Race and the London Riots

[Conley]

Seems things are getting even worse:

"Resident after resident of Dudley Road and its surrounding Winson Green district commented pointedly to The AP that the attackers were black and accused them of targeting Muslim shops.

The passions echo streetfights from previous years, such as in 2005, when a neighboring Birmingham district suffered two nights of violence between Caribbean and Asian gangs over unsubstantiated rumors that a gang of Pakistani men had raped a 14-year-old Jamaican girl. Two men were stabbed to death, firefighters faced machete-wielding mobs, and Muslim graves were desecrated during those clashes. The west side also suffered riots in 1981, 1985 and 1991 fueled by minority hatred of white police and black resentment of the Asians' dominant position as shopkeepers.

"We'll hunt down these black men, cut off their heads and feed them to our dogs," said Amir Hawid, 20, who lives just a hundred yards (meters) from the killing scene and heard the screams of the crowd at the moment of impact."

The AP is beginning to explore the racial aspects, interesting article about the death of three Muslims:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/08/10/ap/europe/main20090716.shtml

[Conley]

From another article:

"Britain also has one of the highest violent crime rates in the EU and alarmingly high youth unemployment - roughly 18 percent of youths between 16 and 24 are jobless and nearly half of all young black youths are out of work.

As the government battles colossal government debt with harsh welfare cuts that promise to make the futures of these youths even bleaker, some experts say it's blinkered to believe the riots have only been a random outburst of violence unrelated to the current economic crisis.

"There's a fundamental disconnect with a particular section of young Britain and sections of the political establishment," said Matthew Goodwin, a politics professor at University of Nottingham."

I think we'll be seeing this same thing in the U.S....there may be racial tensions involved but I think the greater commonality between the two, will be the feelings of hopeless from the younger generations. The economy here, the global economy, all of it is going down the crapper. The Dow is down another 500 points today.

[Conley]

"The hardening of liberal opinion in London is palpable"

"The big black boy rode his bike straight at me, crashing me off my own and leaving us both tangled up on the ground. Then four more of them were racing towards me, clawing at my legs to get them off my bike, kicking me in the head as I tried to hold on. Two minutes later, it was all over. Ten minutes later, no doubt, it was being used to loot a newsagent’s. "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8692429/London-riots-Bleeding-I-called-999.-A-tired-man-told-me-to-go-home.html

[Conley]

Sorry, I know this thread is all over the place :D

I am just reading about this stuff and it is blowing my mind. I can't believe they are comparing this to L.A. in 1992. Not even close...before the riots:

"The most violent country in Europe: Britain is also worse than South Africa and U.S."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html#ixzz1UfMIuhCY

[Conley]

another perspective:

http://i.imgur.com/ShQE4.png

[Mister D]

Conley, you know my views on this. Racial tension is unavoidable and is part and parcel of a multi-racial society. What helps keep the lid on that sort of thing is the relative prosperity of the west. Now the money is running out...

I'll concede that the riots are not about race per se although they certainly began that way. My view is that economic problems and the like expose social fault lines that have always been there. The British political class chose to ignore them and shame those who dared bring them up. Government policy created those fault lines only in so far as they have not only allowed but have actively encouraged large scale migration from the Third World.