August 11, 2011

Tom Wolfe on 1966 San Francisco riot

From Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers:
Whites were still in the dark about the ghettos. They had been studying the "urban Negro" in every way they could think of for fifteen years, but they found out they didn't know any more about the ghettos than when they started. Every time there was a riot, whites would call on "Negro leaders" to try to cool it, only to find out that the Negro leaders didn't have any followers. They sent Martin Luther King into Chicago and the people ignored him. They sent Dick Gregory into Watts and the people hooted at him and threw beer cans. During the riot in Hunters Point, the mayor of San Francisco, John Shelley, went into Hunters Point with the only black member of the Board of Supervisors, and the brothers threw rocks at both of them. They sent in the middle-class black members of the Human Rights Commission, and the brothers laughed at them and called them Toms. Then they figured the leadership of the riot was "the gangs," so they sent in the "ex-gang leaders" from groups like Youth for Service to make a "liaison with the key gang leaders." What they didn't know was that Hunters Point and a lot of ghettos were so disorganized, there weren't even any "key gangs," much less "key gang leaders," in there. That riot finally just burnt itself out after five days, that was all.

22 comments:

Dennis Dale said...

MLK was heckled out of LA after Watts too.

Anonymous said...

Should be sent in the ex-gang leaders.

G.L.Piggy said...

Basically, from a policing standpoint, go big or go home. A few cops merely antagonize the goons whereas the entire force will squash it. In the ramp up the cops only bring a small unit which fuels more rioting which fuels looting in a different spot. Eventually an equilibrium is met and looters fall back.

There must be a natural life cycle to these things.

Anonymous said...

was reading at Adweek that Levi's Europe is holding off on buys for the "Legacy" spot Wieden Kennedy (the Nike firm) produced for them, which depicts Young People in scenes of noble urban protest, along with other visuals representing the customary "1968" radical chic horse manure. They also linked to somebody's re-cut of the British Tourist Authority's current campaign:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gUMdnW_07s

eh said...

Whites were still in the dark about the ghettos.

That didn't come out right. Or maybe it did.

The Ghost of Gaetan Dugas said...

Another SF minority spat on Randy Shilts, who told them to behave. Plus ça change...

Anonymous said...

At this time, the Western countries are incapable of dealing effectively with rioters/looters. I don't expect any improvement until the welfare state withers away.

The "urban unrest" story is always the same. A trivial triggering incident (often some NAM "youth" getting what he deserves while struggling with the police) followed by several days of looting and violence while local politicians wring their hands and the police remain paralyzed. Then troops (or similar-- border guards, regional police, whatever) are sent in by higher-level politicians, just around the time the rioters are tiring anyway (rioting is hard work, especially toting all those TV's home).

In the USA the rioters do most of the damage in their own (bad) neighborhoods because the people in nicer neighborhoods are armed and defend their homes while the police dither.

In countries like the UK, neighborhood defense against rioters is very difficult, so the do even more damage.

Simon in London said...

Reminiscent of the French 'youth' riots. The authorities send in the Muslim Imans to call for calm, thinking it's a religious intifada, and les jeunes ignore them.

The French Muslim Youth seems a lot more like our British Caribbean blacks & underclass whites (we seem to be the only country in Europe with a significant white underclass, I suspect the social security/welfare system which viciously penalises two-parent families may be the main factor there). The mosques actually do have influence over our Pakistani 'youth', and I'm surprised no one has drawn the link between Ramadan and the lack of Muslim rioters. Ramadan makes them extra-religious for the month, so they are more likely to riot for Islamic reasons (eg cartoons) but less likely to riot for Nikes & plasma TVs.

elvisd said...

Flashback from that era. Over a million dollars spent to create the "Conservative" Vice Lord faction, which made for cover long enough to get armed, consolidate their power, and become the dominate gang of the period. Next time you're in Memphis, Chicago, Jackson, or New Orleans, remember that it was grant money in the 60's that helped boost this "community group".

http://gangresearch.net/cvl/cvlhistoryfinal/VLTitlenew2.html

http://chicagocrimescenes.blogspot.com/2009/07/conservative-vice-lords-inc.html

Marlowe said...

Predictably, the Labour Party, Her Majesty's Opposition in the House of Commons, claimed the Tory coalition government's cuts to inner city youth centres and outreach programs caused the violent disturbance. Hilariously, a 31 year old black man who worked as a mentor to inner city youth at a London primary school (elementary school to Americans) appeared in court the other day charged with looting TVs during the riot.

Chicago said...

Jesse Jackson was deemed to be the tribal chief to whom all the media would run for a catchy soundbite. The usual message was to send money quickly, preferably through him. He's managed to parlay his role as a presumed tribal chief into a grand lifestyle for himself and his family, who are also a bunch of parasites.
Some of the welfare programs of the sixties were just a form of fire insurance. Current programs such as affirmative action are pretty much the same thing, just less direct than cash payouts.
If rioting pays off for minorities, in the long term as well as short, then we'll probably get more of it. All the impostor tribal leaders will come running to cash in. White academics will have many a payday writing endlessly on the same old thing, recycling everything written since the forties.
So where's the next big riot in the US going to take place? You know there'll be more. I want the experts to tell me so I can prepare.

TGGP said...

Read the rest of "Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers" here.

Bill said...

This is related to a Tom Sowell theme. An important effect of affirmative action has been to separate black leadership, "the talented tenth," from the actual black community. Whites want to have these guys around to fill their diversity quotas, whites certainly don't want the rest of the black community around, and whites are willing to pay to satisfy these wants. The talented tenth gets vast benefits and gets separated from the mass of blacks.

So, when the black mob describes these guys as "Toms," they are telling the truth.

beowulf said...

Come on, doesn't Scotland Yard have sonic cannons?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2009/sep/25/sonic-cannon-g20-pittsburgh

Leave it to the Brits to make an alien invasion movie that makes you root for the aliens.
ATTACK THE BLOCK, a fast funny, frightening action adventure movie that pits a teen gang against an invasion of savage alien monsters. It turns a London housing estate into a sci-fi playground. A tower block into a fortress under siege. And teenage street kids into heroes. It's inner city versus outer space.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD0gm7dHKKc

Anonymous said...

Lots of whites rioted in the banlieus in 2005, even if the West Africans took the lead.

Anonymous said...

The problem with Pakistanis isn't neccessarily that they commit a lot of street crime or misbehave in public. More that they constitue a quickly alien element that's transforming British society in unwanted ways, and that they're hostile to much of British society.

Compare that to Afro-Carribeans. They're very "British", but their Britishness is more of the chav variety.

Camlost said...

What they didn't know was that Hunters Point and a lot of ghettos were so disorganized, there weren't even any "key gangs," much less "key gang leaders," in there. That riot finally just burnt itself out after five days, that was all.

Does anything about Africa suggest that blacks know how to organize of their own accord?

bleach said...

>
Compare that to Afro-Carribeans. They're very "British", but their Britishness is more of the chav variety.
>

Please, race and culture are not separable concepts. Look around. African-Americans were completely ripped from their traditional culture, educated with English language, Christian religion and American culture. They still aren't the same people as white Anglo-Americans and never will be. Incidentally, Afro-Caribbeans are heavily overrepresented in the race racket.

Anonymous said...

Welfare is the panem in panem et circenses. It's there to placate the bloodthirsty rabble.

It's a more expensive solution than bullets but less likely to induce an explosion, so the overlords reckon. But like dope you have to keep upping the dose.

Anonymous said...

One option is to do pretty much nothing. Let them burn down their own neighbourhoods if they are so stupid as to do that. Why the fireman even bother to try to put out a fire some gangbanger started in his own hood while they are being endangered by rocks or bullets I just don't get. Just let the hood burn itself down to the ground. The area should be quarantined off to contain the riot, but that's about it. Or you could DRASTICALLY raise the cost to them of rioting by having military and para-military forces go in there and REALLY kick some ass.

As always its a classic case of GO BIG OR GO HOME.

Anonymous said...

In countries like the UK, neighborhood defense against rioters is very difficult

The problem multilayered.

We arent allowed to have guns anymore, though mysteriously that doesnt seem to apply to criminals.

Our laws allow 'reasonable force' to be used in self defence/home defence. Wtf is 'reasonable force' I hear you cry? Fact is no-one really knows, it varies.

Then there is PC element to this.

The MSM here has been busily praising Turks, Sikhs etc for standing up to the looters while sneering and belittling whites who did the same.

And any white who took on a non-white looter better have all the above in mind when acting.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, but at least the English have EDl, BNP, and real men that'll stand up to this. In America, we have nothing of the equivalent.

For all the talk about America being a conservative country with a cowboy spirit, we're as far to the extreme left as most of the EU. If an EDL tried to patrol our streets, it'd get shot down fast by the media and government.

The American minutemen, who tried to patrol the southern border, got slandered by the media, the Democrats, and "conservative" Republican President Bush!