Comparing BLM marches to the Capitol riots ignores history, and truth (1931 hits)

Comparing BLM marches to the Capitol riots ignores history, and truth

White America needs to stop clinging to its fear of Black violence and justification of violent white grievances.

By Ali Velshi, MSNBC Opinion Columnist

On the night of May 28, I was standing in front of a burning liquor store at the corner of East Lake Street and Minnehaha Avenue in Minneapolis. Three days had passed since the death of George Floyd in police custody, and no arrests had been made.

Police had been run out of their precinct by protesters on one corner. On the opposite corner stood the still-smoldering ruins of an AutoZone that had been burned the night before. On a third corner, protesters had gathered, and on the corner behind me, the liquor store was in flames. I had stood at the intersection for six hours, watching the frustration grow.

I'm revisiting this scene now in light of a more recent event, when crowds of supporters of President Donald Trump swarmed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, protesting the legitimacy of the election of President-elect Joe Biden.

Although some have drawn misguided parallels between the two, there is an important distinction here: Violence that is intended to spread democracy, end injustice and encourage fairness in the application of the rule of law has nothing in common with the wanton, anti-democratic riots of Jan. 6, fueled by QAnon and other conspiracy theories that tell the story of an election stolen by a Satan-worshipping cabal.

Jan. 6 was a violent riot in support of a coup attempt, and it should be met with nothing but universal scorn. The protests that swept the country after the death of George Floyd were the symptom of historically oppressed and disenfranchised people reaching a boiling point and taking a stand for their basic rights.

The idea that people of color who demonstrate for their rights — Black people, specifically — are inherently threatening and dangerous is commonplace in America. And the supporting narrative is that police are there to protect you from that, even though, as in this case, police were the proximate cause of the demonstrations.

But more than that, there's a clear distinction that even well-intentioned people make, possibly inadvertently: that Black people with grievance are one step away from becoming violent, while white people with grievance are justifiably upset, fighting to defend their rights.

On that May evening in Minneapolis, I described the scene to my colleague Brian Williams, who was anchoring. I relayed how, even though the previous day's protesters had been largely peaceful, police had responded by barricading the precinct and creating a human shield. This helped create "a new center of focus for the protesters," as I reported, prompting them to target the police station and the armed officers who surrounded it; officers responded with tear gas.


READ MORE: Comparing BLM marches to the Capitol riots ignores history, and truth https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/comparing-bl... Posted By: Dea. Ron Gray Sr.
Tuesday, January 19th 2021 at 7:18PM
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