The Media Distorting Riots and Violence

By: Irene Kim

Many of us agree that we are against the ideas of looting and violence that are affiliated with the protests. However, there are several large misunderstandings when it comes to this topic which has divided and distracted the focus away from the point of the movement. Before I start, what is most important to understand is that if the police did not brutally murder hundreds of lives, these protests would not have happened on such a massive scale in the first place. 

First, the majority of BLM protestors are NOT inciting violence or looting. They are white supremacist groups, disguised police officers, or unaffiliated local residents desiring to take advantage of the movement. The intentions of these people are usually to force the protests into a negative light by the media, which is evidently working. There are clear videos of the BLM protestors PLEADING those not affiliated with the movement, (white supremacists, disguised officers, etc.) to stop the violence because they are aware they will be framed for the looting that they did not commit.

Moreover, the POLICE are inciting most of the violence. These protests all start in a nonviolent manner, but the police have been unnecessarily using tear gas and rubber bullets. Search up what happened when Trump decided he wanted to walk to a deserted church to hold a photoshoot — it portrays one example out of many. Some examples are pregnant women being stomped on the stomach and getting a miscarriage, a 70-year-old blind man being killed, the police pushing over a paralyzed man and several elderly, the police macing 8 and 13-year-old children, the police beating up protestors for no reason, and the police purposefully ripping off a protestors’ mask to direct the tear gas into the eyes and face of a protestor.

Here are some sources:

• About 80% of protesters in Minneapolis area were from out of town, governor says
• A white supremacist channel on Telegram encouraged followers to incite violence during police brutality protests by ‘shooting in a crowd,’ according to internal DHS memo
• White supremacists pose as Antifa online, call for violence
• “…while it was local protesters and groups that staged initial angry, but peaceful, demonstrations, it was agitators from elsewhere that strategically escalated the tension by causing damage and setting fires, they said. Their beliefs were reinforced by the large numbers of white people in the protests in Minneapolis.”
• Minnesota Officials Link Arrested Looters to ‘White Supremacist’ Groups

Second, if you are reading this and decided to point out the looting and violence, but have not promoted the Black Lives Matter movement other than a black square, you need to reprioritize. Your attitude shouldn’t be “A man was killed, but looting is wrong!” but “Looting is wrong, but thousands of people other than George Floyd were brutally killed by people designated to protect us!” The media purposefully tries to focus on this aspect of the protests to distract away from the movement.

Did you see mass news coverage when our citizens would burn down buildings because their sports teams lost? When citizens had rifles in their hands, shouting at the police to stop quarantine because they wanted a haircut? If you didn’t become outraged and hold these people accountable in the past when they burned down small businesses, don’t suddenly become all outraged now when discussing BLM. And, remember that the police ALLOWED “several hundred protesters to peacefully enter the capitol building around 1pm, where they crammed shoulder-to-shoulder near the entrance to legislative chambers” when white people tried to protest against the virus.

Third, EVEN if they DID incite some sort of violence, how are you going to criticize their methods when they’ve been brutally oppressed for years? If you don’t truly understand what Black minorities have gone through ever since they stepped foot on American soil, here is a quick rundown:  

*TRIGGER WARNING* 

Black minorities were raped, enslaved, lynched, their teeth were used as dentures, they slashed pregnant women’s bellies open and stomped on their babies as they watched, they would force the son to rape their parents so they wouldn’t need to buy new slaves, utilized Black people for the Tuskegee experiment, exhibited a man named Ota Benga in a zoo’s monkey house, tied pregnant women to trees to allow cats to attack their bellies, had carnival games where they would “hit the n****** baby.” The word “picnic” morphed into “pick a n******” to watch them get hanged. I could continue.

So yes, I’m against looting and violence, but have I witnessed my brother being shot to death for buying a pack of Skittles? I don’t even think I would have the self-control to peacefully protest if that happened to me. No one is saying this violence is okay, but do you not see the mass news coverage, now that rioting has occurred? Black Lives Matter protests have occurred since 2013, but they are just now getting news coverage. Why didn’t we ALL say BLM 7 years ago when it first started, when Trayvon Martin’s death, Eric Garner’s death, was JUST as brutal as George Floyd’s? What is the ONE thing that changed?

Martin Luther King Jr said, “Rioting is the language of the unheard.”

If the BLM movement wasn’t heard before, it sure will be now.

There is never a RIGHT way to protest; protesting is ACTIVELY GOING AGAINST the system. When Colin Kaepernick kneeled they said, “this is not the right way.” When MLK had children protesting with him in Birmingham, people said “this is not the right way.” When he marched in Selma, people said, “this is not the right way.” It’s never the right way because that’s the POINT of protests. Also, when MLK was assassinated, rioting occurred for SIX DAYS before laws were finally passed.

Stop and ask yourself why you’re so angry over property being destroyed instead of realigning your voice to try and spread justice for all of the lives we’ve lost by the hands of cops just because of the color of someone’s skin. People are allowed to be angry and have grief — and although a majority of this violence is not done by BLM protestors, I hope I was able to convey that sometimes the protestors’ grief will be shown horribly, but unless it affects your directly, you have no say in how they get to express their pain. None.