Systemic issues snowballing hard. No opportunity, poor education, lack of hope. This sort of looting is easy to justify to yourself if you feel like everything is against you, nothing maters and there will be no consequences.

Racists will point to the color of their skin, not wanting to look even an a little bit deeper into the issue. The truth is there is certainly some degree of selfishness to what they are doing. I’m sure some of them play up being the victim much more than is warranted. None of that changes the reality that black folk in poor areas are systematically deprived of opportunity. Plenty of studies and research prove the hows and whys.

Also consider that crime isn’t up by all that much year over year. These sort of raids seem to be new, but are not indicative of what it’s really like in this country. I suspect a lot of this is coming from kids who might have fallen through the cracks during Covid. Too many kids in poor communities disappeared from schools.

This was way worse in the 70s and 80s. I’m sure a lot of idiots on Reddit will act like they understand it, but it’s a lot more nuanced and is caused by numerous factors. Some we can control and some we can’t. One thing is for sure this has nothing to do with politics and yet stuff like this will only be discussed in the shadow of political discourse.