Out of the thousands of people who were peacefully protesting – and protesting something real and important that needs immediate attention and outrage from everyone, not just the black communities – the media chooses to focus on the few who riot and don’t actually care about the real cause. It’s done to delegitimize the entire thing, to take the focus away from the positive changes that thousands of people are trying to make.
What’s worse is that most people truly don’t react with such aversion when white people ransack cities because their sports teams won or lost a fucking game. But, ooohhh, those outraged black people should just shut the hell up when unarmed black men are murdered by the people who are paid to protect them! How dare they!
I agree that everyone has the ability to get pissed off about something, but some people legitimately have more of a reason to get pissed off. The fact that many privileged people don’t recognize that in this country is part of the problem.
I’m sure there are a lot of people who were rioting that truly just don’t give a shit. Who just want to loot, and burn, and cause mayhem. But there may also be a number of them who burned things down and caused destruction because they feel they have no other choice left. Does that make it right? No, definitely not, because they end up hurting innocent people. But the important thing to remember is that we can’t compare those riots to the riots that occur (all the time) when (mostly) white people get mad or happy about losing or winning a sports match, because they are born of entirely different things. One is truly random havoc for the sake of it, another is because people are being murdered – even if the rioters are in the wrong in general.