White Riot: the Oscar Grant Riot

The verdict in the Oscar Grant trial was the best you could have expected: involuntary manslaughter. Johannes Mehserle didn't see Oscar Grant and coolly decide to dispatch a black man; he was a cop who lost his cool and mistook his gun for a taser (how???). He's not a murderer, but he was not free of criminal liability, either. Still, that wasn't good enough for the professional rioters who descended on downtown Oakland last night: After Dark, Mobs Form, Smash Windows, Loot

There was outrage, there was looting and there were skirmishes between police and protesters, but that wasn't the whole story of how Oakland reacted to the Johannes Mehserle verdict.

The trouble Thursday boiled down to a racially diverse mob of about 200 people, many bent on destruction no matter what, confronting police after the day's predominantly peaceful demonstrations ended.

Sporadic conflicts were quelled quickly early in the evening, but by late night at least 50 people - and maybe as many as 100 - had been arrested as small groups smashed windows, looted businesses and set trash bins on fire.

The violence was contained for much of the early evening within a one-block area near City Hall by an army of police officers in riot gear, but around 10 p.m. a knot of rioters broke loose and headed north on Broadway toward 22nd Street with police in pursuit.

They smashed windows of shops including the trendy Ozumo restaurant, and one building was spray painted with the words, "Say no to work. Say yes to looting."

There are probably some saps out there who will say that this shows how outraged the "community" was. Actually, most of the people in the "community" fled the scene to avoid the predicted riots, boarding up store fronts and leaving notes begging to be left alone. They also spent the weeks leading up to the verdict preaching non-violence to Oakland's youth. Many of the rioters turned out to be white "anarchists," no doubt from Berkeley and other suburbs. Are we going to have to start talking about the White Negro Problem?

Officials said the main instigators appeared to be organized "anarchist" agitators wearing black clothing and hoods. Many of the most aggressive demonstrators smashing the windows of banks and shops were white.

Community leaders had called for nonviolence, and during the day most of the rage from those who thought Mehserle should have been convicted of a more serious charge was confined to loudspeakers and animated conversations on the asphalt. But, as many community leaders had predicted for weeks, a determined knot of renegades faced off with the police who surrounded the protesters. They taunted the officers and threw bottles and rocks.

I am officially ashamed of my race.

Oscar Grant did not deserve to die, but he was no innocent either. The fact is that resisting arrest whether in the Deep South or the Fruitvale BART station is one of the dumbest things a guy can do. Mehserle was no innocent either, but he was hardly the fascist judge/jury/executioner in the fevered minds of last night's looters. The vast majority of Oaklanders could understand that. But, it only takes one rock to smash a window, one match to start a fire.