Despite recent clashes between Occupy Movement protesters and the police, Americans just don’t riot like they used to. Emily Badger reports:
“Alienation, youth unemployment, distrust of police,” says University of Pennsylvania historian Michael Katz, “these things are surely as prevalent in the U.S. as they were in France.”
If anything, the conditions that fuel urban violence – income inequality, poverty, joblessness – are as disheartening in America as ever, in the wake of a deep recession.
“So why,” Katz asks, “had collective violence more or less disappeared from the streets of American cities?”
Some answers are encouraging, others distressing.