Riots and looting get a bad rap. The additional violence on top of a protest is seen as opportunistic chaos for amoral folks who are taking advantage of tumultuous times, or, for the more cynical, as the underlying and unstated value system of the entire protest movement despite their presented goals of social change and justice. In either case, rioting and looting is seen as delegitimizing protest movements; peaceful demonstration and presumably drum circles are the only valid forms a protest can take. Despite the long history of violence (even random, directionless violence) being associated with well-celebrated social change, today such ghastly displays are tut-tutted by the pearl-clutching among us.

Oh goodness! Another police killing / school shooting / poisoned water supply / pointless war? I sure hope nobody has any strong emotional reactions to this!

Protesters are told to follow the example of Martin Luther King Jr., who once said:

“And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? … It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.”

Or Gandhi, who said:

“I have been repeating over and over again that he who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honor by nonviolently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor.”

The use of violence is ghastly, and has problems of its own, but to deny its history is to deny the history of protest.

Why might that be? Well, effective protest serves as a disruption. ‘Normal’, as in the status quo, is deemed as harmful by the protesters, so a disruption of that normal is required to challenge it. Blockades, boycotts, and marches all serve to disrupt the economy, trade, and traffic respectively. Peaceful, non-invasive protests like holding signs on the side of the road while shouting slogans disrupts the normal routine of our day; we have to see and hear them when we otherwise would pass an uneventful commute.

Let’s disrupt society’s ability to drink Pepsi! Oh, God dammit Kendall Jenner, you ruined it!

While certainly a reasonable link between the problem with normal and its subsequent disruption brings greater clarity to the protest in general, it is not out of the question for a little randomness to be thrown in for the same reason that blood feuds are a thing. A blood feud is a form of collectivist justice: if one member of a family commits an infraction, everyone in that family is guilty because they exist as a collective rather than as distinct individuals. Society has become more individualistic since the times when blood feuds were more prevalent, but the idea has not gone away. Consider this: George Floyd was not killed because he was George Floyd, and Derek Chauvin didn’t really kill him as Derek Chauvin. George Floyd was killed because he was a black man, and Derek Chauvin killed him because he was an arbiter of normal. This then is not an individualistic murder, but a collectivist crime. A crime against all of black people by the enforcers of normalcy. The response then, makes sense as the collective of black people and those who stand in solidarity with them lash out at all of normalcy in response. Normal kills black folks, so normal is to blame. Let’s smash up normal: hence, riots and looting. And obviously it doesn’t help that the police continue to brutalize protesters which then exacerbates the blood feud further.

It’s worth pointing out that the size of disruption seems to have a golden mean of effectiveness. A small disruption doesn’t really affect much change (for example, changing your social media profile), but blowing up an Ariana Grande concert is clearly too far. Blood feuds tend to demand blood for blood, but I believe we’ve moved far enough beyond that ideology that we’re no longer moved by this bloody level of disruption. Are riots and looting too far? Well, considering that this is a response to many on-going deaths at the hands of police, we then have to ask, how much property damage is equivalent to the life of a human being? Trump put the number at around $450 billion when refusing to provide any kind of consequences for the Saudi dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, and, while I haven’t seen any numbers, somehow I think the looters have a long way to go before they reach that ceiling. Trump, of course, is using harsher language to describe even the peaceful protesters than he used for MBS after the Khashoggi dismemberment, but I suppose that’s because he’s not personally profiting from the BLM movement. Or maybe he just needs vapid flattery, who knows?

Could have been something to do with this orb. Remember the orb? I don’t think that mystery ever got solved…

The point is, the riots and looting are not separate from the peaceful protests, but are an extension of the same disruptive motivation that propels all protest. When these things happen, ideally we would reflect on normal. How does normal impact or harass others, or maybe how does normal benefit us, or even just leave us alone? Those who are impacted or harassed are quite familiar with the problems of normal; it’s those who are not who typically need to reflect. Once the justifications are assessed, then we can reflect on whether the level of disruption is appropriate to the level of impact.

Reshaping normal is thus the goal, and normal is not individual. Individual transgressions do not result in riots because riots are by definition collective, which requires collective response, and not the reprimand of “a few bad apples.” Ibram X. Kendi suggests focusing on policy changes, and the individuals will follow. What are some policy changes that might reshape normal into something less destructive towards people of colour? Well, they’ve already made some suggestions; we can start there.