Why the CVS Burned

The rioting in Baltimore wasn’t hooliganism. It was a protest against the depredations of the ghetto economy.

Most people can sympathize with the anger on display this week in the streets of Baltimore. It’s relatively easy to feel compassion for people who’ve suffered police brutality and abject poverty, even if you’ve never experienced either. Looting and burning is harder to understand, since torching a CVS store would hardly seem to have anything to do with protesting the actions of the Baltimore Police Department. President Obama decried the Baltimore riots as “senseless violence and destruction.” Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake also despaired at the destruction. “We worked so hard to get a company like CVS to invest in this neighborhood,” she said, “this is the only place that so many people have to pick up their prescriptions.” Why would anyone burn down the only CVS in their neighborhood?

The reason, I think, is likely the same reason that poor black Americans in cities across the country burned “their own” neighborhoods in the late 1960s: They did not experience those places as their own. Then, like now, police brutality was a precipitating cause of the violence, but it was the long-term experience of the indignities of the ghetto that gave shape to the riots. Then, like now, commentators compared the rioters to animals who had run wild and needed discipline. Rioting, to these bystanders, was not proper political protest but the criminal actions of poor people who merely wanted to grab what they could for free. This narrative, which I heard throughout my childhood growing up in Baltimore in the 1980s, put the blame not on the depredations of the ghetto, but on the character of its residents. It completely misapprehends the political economy of our poorest neighborhoods.

"...They did not experience those places as their own..."

Well, yeah. In many cases, those places weren't their own. They were largely given to them. They weren't going to be in such a hurry to burn down a city block if one of the businesses or homes there was paid for them by the years of hard work they did, would they?

Gee, time to post the "I'm Shocked!" picture. We all see what happens to things (and people) when they don't have to work for something, and things ranging from money to houses to healthcare are "given" to them by other people (taxpayers).

When the feelings or well-being of animals like these rioters and looters are given priority over the well being of a random citizen or a business owner BY THE AUTHORITIES, here is what happens to those random citizens and businesses:

They aren’t protected.

Their families aren’t protected.

Their property isn’t protected.

Their business isn’t protected.

So, they do what any INTELLIGENT, THOUGHTFUL, RESPONSIBLE person does: They uproot their family and business, and LEAVE. (Because we all see what happens to those who stand up to the animals: If they survive being beaten to a pulp by a mob, they are demonized as racists)

And what happens after that?

We hear whining and moaning that people in those ravaged communities can’t get access to basic services, can’t get stores to buy food at, can’t get a cab to take them home because it is too dangerous for the cabbies. And they decry the people who left to survive as “racists” and characterize their leaving as racially based “white flight”.

And they demonize industry and commerce as racist because they don’t want to build factories or open stores in those areas, because the extra security costs add up to 30% to the overhead of business, an addition fatal to business survivability.

And they demonize banks as racist who won’t give business loans to someone who wants to open something in those areas, because they won’t make it past the first riot.

And they characterize as racist the unwillingness of insurance companies to offer low rates to businesses in those areas, because it is a guaranteed 100% loser for them.

THAT is what infuriates me about the animals doing this in places like Ferguson and Baltimore. They are doing all they can to drive people out of those areas so that much of the liberal black leadership can point to racist “white flight” as one of the roots of their failure to have a functioning community.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.