(2014)

There’s a lot of white people yelling burn baby burn on Facebook and Twitter tonight, nice white people living in nice white neighborhoods a thousand miles away. It’s always easy to demand violent action when it’s not in your own neighborhood. And it’s always easy to demand neighborhoods burn when you think that property isn’t worth that much anyway. As long as it’s those people. Those people. Someone even plays the stereo too loud in your neighborhood and you call the police. But this isn’t about you, is it? It’s about those people. Sure there’s a riot goin’ on–I’ve seen that a few times tonight on Facebook, quoting Sly–but it’s not in your neighborhood. It’s so exciting, isn’t it, being a keyboard revolutionary.

I didn’t hear Michael Brown’s parents yelling burn baby burn. But then this isn’t about them. It’s about nice white people living vicariously through someone else’s broken windows and busted heads.

A public storage facility consumed in flames in Ferguson, Missouri, November 24, 2014.       (Eric Thayer/Washington Post)