The media make too much of the connection between race and riots. The left concentrates on race when it suits its agenda, the right likewise.

In the Los Angeles riots of 1992, much of the media dishonestly focused on incidents where innocent white people were attacked by African Americans. On the other hand, there have been genuine race riots where this was the norm.

Riots are

• attempts to get back at the police - for some reason, many people hate cops
  
• attempts by poor people to get their hands on commodities which they can't afford
• attempts to pressurize the political system - 'this is what happens when the police kill one of us'
• black people expressing resentment against what they see as racial discrimination
• criminal acts by opportunist elements against working class people
  
• racially motivated violence
• all of the above

There is a common belief that most riots are 'race riots', just because people of color are disproportionately represented amongst rioters. An attendee at the Pacifica Forum meetings at the University of Oregon told me that the riots in London in the eighties were primarily race riots of black people against white people. I told him I was there, and that he was mistaken. He was incapable of listening.

Equally dogmatic is the inconsistency of the mainstream media. It treats Asian shopkeepers defending their 'community' against looters very differently from white people doing the same thing. Socialist Workers Party hacks claimed that white people planned to 'get the Pakis', but when a carload of Afro-Carribean youth actually killed three young British Asians, the silence was deafening. The police break up groups of white 'vigilantes', but allow Muslims to organize to defend property against looters.

The last word, from a young man located in Liverpool: "They are bastards. Fuck the police, man. They are not all bad but most of them are". 

Another last word, from me - Kevin MacDonald is a far-right academic whom I defend as being useful in understanding the grip of Zionism in American academia and the left. But he is worse than useless at grokking riots.