Question

To what different causes did various individuals and groups attribute the urban violence that erupted in the 1960s?

Answer 1

The 1967 DETROIT RIOTS were among the most violent and destructive riots in U.S. history. By the time the bloodshed, burning and looting ended after five days.It is a series of violent confrontations between residents of predominantly African American neighbourhoods of Detroit and the city’s police department .The riot is considered one of the catalysts of the militant BLACK POWER MOVEMENT.

DIFFERENT CAUSES FOR URBAN VIOLENCE IN 1960s:

*) The deeper causes of the riot were high levels of frustration, resentment, and anger that unemployment and underemployement, persistent and extreme poverty ,racism and racial segregation , police brutality and lack of economicand educationalopportunities. Deindustrialization in the city had resulted in the loss of industrial jobs and their replacement with low-paying service jobs. “White flight” and a shift in the tax base to the suburbs also contributed to deindustrialization. * *)Housing discrimination forced African Americans to live in certain neighbourhoods of the city, where housing was frequently poor or substandard, while urban renewal programs and freeway construction eradicated areas in which African Americans once thrived.

*)  Police brutality and racial profiling were ordinary occurrences in Detroit’s African American neighbourhoods. Residents were regularly subjected to unwarranted searches, harassment, and excessive use of force by police, and a few well-publicized shootings and beatings of African Americans by police occurred in the years preceding the riot. All of those factors encouraged African Americans in Detroit to view the police as merely the occupying army of an oppressive white “establishment.” In such a volatile atmosphere, it required only one provocative act by police to produce open revolt

.*)  Political exclusion of blacks from city government.

*)) poor health care ,poor social services and poor facilities.

*)  rapid change in the racial composition of neighborhoods.

The other reasons such as:

*) police officer fatally shoots a teenager in the back of the head during a gathering of youth in local public housing projects. Many youth and adults from the local African American community gather in the local business district, routinely burning and otherwise destroying non-Black-owned businesses.