came up on my FB feed.

forces that support it.

But pretending the police response wouldn't be different if the crowd weren't majority white is a little disingenuous.

No, sorry, that undercuts the OP's entire argument.

The privileges whiteness can be granted -- we've seen that with the Italians and the Irish. Unruly crowds that are majority white are seen differently than unruly crowds that are majority black.

I'm interested in the pushback on this. What do white people lose by acknowledging this fact?

Your definition of "riot" makes sense from an academic standpoint. But the descriptions used by most people have nothing to do with the emotions underlying the activity.

When black people do it, it's a riot. When white people do it, it's a "celebration that got out of hand.""

see this incident as you do and, like the others, have given my reasons. I don't think anything I could say at this point
would change your view, so I see no point in discussing it further.
Have a nice day.

were on the streets that night, and only a small percentage were destructive. For by far most, it was a huge, happy public event, not a riot.

Police [apparently haven't made many arrests but say they expect to make more. Some completely identifiable guy who flew home with a stolen stadium seat is now internet famous. It's only one of a bunch torn up, though, and U.S. Bank Stadium hasn't said if it'll be seeking prosecution for these crimes.

In any case, expect further BLM unhappiness when they occur. Just checked, and POC are 43+% of all Philadelphians. Don't know what the percentage is close to "downtown."

but it wasn't me, since I stated that I didn't believe it was a '"riot".to begin with....You seem very angry at something or someone, but I don't think it's me....I've made my point about this incident and have zero interest in continuing to argue about it. Have a nice day.

Apologies accepted, anyhow.

this was done by a VERY small number of people, so no, that doesn't indict the entire group.

Just happy people. Do they have pics of blacks turning over cars or smashing streetlights?

Those exist for whites.

It shows 3 guys sitting on a downed street light. It doesn't show them downing it.

I'm not saying everyone was a perfect angel, but so far you have only shown me blacks enjoying the victory celebration peacefully.

I'm still waiting.

This is getting tiresome.

This is the crew on the Ritz awning as it collapsed:



If you want to play "count the races and genders" with an event involving widely separated celebrations in different neighborhoods throughout the city which were broadcast live on local TV for several hours, I'm not sure whether the local stations have their full broadcasts conveniently online for analysis. But you can at least play your game with the photograph of those who were on the Ritz awning when it came down.

These designated areas, which were blocked off by trash trucks and had strategically placed barricades, were not spontaneously occupied by people who just happened to turn out. There were designated zones in which people gathered and, no, the police did not march in to break them up, because that is where thousands of people were expected and allowed to gather. There were people there of all kinds, and it was not a riot. 30 seconds of social media video from a two block area does not substitute for what was a citywide event.

Again, this thread is about trying to sow division around the spectacle of a diverse city which for one night was unified in celebration, and in which, as with any such event involving tens of thousands of people, there were a few untoward incidents. The sensationalism in some of the reports and exaggerations does not reflect what occurred in Philly that night. People of all ages and races were partying in a city that usually sees its fair share of violent crime on any given night.

Link to tweet

I am a supporter and fan of BLM but even they make mistakes sometimes and this is one of them.

A crowd of protestors of maybe 500 is a lot easier to arrest than 10s of thousands.

It's like the old joke about the guy going 80 getting pulled over while a guy driving 120 flies by.

"Why didn't you pull him over?"

"I can catch 80. I can't catch 120!"

Police aren’t going to try to break up a mass of humanity where as smaller groups of a few hundred they often attempt to impose “law and order”.

This was a "Happy" riot, by "Happy" white's. As opposed to an "Angry" riot, by "Angry BLM activists.

Unless of course the violence was due to angry whites, in which case it was caused by BLM instigators and provocateurs.

Don't you guys know anything? (snarc alert for the ironically impaired)

Do you have pics of blacks turning over cars or smashing things?

They do for whites.

nice try though.

Incidentally, the Philly police are reviewing footage of that incident in order to make arrests.

Once again, for the visually impaired:

The Ritz awning was brought down by a group that was diverse in gender and race:

https://media.nbcphiladelphia.com/images/620*349/20180205+Collapse.jpg

Which means WOMEN were as involved. A gender neutral sports riot!


Keep grasping for straws.

Link to tweet

The exact demographics on the awning changed from time to time, as we are made aware by this video:

Sadly predictable. Both the riot and the reaction to it.

BLM is right to point at the dichotomy and they are spot on.

I was there. Maybe 4 separate incidences of bad behavior.

But riots? Never happened.

literal horseshit and menacing others, climbing gates, looting, blocking traffic -- TOTALLY not a riot, you guys! Just rowdy hijinks!

One car was flipped, one store had a window broken, some flowerpots were toppled, I believe a total of two lightposts came down and the Ritz awning was collapsed by about a dozen people.

As for "blocking traffic" - no, there were blocks of streets that were closed by the city, which had parked trash trucks to close off some intersections, and they had put up metal barriers to keep a narrow corridor open on Broad Street. These were designated areas for people to gather and party. The crowds - and it should be noted diverse crowds - of people who gathered on Broad and at the area of Cottman and Franklin went to those areas BECAUSE the streets were closed for that purpose.

The relative degree of general mayhem was lower than a normal night in Philadelphia.

There was not a "trail of destruction" as recounted in the OP.

Nothing to concern yourself over, folks! They were wrecking things because they were HAPPY, which makes all the difference!

It's important for white people to uphold the narrative that the cops are reasonable when the people are reasonable.

You think white people are the only people that love their team and city? Get out of here. You don’t know anything about Philly.

“community.” I hope these idiots are identified and charged.

Well, that's saying something.

Good morning.

to suit one's narrative just doesn't cut it.

What do you call that?

of ten thousand or so. In the same vein, I don't condemn BLM because a FEW of their members at certain points, we're heard chanting "Death to cops" or words to that effect.

"The other weird thing is how..."

And the desire to move the narrative away from the OP's point as quickly as possible. Very good job, by the way.

The point being to erase black people from the city of Philadelphia?

The point being to pretend that there was some sort of racial distinction to be made?



The streets were not spontaneously blocked by crowds. Several blocks in various areas of Philly were deliberately closed off by trash trucks for the purpose of holding celebrations. There were relatively few incidents of disorder, and certainly not predominately by one "race" or another.

The few folks who got out of hand were not predominately one race or another.

Link to tweet

WHITES AND BLACKS VICIOUSLY ATTACKING WITH SNACK ITEMS!!!!!

Good behavior? No.

Drunk people of all colors finding common ground in Philly? Yes.

tanks but then remembered these were white people rioting.

Don't care who it is doing the rioting

It's a tacky Northeastern thing.

farr, far away from that "tacky Northeast".

I'll never forget the 2 photos/captions during Katrina when New Orleans was flooded. The white couple carrying bread were survivors struggling to stay alive; the black couple carrying bread were "looters."

it was a classic moment of institutional racism pushed by M$Greedia.

Will it ever end?

not was the coverage.

It is an important and very relevant point.

Football is, after all, a substitute for war. After a victory, the winning tribe gets all worked up and blows off steam. The attitude is 'boys will be boys.'

But, yes, when people are demonstrating for basic human rights, out come the truncheons and rubber bullets.

Thing is, there are lots of people, and what freaks like the Mercers and the Koch brothers fear is that we will get together, compare notes and then demand some changes. This is why they work so hard to divide us.

It's a testosterone driven thing I believe, by males with the lowest intelligence. Stupid Stupid Stupid.

Pretty much all the people who were seen in video doing bad things were males.

If you had bothered to watch the live feeds, which it is apparent most people on this thread did not, you would know that among the pole climbing contingent, the lady competitors in that event tended to have the upper hand on the flexibility and general acrobatic skills required.

More like this sort of thing:

Link to tweet

...and then the odd habit of pluralization occurs.

Do you have any idea, on a normal night, how many convenience stores have armed robberies in Philadelphia?

That "sort of thing" was not a "sort of thing". It was one thing. I would note that even the bunch inside that store again reflects the diversity of Philadelphia, as does this shot of people cheering on pole climbers:



Clearly, the presence of Asians deterred police action.

But you were responding specifically to a comment about light posts. Light posts did not discriminate by race or gender, I assure you.

IMHO, I think some people are more bothered by the overall UNITY of the people of Philadelphia that night.

There is a distinction between celebratory behavior and most often justified angry retaliatory behavior. I think there are justifications for each, yet there are also justifications for levels of reaction.
A real issue is what makes Philadelphia so prone to these childish displays and would a more severe reaction from law enforcement change it or acerbate it.
An example of a mass demonstration of celebration I offer the night Obama was elected. I do not recall any private property being destroyed or heads cracked open. Granted it was a multi racial/ethnic/age crowd, but not everywhere.
A line must be drawn at property destruction no matter the race, age, or sexual particulars.

People seeking to feed a narrative want to believe that "riots closed the streets". There were designated blocks that were closed off for general celebration, and the notion that the crowds were anything other than reflective of the population of Philadelphia is ridiculous.

On a normal night in Philadelphia, you can count on two fatal shootings and several armed robberies, and I'd be willing to bet the general crime rate was pretty low that night.

And if you count Latinos, then people of color outnumber white people in Philadelphia, not to mention mixed race

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Philadelphia

As of the 2010 United States Census,[7] there were 1,526,006 people, 590,071 households, and 352,272 families residing in the consolidated city-county of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The population density was 4,337.3/km² (11,233.6/mi²). There were 661,958 housing units at an average density of 1,891.9/km² (4,900.1/mi²).

The racial makeup of the city as of 2016 was:

44.8% White
44.2% Black
7.4% Asian
2.3% from other races
2.4% Mixed Race
0.8% Native American
13.6% of the population were Hispanic and Latino
34.9 Non-Hispanic White
(Source: US Census Bureau[8])
------------------------------------------------------------------
I have been to Philadelphia many times and noted the diversity of the city and thus your post immediately seemed wrong to me.

and don't live in the neighborhoods they damaged

That's quite a feat in Philadelphia.

Show me the same percentage of blacks in that crowd as live in that city, and you can have some credibility here.

Sure, the mayor loves young people, etc., etc., but in the videos I've seen, they're not there.

The assumption has been that all of the folks out there were city residents. In fact it should be obvious that there are fans of the team that not only live in the Philly suburbs in PA but who also live in South Jersey and in Delaware. So I expect quite a few had made the trek into the city to go to sports bars and restaurants - especially downtown...and to friends who live in the city and when the game was over they all poured out.... and as the night wore on others made the trip into the city to celebrate. The trains were running frequently (regional rail, subway, el) in anticipation.

So when that happens, whatever number of blacks were out there, were diluted (and dwarfed) by both city and suburban whites. And of course there were hundreds of thousands (including myself) who were enjoying the game at home and were not out in the streets at all!

that all the suburban people were white and they came in enough numbers to dwarf a large city's population and then that those were the people that caused problems.

This was a wrongheaded article by BLM.

I've seen a number of negative comments from others regarding it (here on DU as well).

is done to black people in this country.

I haven't seen every liberal organization comment on it. Black people shouldn't be expected to take up every issue, either.

The King family signed off on it. (Or at least, some did.)

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-dodge-martin-luther-king-20180205-story.html

The script-writers for the movie Selma had to rewrite some of King's speeches to avoid being sued.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2896253/I-didn-t-dream-copyright-reasons-Martin-Luther-King-film-Selma-without-quoting-civil-rights-leader-fear-sued-family.html

who hasn't had chance to post that much the past couple days... (computer issues)

From what I saw on the local coverage - you literally had hundreds of thousands of people along probably 8-10 miles of Broad St. (the main central north to south thoroughfare which is about 12 miles long total), with MOST not acting out. You also had thousands of people gathered at certain intersections at popular gathering places in other neighborhoods including NE Philly (Mayfair) and lower NW Philly (Manyunk) as well as down in South Philly by the stadiums where Comcast has a big sports entertainment complex.

But you had some hardcore drunken white hoodlums right around City Hall and the theater district who tore that area up. Based on some tweets that I see in this thread you also had similar drunken rioting going on in isolated bars and convenience stores around the city. All of those areas have surveillance cameras and they are supposedly compiling images to identify the perps.

I think BLM is correct regarding the obvious hypocrisy and double standard but I also want to note that just like reporting on protests where Black Bloc comes in and disrupts and ALL of the hundreds or thousands of peaceful folks are tarred and feathered too (and sadly also kettled and rounded up) - the same is happening here where the vast majority of fans did not tear up the city but are getting blamed for doing so nonetheless. This is a city of over 1.5 million and 143 sq miles.

As a side note, I saw my local news also report what my alma mater (UMASS) did after the Patriots lost and they tore up one of the dorm areas (where I used to live back 35 years ago). They showed pics of riot police there along with mounted police as students there did their usual bottle throwing and furniture smashing and whatnot. But then they used to do that routinely on weekends let alone during holidays like Halloween. That was definitely the epitome of white privilege there at that school (which when I was there had 400 black students total out of an undergrad/graduate student population of 25,000).

....and who don't seem to understand how this was set up in the first place.

If you were watching the live video from Mayfair, for example, I can't imagine how anyone would come away with the impression that the crowd was even majority white.

They also don't seem to understand that the upper part of Broad isn't much of a residential area, and that's where the national media was camped out in the hotels up there. So whatever might happen in the central business district isn't all that representative of Philadelphia in the first place.

What's funny is that people IN Philadelphia are generally happy with the way things went overall, compared to a typical night in this city of 5 million people.

I was surprised at Mayfair (and that whole Cottman & Frankford area) that used to be predominately white and Hispanic, and is far more diverse, with quite a few blacks now. Used to sub teach around there and through Kensington to Port Richmond and the neighborhoods were always quite segregated (and still are for the most part), so that gathering place was a quite a culmination of folks of many backgrounds!

Otherwise, at least one set of the media figured they were safe at Temple U because that is who has pretty much taken over north Broad. And Manyunk has been gentrified and is a sort of "South St. (North)", but with entertainment venues along with the restaurants.

as someone who doesn't want to be associated with people who have done bad things.

You don't want to be associated with criminals destroying things. And you really don't want the police to think you look like someone who needs to learn a painful lesson.

I guess I don’t understand the comment.

I’ve done my share of “bad things” in the course of a lifetime, and been associated with plenty of others who have done “bad things”.

I may have associated with any number of people in this video, but I haven’t checked all that closely.

and be punished just in case.

You make excellent points about the diversity of the people doing things, but you know that one type of person is disproportionately stopped and frisked, and pulled over randomly, and publicly executed by fearful cops. It would be a shame if that happened to you, wouldn't it?

You also know that one type of person has gotten used to getting away with less punishment when caught doing bad things. Maybe you don't want that to change.

Two types of protests in America:

Those that challenge the power structure and everything else.

BLM challenges institutionalized racism in police tactics and politics in general. They were met with excessive force by an over militarized police presence. Same for people protesting pipelines. Our local and national governments have been consistent over the years at physically quashing protests against them.

There should be no doubt by now that people of color are consistently treated more violently than those of other races and colors. But make no mistake, it is the people who protest the power structure who are the targets of Look at our history......Kent State. White students protesting the war were gunned down by National Guardsmen. Look at the Occupy movement. I understand that occupiers were not shot dead but their treatment was aggressive and authoritarian.

Protest against multiculturalism in Charlotte and the police will be hands off. Protest for gun rights and the police will be hands off. Protest against immigration reform. Crickets

Race is still their most effective way to divide us but they are our common enemy and they are here to tell "We the people" to fuck off.

illegiitimate white nationalist government in DC. I don't give a phuck about what we AfAms have a right to do. Brown and black people are being deported in the most racist ways possible. What we need to do is be in a position to vote the trash out. Period. We can't get arrested because we're more likely to be charged with a felony and convicted of a felony which means we won't be able to VOTE. Period. Full stop. It's gonna take ALL people of color to save our democracy. If they wanna act out, they can do it with a ballot in a voting booth.

thanks

that that is a bit of an exaggeration about what really happened. And yes, a racially diverse bunch of people acted like complete idiots. I think the whole nonsense had more to do with alcohol consumption mixed with testosterone than it did with race.

I'll stipulate that sports riots (or "celebrations," if you will) are treated differently from demonstrations for civil rights. But I don't think that the core of this different treatment is racism, although racism may be an incidental component, when it is a racial minority protesting for civil rights.

My take is that sports disturbances are not seen as any threat to underlying order, whereas demonstrations for rights are. I might even argue that sports disturbances are seen as permissible because they reinforce the underlying order, by allowing fans to blow off steam, but I won't pursue that point here, as it is tangential. But demonstrations for rights, be they 1968 Chicago-style protests, or Standing Rock style protests, or Black Lives Matter style protests, are always seen by authority as a threat that must be suppressed.

But participants in both styles of "disorderly conduct" are always of mixed races and genders, which lead me to conclude that racism is not the primary motivation in the reaction to them. However, it can always be used when expedient -- on both sides of the question, of course.

-- Mal

law enforcement is all about control. Here in Philadelphia, and other cities I am sure, the powers that be can play how to handle a celebration because it is predictable.

Last edited Tue Feb 6, 2018, 08:09 PM - Edit history (1)

... the local cops were mustered and standing by, let the locals blow off steam for about half an hour or so, and then started telling people to break it up, they'd "had their fun." I have a vivid memory of one pantsless, inebriated young man climbing a lamppost and waving at everyone. With something other than his hand.

-- Mal

Black people turning over cars and setting fire to property in protest of social injustice produces the same outrage as black people kneeling quietly during the national anthem to protest social injustice, which provokes far more anger than majority white mobs turning over cars and setting fire to property to celebrate a sports win.