Police dressed in riot gear descended on the crowd deploying tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets. Does this scene sound familiar? There are many similarities between the protests in Ferguson and the riot that took place recently in Keene, NH during their annual Pumpkin Festival. Social media sites have exploded, comparing the two events and pointing out a racist double standard. Most people citing how the law enforcement response and media coverage have been inconsistent between the white rioters in Keene and the predominately black protestors in Ferguson. The differences in language used by the media to describe the events in the two cities are rather conspicuous. For example, the “rowdy students” in Keene versus the violent “thugs” in Ferguson. However, comparing these two events in order to illustrate this double standard is more complex than it may initially seem. Despite the similarities between the two, the situations in Ferguson and Keene are, at their core, drastically different.
Even though law enforcement may have used some of the tactics to subdue the people involved, the circumstances from which both events arose are in almost complete contrast of each other. The mostly white rioters in Keene were fueled by alcohol and a desire to do things they are not supposed to do. The overturned cars and fires lit in the streets were prompted by nothing more than mischievous behavior. It demeans the efforts in Ferguson to compare it to the riots in Keene. Ferguson is an ongoing, organized movement prompted by the shooting death of an unarmed black teen. Ferguson is a political movement and the looting in Keene is nothing like the civil disobedience being seen in Ferguson. Ferguson can be rightfully called a protest or a response to an injustice. The media has the wrong idea about who the “thugs” are.
Talking about Keene and Ferguson can also be productive, however, when we shift the discussion from comparing the two situations to differences in how society perceives black and white behavior. It is as though white youth are allowed and expected to be children, while black youth are more likely to be criminalized by the justice system. White violent behavior is not often talked about to the extent that African-American rioting behavior is. The initial characterization of the Keene Pumpkin Fest crowd as “rowdy” illustrates this point perfectly. White behavior seems to get normalized while bad behavior of a small number of people in the African-American community often stigmatizes the entire population. However, you do not see the same conditions when it comes to bad behavior by a small group of white people. The media needs to get better at representing what is really going on during these types of riots and protests, instead of minimalizing important social action by comparing it to drunken misbehavior. The fact that the Ferguson protests was in many ways compared to Keene makes it seem as though it does not have enduring issues or evidence to support the people’s frustration.