As a result of its mixed racial, ethnic, and religious composition, it is not surprising that American society has occasionally seen underlying tensions spill over into collective violence. Thus one can note violent destruction of the Indians and early attacks on Quakers, anti-Mormon and anti-Catholic riots in the 1840s, occasional slave uprisings, the 1863 anti-draft, anti-***** riots in New York, the anti-Chinese outburst in California in 1871, and major race riots between whites and blacks in 1917 at East Saint Louis; 1919 at Chicago, and 1943 in Detroit, as well as the 1943 anti-Mexican riot in Los Angeles. Political and labor violence, from Shay's Rebellion and the Stamp Act Riots in the eighteenth century to bloody fighting in twentieth-century mill and mine disputes, has also been much in evidence. Recent racial violence is thus hardly new to the American scene, though the exact nature of the causal link between earlier violence and recent uprisings is difficult to determine. However, the scale of recent disorders has been unprecedented in the history of the country.
Also distinctive is the fact that recent violence, often growing out of a police incident, has been restricted to ghetto areas and involves blacks striking out at the authorities, property, and symbols of white society, rather than at whites per se. Earlier racial violence, not restricted to ghetto areas, tended to be initiated by whites and involved black and white civilians with authorities often playing a passive role. Earlier ethnic violence was more pogrom-like in nature, while violence of the 1960s has more the character of colonial uprisings.
An additional new factor involves reports of the quality of those issued by post-riot investigating groups such as the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders and the New Jersey Select Commission on Civil Disorders. 1 With one or two notable exceptions, earlier riot commission inquiries fell far short of the objectivity, compassion, scope, and intelligence found in these recent reports. 2
The report of the National Advisory Commission is perhaps the most significant and far-reaching statement of a programmatic nature ever made by a governmental unit on American race relations. 3 It is a major call for new will and resources and a reordering of national priorities. In 1968 it represented the broadest compilation of materials on intergroup relations since the publication of Myrdal's An American Dilemma twenty-six years before. Contrary to some black radicals' echoing of Camus, it suggests that a society can condemn itself.
Cynics may, of course, suggest that it has all been said before, and perhaps in clearer, more manageable form. Yet it has not been said before with the potential power of a presidential-level commission composed of Establishment moderates.
Two premises underlay the commission's work. The first is a basic tenet of every such investigating group's work, from the British Corfield report on the Mau Mau to the McCone Commission report on Watts namely, that a nation cannot tolerate violence and disorder. What sets this report apart is the second tenet, which suggests that the nation will not deserve freedom from violence "unless it can demonstrate the wisdom and the will to undertake decisive action against the root causes of racial disorder." among the most important of root causes are not conspirators, or those with a false sense of grievance, but the very organization of white-dominated society.
Two of the most salient factors in the report have to do with the lack of black political access as a condition predisposing cities to violence and the role of the police during the disorders.
The commission reports that in Tampa, Florida, Negroes are 20 per cent of the population, yet there are no Negroes in the city council or school board. In Atlanta, Georgia (42 per cent *****) one of sixteen aldermen is black. In Cincinnati, Ohio, there is only one ***** on the city council, and of eighty-one members of city commissions, one was black. In Newark, New Jersey, more than half *****, seven out of nine city councilmen and board of education members are white. In Detroit, Michigan (more than one third black) one of nine councilmen was *****. What is even more conducive to disorder is that this under-representation often occurs in an atmosphere of grievances acknowledged but unacted upon and promises made but broken.
Compared to the degree of bloodshed in recent racial disorders in Indonesia, Nigeria, and earlier in South Africa and India, America's racial violence seems mild. An important factor in keeping down broader racial confrontation and widespread killing has been the power and professionalism of the police. Yet if such a judgment may be made in a comparative perspective, it may not be made in any absolute sense. As this report makes very clear, there were some instances, particularly in Detroit and Newark, where police behavior seemed as much to create disorder as to control it.
Snapping power lines, firecrackers, and nervous, untrained police and national guardsmen caused much indiscriminate firing. The police often faced a very difficult job for which they were unprepared. According to the director of the Newark police, "Down in the Springfield Avenue area it was so bad that, in my opinion guardsmen were firing upon police and police were firing back, at them." With an honesty not always found in such documents the report gives many disturbing examples of the accidental killing of innocent people and in some cases of official murder. Conflict was clearly escalated by such behavior, along with the National Guard's smashing of stores with "soul brother" written on them. In Newark, the removal of badges and taping over of squad car license numbers by the police in Detroit, the arrest in Cincinnati on loitering charges of antipoverty workers trying to calm things, the misuse of bail and indiscriminate sentencing by judges, the lack of cooperation among various authorities, and official expectations of a riot that in some cases led to extra heavy policing and the occupying of an area by the National Guard with jeeps and tanks even before a disturbance had begun. 4
Yet I think the significance of the report lies not so much in the originality of its indictment as in the character of those making the indictment, not so much in the clarity of its presentation as in the scope of its recommendations, and not so much in the academic thoroughness of its analysis as in its compassion and sense of urgency.
Without in any way denying the enormity of America's interracial problems, the predominant responsibility of white society for these problems, and the great need for the kind of action recommended by the commission, I would like to raise some critical questions about the report's analysis of the disorders themselves (a factor somewhat independent of the position of the ***** in America and the steps needed to change this position). 5
My critical comments will revolve around the report's failure to deal with variation in types of disorders, to refine and document the importance of current racism, to discuss the general connection between external war (and the Vietnam War in particular) and internal disorder, and its inadequate treatment of postriot consequences.
Types of Disorder
The report notes: "We have been unable to identify constant patterns in all aspects of civil disorder. We have found that they are unusual, irregular, complex . . . and unpredictable social processes" 6 This kind of layman's sociology is disappointing in the face of data that almost leap up at the reader waiting to be interpreted. The issue is not to find universal themes but rather to explain variation and typical patterns of development. An adequate answer to the question "Why did it happen?" depends on a careful elaboration of what "it" is. There is an unfortunate tendency in the report to treat disturbances as if they were all of one kind. Almost the only systematic acknowledgment of variation comes in the classification (using four criteria whose interrelations are not made clear) of riots as "major," "serious," and "minor." 7
Among variables that would have been useful in categorizing disorders are things such as the degree of political articulation, the degree to which the disturbance was offensive or defensive in nature,and whether crowd aims were primarily expressive or instrumental. To consider Cambridge, Maryland, a city with essentially a "defensive riot" in the same terms as Plainfield, New Jersey, a city with a very political disturbance, or to consider the first Dayton disturbance, which involved an expressive bar crowd, with Detroit and Newark, both of which experienced full-scale armed insurrections, does not advance understanding. One reason social scientists have thus far been unable to find very meaningful correlations between background factors and whether or not a city experienced disorders certainly lies in this tendency to treat all riots as if they were the same.
The analysis section of the report (chapter two), with the exception of a useful profile of rioters in Detroit and Newark, is dominated by long lists containing things such as the number of cities in which tear gas was used, the number of times various kinds of grievances were mentioned, the number of times curfew was imposed. This is analysis by description. Such facts are the building blocks out of which explanation should emerge. However, while a welter of facts is presented, they are not sufficiently interpreted and interrelated, nor are presumed causal factors related to each other or to different types of disorder in a systematic way.
This part of the report, which analyzes the actual riot situation, is also unduly static. The sense that a riot is an emergent process (independent of a wide array of factors conducive to violence in the preriot situation), very much dependent on the nature of the interaction between the police and the black community, is lacking. The important fact that in some cities as the disturbance grew police became subject to the same collective behavior phenomena as rioters (rumor, fear, frustration, emotional contagion, lessening of inhibitions, breakdown of social organization, innovative behavior) is not sufficiently dealt with.
Racism
In seeking to explain the disorders the commission rejected conspiracies and criminal element theories and focused instead on racism and poverty. It notes, "�white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it."
While the stress on racism may seem to some people politically inopportune as well as sociologically oversimplified, it has the virtue of pointing out that many of the problems faced by blacks stem from the system of social organization rather than from the personal failings of individual Negroes. In a society heavily biased on the side of rugged individualism, such an emphasis may not be out of line. It is doubtful that this stress on racism will hurt the black power movement the way President Johnson's "We shall overcome" speech earlier hurt the civil rights movement.
While I think the focus on racism is correct on both strategic and intellectual grounds, it could have been better documented and treated in a conceptually more sophisticated way. Racism is not a unidimensional concept, nor does it involve all whites or affect all blacks in the same way.
The concept of racism as used is too abstract and general. Because it accuses everyone, it accuses no one. While in a subtle sense any white who grows up in American culture cannot escape a degree of racism or profiting economically and psychologically from a society stratified by color, there are vast differences between individuals and institutions with respect to their benefit from racism and the amount and kind of racism. While all may be guilty, some of the pigs (in George Orwell's sense, not the black militant's) are more guilty than others. What is needed is, if not a report that names names, at least one that names institutions and contrasts varying manifestations of racism. One looks in vain for an adequate discussion of who specifically profits in what ways from having a large black underclass. Just which white institutions created, maintain, and condone the ghetto?
The report would have been more persuasive if it had differentiated institutional from idiosyncratic racism, racist attitudes from racist behavior, self-conscious and intended racism from subconscious or nonreflective and unintentional behavior and attitudes that may have racist consequences, and done more to document rather than simply assert the importance of current racism. One can wonder whether the average suburban white, who rarely has any kind of contact with Negroes and who rejects the more vulgar stereotypes, will come away from the report with an appreciation of the prevalence or importance of current racism.
The analytical and descriptive sections of the report dealing with the disorders might have been more closely linked to the policy recommendations. 8 In its recommendations for action the report relies as much, or more, on a model stressing the internal weaknesses of the ***** community as on self-conscious racism.The recommendations for action also deal more with the consequences of racism and changing the ***** community than with direct attacks on racism and changing whites. This is partly related to the failure to elaborate racism and to show how it interacts with other causal factors.
Confusion also emerges in the "why did it happen" section of the report, where racism is used in an undifferentiated way to account for both the position of the ***** in America and riots. While it is relevant to both, it would seem to apply more clearly to the former.
The bitter fruits of racism are seen to be pervasive discrimination and segregation, white exodus and black migration, and the black ghetto, with its circle of failure, crime, and dependency. Such factors may well be necessary conditions for the occurrence of violence. Yet one could note that such conditions exist in most ***** communities, the majority of which have not had serious disturbances, as well as in communities that have had very different kinds of disturbances. And in these communities only a minority of the population participates. Nor does a focus on racism help us understand why relatively �good� cities such as New Haven, Connecticut and Atlanta experienced disorders, while relatively �bad� cities such as Oakland, California, or smaller Southern cities did not. Nor does it tell us why the increase in disorders seems directly proportional (in both a temporal and a geographical sense) to a decrease in the degree of racism. 9
Racism, as it relates to the position of the ***** in American society, while strongly necessary fox a full understanding of disorder, is not synonymous with it.
Two Wars
In its search for possible causal factors, an important omission is almost any mention of the Vietnam War and of the general connection between war and civil disorder. Wars abroad have been strongly related to violent internal conflicts at home. More than two-thirds of all race riots in the fifty-year period from 1913 to 1963 occurred during (or immediately before or after) war periods. Or put another way, approximately three-quarters of the race riots occurred in the one-quarter of the years devoted to wars. 10
The four largest race riots before the Vietnam War came during war periods. The Civil War saw the New York draft riots where perhaps two thousand people were killed (no one bothered to keep serious count, and there were instances where police responded to rioters by simply throwing them off buildings). World War I witnessed the very brutal East Saint Louis disturbance in which forty-eight people were killed. After whites set fire to several hundred black homes, white snipers fired at Negroes as they fled the flames. A white mob battled the firemen. The end of World War I saw the 1919 Chicago riot in which thirty-eight died. This followed an incident where a ***** swimmer drifted across the line separating the "*****" water from the "white" water. An incident at an amusement park triggered the 1943 Detroit riot, which left thirty-three people dead and almost a thousand injured.
One needs only the degree of expertise of the person who accused a sociologist of being a man who spent $100,000 to find a house of prostitution to get at some of the basic reasons for the general connection between external wars and outbursts of internal violence. A brutalization of the atmosphere occurs where life is not valued. Models for violent behavior are communicated, as is the implicit belief that force and coercion are acceptable ways of solving problems. While wars may unify a country, this often comes about at the cost of increased intolerance for racial, religious, or ideological outsiders. Wars bring various kinds of social, economic, and geographical dislocations. The hold of traditional agents of social control may be weakened. Expansions of the war-time economy have often led to advances for Negroes. Such black advancement may create fears among a threatened white working class and generate even greater ***** discontent. Furthermore black aspirations are raised in wars fought to "make the world safe for democracy" or to "secure the four freedoms" or to "resist communist tyranny.� The ideology which helps unite the society may at the same time increase the sense of oppression among its minorities.
That riots have increased as the Vietnam War has escalated may thus represent more than a fortuitous correlation. In some ways we may simply be seeing a continuation of an earlier pattern, although disturbances have changed from the classic race riot where whites attack Negroes to one in which Negroes attack the police and system.� 11
Many of the above factors are relevant to understanding contemporary disorder, just as they are relevant to the many war year disturbances in this century. Yet a more immediate link between the Asian war and the disturbances at home may lie in expenditures. The Vietnam War has clearly drawn vital energy and resources away from the cities in a context of heightened aspirations. 12 While the money spent in Vietnam has increased 250 times from $103 million in 1964-1965 to $25 billion in 1968, under the threat of Sargent Shriver's resignation Congress barely managed to give the poverty program $1.7 billion. In some vital areas funds have been cut back. Where urban and human welfare programs have not been crippled by the war, they have in no way expanded to meet the need. In many models of violent uprisings the government's failure to carry out its pre-Vietnamese promises would be seen as conducive to internal violence.
While the effect of wars in general, or this war in particular, on the outbreak of civil disorder cannot be precisely measured, the report might at least have hinted at these factors. 13 Even more significant is the report's failure to consider the inhibiting effect of continuation of the war on the call for massive domestic expenditures implied in its recommendations.
In recent years,there has been a resurgence of racial/ethnic conflict at predominantly White institutions of higher education. Incidents of harassment and violence at the University of Michigan, the University of Massachusetts and other campuses have highlighted the continuing racial/ethnic divisions among majority and minority students (Wilkerson 1988; Farrell 1988a and 1988b; Simpson 1987; Williams 1987). These incidents have emerged during a period when the society, in general, has expressed concern about the declining enrollment of racial minorities -- particularly Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans -- and, to a lesser extent, Asians, in higher education. Therefore, it is ironic that those minority students already enrolled in predominantly White institutions of higher education are experiencing increasing levels of racial/ethnic discrimination and feelings of isolation.
To that end, this paper is a preliminary attempt to develop a perspective on this apparently worsening situation. In order to establish a contemporary understanding of this problem, a general content analytical technique was employed to delineate the most significant contemporary issues/factors surrounding racial/ethnic incidents on the campuses of predominantly White institutions of higher education (Borg and Gall 1979; Babbie 1983). Content analysis has been determined to be an effective tool for monitoring social change. During the past year, there has been an emergence of reportorial interest in racial/ethnic conflict on White university campuses, thus the employment of this technique. The basic approach was to examine the patterns of focus in selected newspapers and related publications and to summarize emergent themes and trends.
For the purpose of this qualitative analysis, a national newspaper, The New York Times, a local newspaper and selected black-oriented newspapers were reviewed for the calendar years 1987 through June, 1988. In addition, related books, articles and periodicals on higher education issues also were assessed. The specific objectives of this investigation were to:
- to provide an overview of minority students on White college campuses,
- to examine the general perceptions of racism in contemporary society,
- to determine the scope of racial/ethnic incidents on campus of predominantly White institutions of higher education, and
- to assess prospects for change.
The main results of this analysis indicate that Blacks were the primary minority group impacted by these "reported" racial incidents, but Hispanics and Asians also have been found to be experiencing increased levels of 'actual" and "perceived"racial discrimination. Native Americans have not emerged in this content analysis as being victims of "reported" racial incidents in contemporary higher education.
Racial Violence Continues in Australia
iolence spilled into a second night Monday as scores of youths drove through predominantly white suburbs of Sydney, smashing windows of cars, homes and stores and raising fears of spreading racial unrest.
Prime Minister John Howard called the violence "sickening," but denied it was rooted in racism. Arab community leaders said the unrest would heighten racial tensions as cell phone text messages warned of retribution by the Arab community and attacks by neo-Nazi groups.
About 5,000 white men, many of them drunk, targeted people believed to be of Arab or Middle Eastern descent on Cronulla Beach on Sunday after rumors spread that Lebanese youths assaulted two lifeguards earlier this month.
Police, who had stepped up patrols on the beach after learning of cell phone text messages urging people to retaliate for the attack on the lifeguards, fought back with batons and pepper spray.
Young men of Arab descent struck back in several Sydney suburbs Sunday, fighting with police for hours and smashing dozens of cars with sticks and bats, police said. They said 31 people were injured, including a white man who was allegedly stabbed in the back, and 16 arrested.
Carloads of youths also tore through the suburbs Monday night, attacking vehicles and throwing bottles through windows. While only one person was reported injured and six arrested, there appeared to be more damage to cars and stores than on Sunday.
Television images of Sunday's riot shocked Australians, who pride themselves on tolerance and credit an influx of immigrants with helping build up the country after World War II.
Tensions between youths of Arabic and Middle Eastern descent and white Australians have been rising in recent years, fueled by the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States and deadly bombings on Bali that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.
Many Muslims also were angered over Howard's decision to contribute troops to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The president of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia, Keysar Trad, said the violence was "bound to happen" following angry calls to radio talk shows after the attack on the lifeguards. Police have denied the assault on the lifeguards was racially motivated.
The unrest recalled three weeks of rioting in France that began in the suburbs of Paris on Oct. 27 and spread nationwide, baring frustration in communities with high immigrant and Muslim populations.
Police spokesman Paul Bugden said he did not have descriptions of those involved in Monday night's rampage, but said it was linked to Sunday's rioting.
Witnesses told an Associated Press photographer that some youths involved in the attacks were Middle Eastern or Arabic in appearance and others wore ski masks. Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported that police said men of Middle Eastern appearance were involved.
New text messages calling for more violence reportedly were being circulated. "We'll show them!" one message said, according to The Australia newspaper.
Howard defended Australia's policy of tolerance, noting that the nation has successfully absorbed millions of foreigners. "I do not accept that there is underlying racism in this country," he said.
His comments were clearly aimed at immigrants and their families. Howard repeatedly has come under criticism for refusing to apologize for past government abuses of Aborigines, Australia's poorest and least educated minority group.
Morris Iemma, premier of New South Wales state, said police would find those behind the violence. "Let's be very clear, the police will be unrelenting in their fight against these thugs and hooligans," he said.
About 300 people of Arab descent demonstrated against Sunday's attack outside one of Sydney's largest mosques, amid tight security.
"Arab Australians have had to cope with vilification, racism, abuse and fear of a racial backlash for a number of years, but these riots will take that fear to a new level," said Roland Jabbour, chairman of the Australian Arabic Council.
In the 2001 census, nearly a quarter of Australia's 20 million people said they were born overseas. The country has about 300,000 Muslims, most in lower income suburbs of large cities.
A resident of the predominantly white suburb of Brighton-Le-Sands, Steven Dawson, said a bottle thrown through his apartment window Monday showered his 5-month-old son with glass, but did not hurt the boy.
Horst Dreizner said a car was rammed through the front doors of his denture store. "Personally, I think it is only the beginning," he said by telephone.
The violence distressed residents of Sydney.
"What we have seen yesterday is something I thought I would never see in Australia," Community Relations Commission chairman Stepan Kerkyasharian told Sky News.
Religious leaders urged calm, with Roman Catholic Archbishop Cardinal George Pell urging people to "reject the extremists in both camps and work together so that this is the end of major disturbances, not the beginning of something worse."