And dozens of small, mom and pop type businesses, many non-white owned and primarily serving the non white community, were leveled. This week is killing me.

The only “right” way to protest in those people’s eyes is being white.

I live riiiight in the heart of the rioting, and while idgaf about Target, it’s also a lot more complicated than people are admitting. There are so many places gone that aren’t big business, and it’s totally fucking over the neighborhood. We don’t have mail, we don’t have transit service, power has been off and on, we…

Yeah, I feel for the employees of these stores (and in some case, the owners) more than the stores themselves.

I do feel for the locally-owned businesses, but fuck everything else.

We saw this during the LA riots in ‘92- people (white) coming into areas where they normally didn’t to break windows and other unsavory actions. I’ll never forget the white boy, hat pulled down over his eyes, lurking in the shadows of a building in a Black/Latino neighborhood, gas can in his hand, prepared to do his…

Oh look, whataboutism!!

wayne jenkins was my football coach in rec ball and ngl he sucked as a person

It’s interesting at the least that the same vile, racist trolls that clog up the comments on The Root show up on Jezebel. If only it were so easy to change their hearts as it is to flag and dismiss them.

Yeah, I feel like in protests around police brutality actual antifa would be off, you know, *harrasing the facists* (in this case the police, in other cases white supremists and trump supporters) instead of sneaking in and smashing windows and sneaking out again.

They really need to crack down on thise volatile fuck heads. I at least get why the oppressed and wronged feel an urge to riot. But because your team lost (or less sensibly won)? More of them should be tossed in jail.

Assholes pull this shit every year during the May Day protests in Seattle. Always a handful of flat out thieves and vandals destroying locally owned businesses and making everyone else look bad.

We call them protest ninjas. At one point they showed up at all the protests, around 2016. They’re anonymous, they vandalize and maybe provoke, then they vanish. My gut says that when the GOP accuses Soroos of paying protestors, they are projecting their involvement with protest ninjas. They used to call them antifa,…

Thank you, Ashley. That last line...so goddamn true. I appreciate you writing this.

Can we agree that any white people smashing & burning & looting should have the book thrown at them?  I’m still unpacking Ashley’s article, but don’t see any justification for white people stealing or damaging property.

Fucking hell. Face fully covered and brought a big fucking hammer with him aye? The fuck was his game?

(cause yeah, it was *not* to protest police brutality)

I came to The Root to see if there was something here about the looting/fires in my Twin Cities. I am sickened by the killing of George Floyd (even more so after seeing the earlier security camera footage that shows him being pretty cooperative with the cops).

that last quote is the truth... I feel even deeper heartbreak when the buttoned-up media response to riots is “well aaaaactually, this does little to bring justice”

I mean conservatives think its okay to shoot someone for stealing their property and have exposed themselves as thinking that their money and the economy is more important than other people’s lives.  The racial implications with that are pretty apparent as well since the people they are scared of breaking jnto their…

I’m sure there’s significant overlap between people who condemn the looting (why can’t they protest peacefully?) and also condemned the (100% peaceful) protests by football players who chose to kneel during the national anthem.