From Slate, on the Baltimore riots: "Why would anyone burn down the only CVS in their neighborhood? The reason is likely the same reason 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. This narrative 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."
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