Let’s not sugarcoat the rioting

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake of the embattled city of Baltimore was absolutely right when she blamed “thugs” for the violence last week that turned some neighborhoods into veritable war zones.

And, Rawlings-Blake was absolutely wrong in retracting that characterization of the trouble-makers.

Likewise, the president of Baltimore City Council, Jack Young, was echoing the sentiments of all law-abiding citizens around the country when he used the word “thugs” to describe the individuals who disrupted peaceful protests against the treatment of blacks by police and, specifically, the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who suffered a spinal chord injury after being arrested by Baltimore police.

But Young showed a lack of intestinal fortitude when he later apologized for using the word “thugs” and replaced it with the clearly inappropriate “misdirected” — to describe the youth who went on a rampage.

Buildings burned

At least 15 police officers were injured, and more than 200 people were arrested. Sections of the city now bear the scars of the violence. About 140 vehicles were torched, 15 buildings, including a community center under construction and a CVS drug store, were burned, and neighborhood stores were looted.

It is revealing that the looters chose to spare a black-owned business, but showed no such restraint when it came to destroying businesses owned by Koreans and other foreign nationals, according to a report by National Public Radio.

President Barack Obama, who lashed out at the “criminals and thugs who tore up the place,” was appropriately strident in his remarks about Monday’s rioting.

“There’s no excuse for the kind of violence we saw yesterday,” Obama said Tuesday during a news conference with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. “It is counterproductive. When individuals get crow bars and start prying open doors to loot, they’re not protesting. They’re not making a statement. They’re stealing. ... When they burn down a building, they’re committing arson. And they’re destroying and undermining businesses and opportunities in their own communities that rob jobs and opportunity from people in that area.”

The president is to be praised for not mincing words, and it is to be hoped that he does not retract his statements the way the mayor and council president of Baltimore have done.

This isn’t about casting aspersions or denigrating young black men. It’s about turning the spotlight on bands of marauders who are determined to disrupt legitimate, peaceful demonstrations that have been taking place throughout the country as the incidents of black men dying while in custody or while being arrested by police grows.

As President Obama correctly noted, “The violence that happened yesterday distracted from the fact that you had seen multiple days of peaceful protests that were focused on entirely legitimate concerns of these communities in Baltimore, led by clergy and community leaders. And they were instructive and they were thoughtful. ... Frankly, they didn’t get that much attention. And one burning building will be looped on television over and over and over again and the thousands of demonstrators who did it the right way, I think, have been lost in the discussion.”

Implicit in that statement is a challenge to black leaders across the country who need to build public support among all racial groups for what is a legitimate concern of the black community: police brutality.

Systemic problems

From Cleveland, to Ferguson, Mo., to New York City, to South Carolina and now to Baltimore, the deaths of black men — many of them young adults — at the hands of police have highlighted the systemic problems in law enforcement agencies around the country.

Whether it’s a lack of training, especially for white officers serving in communities with a large number of black residents, or an underlying attitude of us-against-them, there certainly is a need for national dialogue.

By the same token, the black and Hispanic communities that have the highest incidents of clashes with police must figure out a way to build trust with law enforcement.

And the leaders in those communities must put a stop to the thuggish behavior of the social misfits.