Comparisons between this week and the summer of 1968 fly around the internet fast and furious, but this history is not a carbon copy of five decades ago. The 1968 protests erupted in ghettoized portions of Los Angeles and Detroit, and those communities suffered extensively in the subsequent crackdown. Chicago, memorably, erupted in parallel with the Democratic National Convention electing not to pull back from the conflict in Vietnam. In 2020, both protesters themselves and the city neighborhoods looted are relatively wealthier. Middle-class looters are targeting national chain stores rather than just local businesses exclusively. And these protests are not confined to the largest US cities.

Most importantly of all, the crowd in 2020 is decidedly multiethnic. Whites are there, holding signs, chanting “No justice; no peace!” and “Black Lives Matter.” Whites should not be rewarded simply for showing up. Still, it is a different level of participation than during the civil rights movement a half-century ago; different even than the original Black Lives Matter protests around Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. And for the most part these protests are peaceful, even featuring moments of true reconciliation. Unlike in Michigan or Texas a month ago, these protesters wear masks and do not carry rifles.

Rumors abound that much of the store destruction is being carried out by “outsiders”—either anarchists bent not on racial justice but destruction, or even “false flag” members of the police who are dressing like protesters and starting property damage to justify police retribution.[1] That is unsubstantiated. But it would be a classic move in American social violence. Rumors of Black attacks on whites inspired white Oklahomans when torching the entirety of “Black Wall Street” in Tulsa—99 years ago today.

Note

[1] Dan Evon, “Does Video Show Police Officer Smashing Windows During Minn. Protests?,” Snopes.com, May 29, 2020, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/officer-jacob-pederson-protests/.