Riots and looting in Ferguson, Missouri, over the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a police officer represent just the latest spate of race-based mass violence to break out in President Obama’s post-racial America. When Obama was elected in 2008, many Americans hoped that racial conflict in the country would calm. Instead, precisely the reverse seems to have occurred.
Not all riots across the country have been racial in nature, of course. Occupy Wall Street participated in riots repeatedly in 2011, and May Day protesters rioted in Santa Cruz in 2010 and Seattle in 2013, for example. There have also been repeated riots on college campuses over incidents ranging from sporting events to frat parties.
But with every controversial police shooting of a minority victim, the possibility of riots looms these days. That’s been true since well before President Obama took office, thanks to a racial grievance industry based on the tacit threat of violence. But President Obama has done little to tamp down that industry and much to energize it.
Aside from the current violence in Missouri, here are the worst mass racial violence incidents of the past few years:
Oscar Grant Riots. In 2009, shortly after President Obama’s election, police officer Johannes Mehserle shot black transit passenger Oscar Grant in Oakland, California. While Mehserle was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in 2010, rioters took advantage of the situation anyway, trashing police cars and forcing Mayor Ron Dellums to take shelter in City Hall. Local businesses were vandalized. In the end, some 120 arrests were made. That violence was not the first surrounding Grant’s killing – right after Grant’s killing, rioters engaged in vandalism, as well as attacks on a police officer. Grant’s mother told the media, “I am begging the citizens not to use violent tactics, not to be angry. I know it’s a very frustrating time, but Oscar would not want to see all the violence that’s going on. He would not want to see the fires, he would not want to see this. You’re hurting people who have nothing to do with the situation.”
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