11 Stupid Reasons White People Have Rioted
White people riot all the time.
Here's a look at some of the dumbest reasons.
http://www.alternet.org/11-stupid-reasons-white-people-have-rioted?page=0%2C2
November 27, 2014 |
There
is a long and storied history of behaviors being depicted through the prism of
people's skin color. During Hurricane Katrina, as people of all races
desperately searched for provisions, the media reported that white people “found”
food, while black people “looted.”
A
similar phenomenon can be seen in the response to protests sparked by the
murder of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown and a grand jury’s recent decision
not to indict his killer, Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. In discussing
riots that occurred in the aftermath of both events, the media and conservative
pundits have displayed far too great a willingness to chalk up the destruction
to black pathology without looking at longstanding policies that support and
maintain white supremacy in the U.S. What’s more, they also completely overlook
the fact that white people riot, too—just for really stupid reasons.
Inspired
by a list compiled by political blogger @red3blog in
a series of tweets, here’s a more in-depth look at the 11 most ridiculous
reasons white people have rioted.
11)
Denver 1998: Denver Broncos Win Super Bowl.
In
response to their home team, the Denver Broncos, winning the Super Bowl for the
second consecutive year in a row, 10,000 fans apparently decided the most
appropriate response was to go on a rampage that included fighting in the
street, randomly setting bonfires, overturning cars and general acts of
vandalism. Andrew Hudson, a spokesman for the mayor’s office, later called the
mob destruction “a really ugly scene by a lot of obnoxious people who were
drunk.” Video of the swelling crowd behaving badly can be viewed here,
with reporters repeatedly referring to the rioters, who caused the city
millions of dollars in damages, as “rowdy.”
10)
San Francisco 2012. San Francisco Giants Win World Series.
You
might guess that with three World Series wins over the last five years,
riot-ready San Francisco Giants fans might decide to sit one of those wins out,
but so far, that hasn’t happened. While this particular photo dates to the 2012
riots following the Giants’ triumph over the Detroit Tigers, the city has
erupted in post-World Series violence twice more in recent history: in 2010,
after the Giants beat the Texas Rangers, and again this year, after the team
defeated the Kansas City Royals. The 2014 riots ended with two non-fatal shootings and a stabbing among
the violence that marred the night. A picture tweeted after this year’s mayhem
shows the remnants of a smashed police car, with a note that “officers had
bottles thrown at them by out of control fans.”
9)
Vancouver 2011. Vancouver Canucks Lose the Stanley Cup.
A
few of the most interesting details about the riots
that followed the Vancouver Canucks’ loss to the Boston Bruins for the Stanley
Cup in 2011: Rioters chanted “Let’s go riot! Let's go!”; cars and trucks were
overturned and set ablaze; theatergoers who’d gone to see the Broadway play
"Wicked" found themselves stuck in the theater, which was located in
the riot zone, until the whole mess ended. Jim Chu, chief of the Vancouver
police department, blamed the chaos on "criminals and anarchists"
disguised as hockey fans. In any case, local news cameras caught aerial views
of rioters in the act, like this video of the crowd turning
over a truck (at the :40 mark) for reasons apparent only to
them.
8)
Lexington, Kentucky, 2012. University of Kentucky Wildcats Win.
If
you have any doubt that white people are particularly committed to rioting for
any sports related reasons, consider the case of the University of Kentucky in
2012. Riots broke out after the school defeated in-state rivals Louisville in
the Final Four, with more than 30 arrests made and a staggering
50-some fires reported. Astonishingly, just two nights later, after the team
defeated the University of Kansas to become NCAA champs, fans again rioted,
setting just as many fires, but this time adding gun violence to boot, leaving
one man non-fatally shot (and not by the police).
11 Stupid Reasons White People Have Rioted
White people riot all the time.
Here's a look at some of the dumbest reasons.
Continued
from previous page
7)
Boston 2004. Red Sox Win Games...Three Different Times.
If
you make a reference to “that time white people in Boston rioted over
baseball,” you’ll have to get more specific and name a year, since it happened
in 2004, 2007 and 2013. The deadliest riot, in 2004, left 21-year-old student
Victoria Snelgrove dead, the accidental victim of a projectile fired by the police.
Snelgrove, despite being among the 60,000-80,000 estimated rioters, was never
labeled a “thug” or a “demon,” and the Boston police department issued a
statement saying it accepted “full responsibility” for the student’s death.
(The city was subsequently court-ordered to pay Snelgrove’s family $5.1
million.) Media coverage of the rioting accused fans
of taking the celebration “too far,” and described them as “causing mischief,”
even as images of flames engulfing a car flickered in the background. Riots
also followed a 2007 Red Sox win, as well as another triumph in 2013, a night
which ended with cars smashed and overturned.
6)
West Virginia 2014. West Virginia University Mountaineers Win.
Although
the West Virginia University Mountaineers pulled an upset with their 2012 win
over Baylor University, it did not reflect the 400-year-long struggle for
equality and justice of one oppressed minority group against a racist and white
supremacist power structure, but white people found a reason to riot anyway.
According to ESPN, rioters “pushed over street lights and
threw rocks, beer bottles and other items at public safety personnel and their
vehicles,” and of course, set plenty of fires. In fact, the school has become
famous for recklessly burning stuff after games (even
though it's now a felonious offense), which I’d love to see
any students from an historically black college try to get away with.
5)
Pennsylvania 2011. Penn State Fires Coach Joe Paterno for Looking the Other Way
While His Assistant Coach Sexually Molested Children.
After
it was widely discovered that Penn State football coach Joe Paterno hadn't
reported his assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, to police, after learning he was
likely molesting young boys, the school fired the coach. After learning of the
university's decision, thousands of students rioted, brawling with police and
ripping down lamposts. They also overturned news vans, which crowded the campus
as the scandal unfolded. Jerry Sandusky was later found guilty of 45 of the 48
charges related to molesting young boys, many of them from underserved
communities and participants in the Second Mile, a "charitable
organization" Sandusky himself founded.
4)
Knoxville, Tennessee, 2010. Lane Kiffin Decides He Doesn't Want to Coach for
the University of Tennessee Anymore.
Lane
Kiffin probably expected that announcing he was quitting as head coach of the
University of Tennessee Volunteers to instead coach the University of Southern
California Trojans—after just one year on the job— would frustrate many of the
school’s football fans. He may not have expected it would result in them
calling for his head and totally wrecking shop. Reports state that Kiffin
was basically chased from campus, while students and other football
hooligans burned things, ran
amok in the streets, and again, burned
things (sometimes, apparently, while drunkenly singing “Rocky
Top, Tennessee”). In the end, Kiffin turned out to be a huge bust at USC and
was fired, meaning he'd actually done Tennesse a favor.
3)
Huntington Beach, California, 1986 and 2013. Surfing Competitions Take Place.
Every
year, Huntington Beach hosts the U.S. Open of Surfing. Every few years, it also
hosts a riot or two. The Huntington Beach Op Pro surf riots date back to 1986
when, according to (possibly apocryphal) lore, the chaos started with
a few guys “trying to take off the bathing suits of two young women.” Whatever
the origins of the craziness—footage of which you can check out here,
along with photos here— it ended with hundreds of rioters
setting police cars on fire, hurling bottles and throwing punches. The scene
repeated itself in 2013, when a crowd described as “young, tan [and]
overwhelmingly white” went on a similar free-for-all of random destruction.
While these two riots are separated by a quarter century, don’t be misled:
Huntington Beach has a history of random group violence that suggests something
deeper and more pathological at work in the white community. Check out this
video footage from 1993 (from a 4th of July riot) or this
lengthy list of Huntington Beach crowd
violence compiled by Southern California station NB
11 Stupid Reasons White People Have Rioted
White people riot all the time.
Here's a look at some of the dumbest reasons.
Continued
from previous page
2)
Chicago 1979. Too Much Disco Music.
Chicago
DJ Steve Dahl was a key voice in the “Disco Sucks” movement, the backlash
against disco music that advocated for the superiority of the more
white-identified genre of rock and roll. (The movement might also be considered
the progenitor of rockism, which remains with us today.) Disco
Demolition Night started as a publicity stunt where fans were invited to bring
old disco records to a double header between the Chicago White Sox and the
Detroit Tigers. Between games, the plan was to have Dahl explode a pile of the
records on the field. The problem was, nearly double the capacity of Comiskey
Park showed up, and a few thousand fans who'd been refused admittance instead
found ways to sneak in. As the two teams began to square off, out-of-control
fans threw disco records and random objects from the stands onto the field.
Between games, when the explosion finally did happen, thousands of attendees
stormed the field, setting bonfires, stealing bases and tearing up the green.
It took cops in riot gear to get everyone back to their seats, and ultimately,
the second game was cancelled and the White Sox forfeited. As pictures from the
night attest, the crowd was overwhelmingly white, although there was one person
of color in attendance: late actor Michael Clark Duncan, a 21-year-old
unknown at the time, who “slid into third base, had a silver belt buckle
stolen, and went home with a bat from the dugout.”
1)
Keene, New Hampshire, 2014. Pumpkin Festival Takes Place. No Really... a Pumpkin
Festival.
The
much-mocked Keene State College riots this year are not just evidence that
white people can and will riot without the slightest provocation, they are a
troubling look at the very different ways our society views behaviors based on
skin color. In October, Keene State held its annual Pumpkin Festival, a
seemingly innocuous annual gathering that somehow devolved into drunken (white)
students turning over cars, throwing bottles at the cops, stealing street
signs, starting fires, shouting obscenities at the police, and somehow,
surviving without a single person being so much as tased. Ironically, despite
early unrest, peaceful protests in Ferguson had been ongoing for weeks, but
conservative media, for some reason, labeled those activists criminals. Twitter couldn’t help noticing the
difference, resulting in tweets that wondered "Why are they tearing up
their own community?" and suggesting “White people in New Hampshire really
need to do some self-reflection and regulate their animal impulses in the wake
of #keenepumpkinfest.”
Click to enlarge.
Arashiyama bamboo forest, Kyoto, Japan
In
western Kyoto, there is a very large forest of bamboo. As you can see
in the photo, the shoots grow very tall, making those who stroll by look
quite small. I'm sure there are times when this road is crowded, but
when we were there, people were few and far between.
My only regret was not understanding that this forest would be the only one we saw. I wish I had taken more photos. Bamboo grows extremely fast, which is why it is the fastest renewable plant product that I know. It is not a tree, it is a grass. Some forests have grown to 20 to 30 feet in a growing season of four months.
Just Google Arashiyama bamboo forest and you will see more photos and more data about this location and how to get there.
The walk through this forest was most peaceful.
My only regret was not understanding that this forest would be the only one we saw. I wish I had taken more photos. Bamboo grows extremely fast, which is why it is the fastest renewable plant product that I know. It is not a tree, it is a grass. Some forests have grown to 20 to 30 feet in a growing season of four months.
Just Google Arashiyama bamboo forest and you will see more photos and more data about this location and how to get there.
The walk through this forest was most peaceful.
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