On the evening of December 16, 1773, a mob of American colonists boarded three ships moored in Boston Harbor. The ships were laden with chests of tea belonging to Britain’s East India Trading Company, a privately held business. Angered by policies imposed on the colonies by the British Crown, that famous colonial mob dumped 342 tea-filled chests overboard into the icy waters below. For their destruction of private property, the colonial mob gained the admiration of fellow colonists, favorable treatment and praise during the past two hundred and thirty-nine years of American History and a boisterous political party bearing its name.
Contrast the Boston mob of yesteryear with the recent mobs in Ferguson, Missouri and elsewhere around the nation, often causing damage to private property in the name of protesting racial injustice, and I have to wonder whether two hundred and thirty-nine years from now, folks will look back at the mob violence of 2014 with equal admiration. Somehow, I doubt it, but the question should be asked. Why not? Isn’t destroying private property in the name of correcting civil injustice etched in our bones? Don’t we secretly relish sticking it to “the man?” Isn’t civil disobedience laudable, even if a number of people have their property destroyed in the process? If that’s not the case, then why is it that, in this nation of supposed equality, white mobs that cause damage to personal property are treated with admiration, but black mobs using similar methods are treated with disdain? Those are rhetorical questions, but I think we all know the answers.
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