Violent Protests Are Not All Bad
People don't say it enough: violence and violent protests are not all bad. You won't hear that on cable news, but it's true.
That statement is not an opinion, it's a fact demonstrated by at least one study. In 2017, Ryan Enos, Aaron R. Kaufman, and Melissa Sands, all professors of political science or social science, published the study “Can Violent Protest Change Local Policy Support? Evidence from the Aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles Riot.”
Here's what the researchers say:
“Contrary to some expectations from the academic literature and the popular press, we find that the riot caused a marked liberal shift in policy support at the polls. Investigating the sources of this shift, we find that it was likely the result of increased mobilization of both African American and white voters. Remarkably, this mobilization endures over a decade later.”
According to that study, violent protests can positively impact policy and mobilization that could endure for a decade at the local level. That finding is significant because many pundits and activists say the focus should be on policy changes.
At the local level, a violent protest may be one of the best ways to see policy changes. Don’t we need all the tools possible? Rage, as violent and uncontrolled anger, can be effective. The keyword here is local because locals may not see or react to violent protests the same way national onlookers do. While national onlookers may respond negatively to violent protests, locals may mobilize and meet the protestors’ demands.
This means it's a disservice to always and only demonize violent protests. Civility is a form of control. And I'm not convinced that white America sees peaceful protestors as peaceful.
A few years ago, I came across a study that said whites see the Black people’s neutral faces as threatening. You can imagine what that means for Black protestors.
In his book, “The Machinery of Whiteness,” Steve Martinot makes the point:
When the police instruct a movement to keep its demonstrations peaceful, there is no response the demonstrators can give that will convince the police that they are peaceful because the existence of the demonstration is already an act of violence unless specially governed by police hegemony.
Whites may never recognize peaceful protests as peaceful. If the call for nonviolent protests, only and always, is for white ears, then activists and demonstrators should end that call. Colonial powers respond to violence.
In “The Wretched of the Earth,” Frantz Fanon said, “decolonization is always a violent event.”
White America has colonized Black people in the United States. Whites get the blame for the colonization of Black people. Still, a history of nonviolent struggle may not have been as helpful as people like to believe.
Allies should take note —decolonization for Black people must also be a violent event. Suppose decolonization is always a violent event, and one doesn't ever support violent events. In that case, decolonization isn't possible.
Fanon also said, “colonialism is not a machine capable of thinking, a body endowed with reason. It is naked violence and only gives in when confronted with greater violence.”
Violent protests translate and speak volumes because violence is the mother tongue of the colonizer. If “a riot is the language of the unheard,” Fanon says a riot is the language the colonizer speaks and understands.
My question then is—Aren’t speaking and understanding the same language parts of effective communication? Research says, yes.