I am bound by your limits?
I just want to make sure everyone understands the race riots this country has experienced.
MLK assassination caused nationwide race riots including Chicago.
No, but if you're comparing it to something, it has to be analogous, and it's not comparable to other race riots in the modem era. I'm not saying it's worse or better, these things don't deserve scorecards. But you have to look at things in the context of the time and society they occurred in.
Before the civil rights movement, lynchings and such were relatively common. Even as a white boy in South Africa I read books in school like "Roll of thunder hear my cry". I'm not ignorant of what this country's white citizens did to its black citizens.
But after that movement there are things that aren't tolerated anymore in the modern world. A racial group rioting against another for three days while police look on is one of those things. It hasn't happened to any other race in the modern era in the US, and it was allowed to happen in NYC.
The fact that you compare it to race riots like Watts shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what the CH riots were. It's common for people to try fit things into narratives they already know about. You hear "race riots in Crown Heights" , you think Rodney King and Watts - riots based on years of mistreatment by police and the government. But it was actually more like a pogrom of old Europe than a riot of modern America.
