I posit that the reason audiences fail to see the similarities in fictional uprising (which we love) and what occurs in real life, is the absence of that second element. Excluding the most ignorant and racist in our country, Americans generally get a sense that there is a problem with the unjustified killing of innocent black people by unsympathetic police officers. While they may not fully comprehend the scale of implicit bias, they understand that black people are more likely to be treated unfairly by the criminal justice system. So we can check off the first element.
As for the second, black rioters have been called plenty of things by the mainstream media; “heroic” is not one of them. Instead of being depicted as people who are doing what little they can do to bring attention to injustice, they have often been cast off as looters, criminals, “thugs” and miscreants taking advantage of the political climate.
Broadcast journalists contrast the rioters with Martin Luther King Jr. (white people’s favorite civil rights leader) and criticize rioters for failing to adopt MLK’s supposedly superior method of passive protest. All of this rhetoric is used to firmly embed in the minds of Americans, both black and white, that there is nothing noble about those participating in the riots — that what we are seeing on television is not the type of righteous revolution we associate with the civil rights movement — it’s mere buffoonery.
– Christopher R. La Motte. “Why do we applaud rebellion in film, but not in Baltimore’s streets?” The Baltimore Sun, May 2015.
David W. Swanson 