Finding racism in the Capitol riots
Pet grievances.
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A violent mob breached the U.S. Capitol building last week after President Trump directed them personally to march on the People’s House during a joint session of Congress to protest the results of the 2020 election.
“We’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue,” the president said Wednesday during an address to his supporters. “We’re going to the Capitol, and we’re going to try and give … our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”
He added, “And we fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Following the deadly clashes that ensued, where outmanned law enforcement officials battled a frenzied mob intent on destruction, some have alleged systemic racial bias by the U.S. Capitol Police, and police departments in general, asserting with total certainty that the rioters would have been dispatched far more violently, killed even, had they been black.
This ignores both what happened at the Capitol and what happened last summer in Washington, D.C., during the widespread anti-police riots.
“No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn’t have been treated very, very differently from the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol. We all know that’s true, and it is unacceptable,” President-elect Joe Biden said the day after the attack on the Capitol.
Former CIA acting and Deputy Director Michael Morell told CBS News, "There is no doubt in my mind that if those were Black Lives Matter protesters yesterday breaking into the Capitol building, there would be dozens and dozens of people dead today.”
Really? “No doubt” at all?
"When white people attempt a coup,” Black Lives Matter Global Network said elsewhere in a statement of its own, “they are met by an underwhelming number of law enforcement personnel who act powerless to intervene, going so far as to pose for selfies with terrorists, and prevent an escalation of anarchy and violence like we witnessed today.”
"Make no mistake,” the statement concludes, “if the protesters were black, we would have been tear-gassed, battered, and perhaps shot.”
It's one thing to believe police departments are prejudiced in favor of white people. But claiming the Capitol riot is proof of that belief simply ignores the reality of what happened last week, where clashes between police and Trump supporters turned deadly.
Many of the predominately white rioters were battered. They were tear-gassed. One woman was even shot and killed after she attempted to force her way into the Speaker’s Lobby. There were pitched skirmishes between rioters and law enforcement. There was violence. An estimated 60 police officers were injured, including 15 hospitalized. One died. There were multiple, ultimately unsuccessful, attempts by the greatly outnumbered police officers to bar rioters from storming the Capitol, physically and violently.
And as for Biden, Morell, and everyone else who claim the bloodshed would have been far worse Wednesday had the rioters been black, we need look no further than last summer, back when predominantly black anti-police mobs overtook the nation’s capital, to test that hypothesis.
No rioters were killed in Washington by law enforcement during the unrest last year. In fact, as my colleague Tom Rogan reminds us, “There is abundant footage of police officers tolerating violent disorder at Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.”
Is there a disparity in how aggressively the authorities responded to both riots? One can easily, and convincingly, make that argument. But fatalities? The Capitol riot has a body count. The 2020 anti-police riots in Washington do not.
What are the people complaining about the U.S. Capitol Police's alleged racial biases really saying? That there should have been more violence done to the Capitol rioters, aside from the gassings, the pepper-sprayings, the beatings, and the fatal shooting?
It seems their complaint in its various forms is based almost entirely on context-free videos showing certain security officers appearing to be friendly with the goons who stormed the Capitol. If so, this is flawed thinking. First, we don’t have all the information. Second, a few instances of seemingly friendly behavior does not imply widespread approval or a systemic double-standard. It’d be the same as looking at any of the many photos of riot police hugging Black Lives Matter demonstrators last year and then looking at the body count this week in Washington and concluding that law enforcement officials have a sharp pro-Black Lives Matter bias.
There will always be those who hijack deadly serious events to talk about the issues that are clearly more important to them. There will always be those who exploit tragedy for political gain. But the Capitol riot is shocking and unprecedented enough to merit its own serious analysis and commentary, uncoupled from the usual piggybacking of pet grievances and attempts at historical revisionism.