UCLA Professor Robin Kelley spoke out this week to suggest that black Americans have no other option but to riot in the wake of the death of George Floyd, who died in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota last week.
UCLA posted some interviews with faculty this week about the civil unrest that is currently plaguing our nation, as riots continue to spread across the country like wildfire.
Buildings all over the nation have been burned down and acts of violence have been committed left and right, yet Kelley claims that black Americans were left with no choice but to resort to this sort of mayhem.
“I’m 58 years old now. I don’t remember a year that there wasn’t half a dozen cases, spectacular cases of police violence. You could do a New York Times front page, just like you did of the COVID deaths, and easily get 100,000 names, beginning in 1960, of people who died,” Kelley said.
“My wife asked me this question last night, ‘Do you think this is right?’ I said, ‘What other choice do people have?’”
It seems to me that there are many other options besides violence and looting, but that’s just my take!
UCLA Professor Darnell Hunt, who teaches sociology and African American studies, said in his interview that it’s offensive for people to use the word “riot” to describe what is happening right now. “The term ‘riot’ tends to connote a senseless venting of frustration, of destroying your own community and all these other things that are counterproductive, as if there couldn’t be political value in urban unrest and forcing the system to examine itself,” Hunt said.
He added that Americans have become unfairly prejudiced against the word “looting” despite the fact that many of the looters during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, which were carried out in response to the death of Rodney King, stole basic necessities.
“You had a huge immigrant population that was barely getting by, barely surviving, and people were going to drugstores and ‘looting’ diapers, things to make ends meet in their families,” Hunt continued.
“To minimize that as just, ‘Oh, people are just looting,’ completely robbed it of the political content and the political possibilities that people are trying to communicate by taking a risk and getting involved.”
These radically leftwing professors can say whatever they want, but the reality is that there are always other options besides resorting to violence.
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What happened to Floyd was wrong, but his death should not be used as an excuse to spread more violence and chaos across America.
It seems to me that there are many other options besides violence and looting, but that’s just my take!
What are your thoughts on this perspective?
This piece was written by PoliZette Staff on June 6, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.
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