926 ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS

When one dispassionately regards this profile of the rioter one can-
not help agree with one Kerner Commission critic who said: "They
seem to blame everybody but the people who did it. " This maso-
chistic group guilt for white racism pervades every facet of the Re-
port's reasoning.

The Kerner Report states that the origin of a riot is not a simple
precipitating incident as much as months of incidents and even more
decades of deprivation. Actually we have witnessed riots progress
from a flash-point incident, i. e., alleged police brutality in Watts, to
a rationalization. "We're rioting for what's-is-name, " one looter told
a Washington reporter during the violence following the death of
Dr. Martin Luther King.

The Kerner Report neglected to credit the multiplicity of inflam-
matory statements such as Rap Brown's "Violence is as American as
cherry pie, " (which are widely and cheerfully disseminated by the
media), that have created an aura of belief that rioting is the in-
alienable right of the ghetto resident. Rather than the pronounce-
ments of the self-appointed black racist, the Kerner Report cites the
precedent in violence as "created by white terrorism directed against
non-violent protest. " If this were true, why wouldn't riots occur in
communities renowned for white terrorism rather than the most
liberal, progressive communities of North and South?

An even more logical explanation, not surprisingly unemphasized
by the Kerner Commission, is the influence of "some protest groups
engaging in civil disobedience who turn their backs on non-violence,
go beyond the constitutionally protected rights of petition and free
assembly, and resort to violence to attempt to compel alteration of
laws and policies with which they disagree. "

If one wants to pinpoint one indirect precipitating cause, it would
be this. It is not the centuries of racism and deprivation that have
built to an explosive crescendo but the fact that lawbreaking has be-
come a socially acceptable and occasionally stylish form of dissent.
Were Negro slum dwellers any happier about their life in 1938 than
in 1968? I doubt it; yet, in 1938 they would not have rioted — not
because the climate was less explosive, but because the climate was
less permissive.

It was the orderly demonstration of civil disobedience praised and
participated in by our nation's civic, spiritual and intellectual leaders
that gave impetus to civil disorder.