The hypocrisy of condemning the Baltimore riots

By Thomas V. Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Apr 28, 2015

As the situation in Baltimore develops, we hear the usual chorus of white voices condemning the riots. Now more than ever, this strikes me as utterly disingenuous, not because rioting is a good thing, but because the people complaining about it tend to downplay or even ignore the situation which caused the riots in the first place.

In other words, they call for peace and nonviolence when it suits them—perhaps when they themselves feel personally threatened—but their calls for peace have been notably absent throughout the long history of murder of black innocents by white police.

The finger-wagging is especially ironic given that this nation was practically founded on a riot (I believe there is a major conservative political movement named after that event).

Of course, as Mark Shea points out, the rioters are a minority of otherwise peaceful protesters, but the media will hardly play it that way, just as when an untold number of pro-lifers march peacefully, they choose to focus on a handful of lunatics.

We may wish the protests were entirely peaceful, but as a friend once said, “Fraternal correction presupposes some measure of fraternity.” Condemning rioters is facile, even hypocritical, if we don’t first have compassion and try to understand why these explosions of outrage have occurred. In the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates sums it up:

An officer made eye contact with [Freddie] Gray. Gray, for unknown reasons, ran. The officer and his colleagues then detained Gray. They found him in possession of a switchblade. They arrested him while he yelled in pain. And then, within an hour, his spine was mostly severed. A week later, he was dead. What specifically was the crime here? What particular threat did Freddie Gray pose? Why is mere eye contact and then running worthy of detention at the hands of the state? Why is Freddie Gray dead?

The people now calling for nonviolence are not prepared to answer these questions. Many of them are charged with enforcing the very policies that led to Gray’s death, and yet they can offer no rational justification for Gray’s death and so they appeal for calm. But there was no official appeal for calm when Gray was being arrested. There was no appeal for calm when Jerriel Lyles was assaulted. (“The blow was so heavy. My eyes swelled up. Blood was dripping down my nose and out my eye.”) There was no claim for nonviolence on behalf of Venus Green. (“Bitch, you ain’t no better than any of the other old black bitches I have locked up.”) There was no plea for peace on behalf of Starr Brown. (“They slammed me down on my face,” Brown added, her voice cracking. “The skin was gone on my face.”)

The typical conservative response (with the exception of libertarians) to these situations fits the profile of moderates drawn by Martin Luther King in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” King noted that many people prefer order to justice. What they want is a “negative peace” characterized by absence of tension, rather than positive peace, which requires the presence of justice. They accuse those who bring hidden tensions to the surface in order to resolve them of stirring up trouble.

Or as Coates continues:

When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is "correct" or "wise," any more than a forest fire can be "correct" or "wise." Wisdom isn't the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the community.

Christianity may call for nonviolence, but let’s make no mistake: violence is the natural human response to violence, and Christianity does not ask us to abandon natural human responses without first understanding them. Those who call for calm and non-violence selectively and without compassion are not calling for Christian peace, but for the maintenance of the status quo.