Your comment disturbs me more than even Tim's article. It's so full of fallacies I don't even know where to begin.

First of all - your argument that "putting French children's heads on pikes" was the only way for French people to see Haitians as "human" is like saying "the atomic bomb was the only way to end WWII". We will never know whether or not it was the only way to end it because all we can say is "such and such happened, and then the war ended". People have argued very convincingly that the atomic bomb was NOT the only way to end WWII but we will never know because they didn't try the other options like: dropping the bomb NEAR the cities but not on them, for example.

Likewise I very much doubt that slaughtering innocent children is EVER necessary to a moral cause, and if that's what makes someone be seen as "human" then that's not the kind of "human" someone should want to aspire to be. Like "I see now that Black people aren't cattle they can be brutal and sadistic just like us" isn't the kind of message that really leads to equality does it? And yet what kind of message does putting children's heads on pikes send other than that?

Likewise if you do more than a cursory look at any revolution, you see that if a civil revolution is violent (especially if it includes killing non-combatants like children) it will lead to a cycle of violence and oppression that is often as bad or worse than what it overthrew. See: the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Cultural Revolution etc. The methods by which these revolutions were fought, were the same that ensured that brutality and oppression continued as a part of their "new system".

You can't "fight for a world where systemic brutality and genocide cannot be conscionable to the public" BY COMMITTING SYSTEMIC BRUTALITY AND GENOCIDE. That's not smashing the system. That's using the rules of the system to try and beat the oppressors at their own game. Thus the system is upheld.

As for BLM "riots", the peaceful protests are the ones that achieve more change than the ones that cause collateral damage to innocent people. You know in New York, when there were the riots, the people who suffered the most? Immigrant small businesses owned by people of colour. Not megacorporations like Target. Not the police. Not the Republican government. The little guy, the people who were already suffering, those who were ON THE SAME SIDE as the rioters, people of colour. Haven't you seen the pictures of the burnt out shops where people put signs saying "Black owned" AND THEY WERE STILL DESTROYED. That is not achieving change. That's not helping the cause. That's not helping their community.

Those people who did that, destroyed their own communities and their own neighbours and allies of colour, they weren't doing it because "a riot is the language of the unheard". If they were, they would have only focused on megacorporations, police stations, justice buildings etc. They were doing it because when violence is encouraged, and people feel they have an excuse for violence, and can get away with it, their worst impulses come out, their selfishness, greed and sadism. I don't think that the people who destroyed immigrant and black owned businesses were doing so to genuinely create change. But the people who DID want to create positive change still defend them because they want to think that everything is justified when you are on the "side of good". Rather than acknowledge the fact that sometimes bad unconscionable things can be done in the name of something good, but not FOR that reason.

You know what violent riots actually do? They make businesses (jobs) leave communities of colour and further entrench poverty in these communities. They make peaceful people turn against those who just destroyed their livelihood. They make POC who otherwise didn't support the police, want more policing. They give fodder to racists that "Black people are violent thieves".

There is no evidence that I've seen, that shows that the violent riots last year achieved anything that a peaceful protest wouldn't have achieved. If you have such evidence please feel free to send it my way.

And by the way I am not saying that all or even most BLM protesters support burning black owned businesses. Most of them do not. But when the leaders of a movement excuse riots and violence against innocent people, it gives cover for bad actors and selfish people who DON'T give a fuck about trying to create a better world, to do whatever they want.