Word: riot
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...local news goes, there has only been one story since last Thursday, when a number of students from South Boston High School incited a race riot. Within minutes of the first stand-off, as white students stood outside and Black students crowded on the front steps of the school, students were hurling asphalt at the police, the mayor was sent to the hospital and the mob of reporters sent to the scene nearly outnumbered everyone else...
...while Boston is in the throes of a nervous breakdown and The Globe blares the riot every day as its lead story, here across the river, there's been nothing--barely a word. The stresses of reading period partially explain the inattention. But it's still hard to believe that South Boston High isn't the topic for intense debate in every dining hall across campus...
This disconnection rarely shows so clearly as it did this past weekend. When we and the media talk about events like the South Boston riot, we always talk about race. And seemingly, this is how the drama last Thursday played itself out--Black versus white, neighborhood against neighborhood. Approached this way, the problem doesn't demand a challenging answer--only twinges of self-righteousness. When whites hate Blacks and vice versa, it's not our fault. We know better...
...issue isn't race. It's class, and the frustrations of poverty. The people involved in the riot, Black and white, have been systematically denied just treatment--decent jobs, safe neighborhoods, good schools. These are things they once could count...
Treating the South Boston riot solely as a problem of race lets us ignore our culpability in the real problems of class...