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I Accept Show Purposes. And in Charlotte, the main catalyst was the police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott. But there were deeper issues, as well. Gray's West Baltimore neighborhood , for example, has languished in poverty: More than half the residents weren't working and one-third of residential buildings were vacant or abandoned, according to a February report by the Justice Policy Institute and Prison Policy Initiative. Charlotte, similarly, has long been mired by racially skewed policing and residential segregation.

Thompson explained in an op-ed for NBC News:. In short, Charlotte is one of the wealthiest cities in the country, but this prosperity hasn't touched overwhelmingly black West and Northeast Charlotte and it is one of the most heavily policed. And the police don't spend much energy policing — throwing people up against cars on a regular basis to search them for drugs — in overwhelmingly white South Charlotte.

And the excessive and aggressive policing of only Charlotte's poorest and blackest neighborhoods leads there, as it does in every other city in the country, to the killing of citizens by the police. It has led there, as it has elsewhere to outrage.

The anger toward these systems, particularly in black communities, extends outside Baltimore and Charlotte. The Black Lives Matter movement took off following the police shooting of Michael Brown , an unarmed black year-old, in Ferguson, Missouri.

These deaths and many others have fed into the idea in black communities that their own members — or their sons — could be the next victims of police brutality. An analysis of the available FBI data by Vox's Dara Lind found that US police kill black people at disproportionate rates: Black people accounted for 31 percent of police killing victims in , even though they made up 13 percent of the US population. Although the data is incomplete, since it's based on voluntary reports from police agencies around the country, it highlights the vast disparities in how police use force.

Higher crime in black communities doesn't fully explain the disparities. A study by researcher Cody Ross found, "There is no relationship between county-level racial bias in police shootings and crime rates even race-specific crime rates , meaning that the racial bias observed in police shootings in this data set is not explainable as a response to local-level crime rates.

But Thompson said it also takes years of neglect, despite peaceful calls for change, for discontent to turn into violence. In the s, people engaged in nonviolent protests as part of the Civil Rights Movement, filed complaints through the NAACP, complained to media, and threatened litigation, Thompson said. In Baltimore, locals complained to media , filed lawsuits over police abuse, and, finally, protested peacefully for weeks before the protests turned violent.

In Charlotte, black communities have long complained about mistreatment by police — including, previously, the police shooting of Jonathan Ferrell , an unarmed year-old black man who was shot 10 times and killed by a white police officer after he crashed his car. It was only when these attempts at drawing attention to systemic problems failed that demonstrators rose up in violence, including in modern-day Baltimore and Charlotte.

But if you protest peacefully, they don't give a shit. A California police officer directs traffic around a shopping center engulfed in flames during the riots in Los Angeles. Social justice riots are often depicted as people senselessly destroying their own communities to no productive means. President Barack Obama , Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake , and members of the media all used this type of characterization to describe the riots in Baltimore.

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Please click confirm to resume now. As rioting swept across England in August , research suggests that it was those who identified as anti-police that mobilised onto the streets and were subsequently empowered through their localised interactions with the authorities and each other. The targets of their subsequent collective rioting were not random, but focused predominately on the police, symbols of wealth and large retail outlets owned by big corporations.

And based on research on riots in multiple disciplines such as social psychology, history and criminology, the spread of the subsequent unrest would have been far from random. But behind the scenes, with closer rereading of riots , social psychology can help bust the myth of the irrational mob and begin to explain how the fictional city — as well as countless real ones — can and do transform from tranquillity into widespread and enduring crowd violence. Portsmouth Climate Festival — Portsmouth, Portsmouth.

Edition: Available editions United Kingdom. Become an author Sign up as a reader Sign in. Fanning flames.