The town of Huntington Beach, Calif. is a sleepy surf town, attracting beach bums and young punks looking to bask in its music scene well-known by those nearby. That wasn't the case Sunday as hundreds descended on the streets during the U.S. Surf Open and vandalized property and engaged in bloody fistfights. Portable toilets were overturned, one with someone inside, a photo of a man plunging a stop sign into a bike shop window has since gone viral, fires were set and the police were taunted as the rioting escalated out of control for no apparent reason.
Following the incident, bloggers and reporters began creating "white riot" parodies, deliberately meant to mock the likes of people like Bill O'Reilly, who infamously blamed youth of color and their parents for violence, the Los Angeles Times reported. Chris Hayes of MSNBC criticized "white culture" for being unable to control its youth and dissapate the prevalence of violence in the community.
"White power structure in this country has no clue, no clue how to solve the problems within in the white community," he said. "How long must we wait for white culture to get it together?"
Hayes wasn't the only one weighing in on white rioting and white crime. Gawker writer Cord Jefferson also wrote a piece decrying the violence, asking questions such as "when did white parents fall asleep at the wheel?" and naming binge drinking, looking like slobs and listening to violent, self-destructive music as normalized in the white community. He also questioned why whites in high authority such as O'Reilly, Hillary Clinton and Joel Osteen didn't address the "menace" of white violence.
"As I said, I know a lot of whites don't want to hear this kind of tough talk. But as an American of color who considers himself an ally to the white community, I'm just tired of seeing young, belligerent white people disgrace themselves year after year at surfing events, horse racing infields, and Ivy League campuses," Jefferson wrote.
New Media Animation posted an animated video of the parodies, depicting the white rioters as white apes with police shooting indiscriminantely into the crowd. The recent, heated conversation about race following the George Zimmerman trial in which he would found not guilty in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black youth in Florida, the parodies were quick to question and attack the causation of the white crime problem: too much surfing, sunshine and alcohol.
"Where's the white leadership?" Jefferson asked in his piece. "Where are you, Rush Limbaugh? Where are you, Sean Hannity?"
© 2024 Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
