There's a Riot Goin' On

A while back I weighed in on why violence and looting, which are usually rare in the wake of a natural disaster, broke out in New Orleans after Katrina. Now Thomas Glass, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins, has published some more speculations on the subject.

Comments

[Shannon Love]

I think a certain sense of entitlement strongly influences whether people will engage in anti-social activities during a large scale emergency.

The three large blackouts in the Northeast in the last 40 years appear to support this idea. There were blackouts in 1965, 1977 and 2003. Only the 1977 blackout resulted in widespread anti-social behavior. The best explanation is that the zeitgeist of the 70's created a sense of entitlement among many that led them to believe they had a moral right to use the blackout as an opportunity to enrich themselves and strike out at others

Since the evacuation of New Orleans was purely a private and largely individualistic effort it left behind those without resources and networks of their own. These are exactly the kind of people most susceptible to a sense of entitlement in a disaster. Throw in racial paranoia and you've got a recipe for disorder.

I am not sure if the breakdown in NO was any worse than one would see in any city if you pulled all the middle class and cops out the poor part of the city. I am fairly certain that the actual breakdown was nowhere near as bad most seemed to imagine in the first few days.

[Jesse Walker]

I don't know how you'd measure a "sense of entitlement," Shannon. And I'm not sure how the gestalt of a decade could explain the fact that some neighborhoods stayed calm in '77 while others rioted. (Note also that the other three cases in the last half-century where public looting followed an American disaster took place in 1989, 1992, and 2005. Did New Orleans have more of a "sense of entitlement" this year than New York did two years ago?)

[rox_publius]

speculate away...

i'm gonna remain armed and stocked with the disaster supplies regardless, no matter how much my being "paranoid" worries the wife.

[joe]

Urban riots in this country date back to before the War of Independence.

Blaming the liberals for everything from cold winters to Susan Smith drowing her children is really a lazy habit.

[jf]

It seems to me that if you have a disaster-type situation in a place where the majority of the people looks like the "innocent until proven guilty" guest-stars on COPS, then you're likely lookly at riots and looting taking place. Is there a historical trend that shows otherwise?

It also seems like there must be a lot of unemployed sociologists that pick up pocket change by "examining" events like this and then spewing out nonsense. I'm no sociologist, but Glass' piece sure did seem to say a lot of nothing.

[rox_publius]

i don't blame the "liberals" for the riot's occurance. i blame the "liberals" for attempting to remove my ability to protect myself, my family, and my possessions when they do.

[ralphus]

Trying to explain what's wrong with New Orleans is like trying to explain what's wrong with Courtney Love. Bring in all the experts you want, the simple answer is that the both of them were, are and will always be gloriously fucked up.

[Han Meng]

Sociologists question how much looting and mayhem really took place in New Orleans

...experts on disaster aftermaths and crowd behavior contacted last week insisted that follow-up investigations will reveal that the impression of Hobbesian violence in New Orleans over the past two weeks was created in large part by rumor and amplified by sometimes credulous reporters. The scholars' suspicions are fueled by what they say is a well-documented history of misinformation during disasters--and a general human tendency to misread crowds, even violent ones, as more malevolent than they really are.

"As a researcher, I base what I say on evidence and there was no evidence for a lot of what was being reported," says Kathleen Tierney, a sociologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder and director of the Natural Hazards Center there. "I don't think I've ever seen such an egregious example of victim blaming as I have in this disaster."

[thoreau]

Ralphus's Courtney Love theory was superb.

Shannon Love's theory? Not so much.

[Janis]

I keep up with New Orleans because it is the closest large city to where I live.

There are some mean sociopathic opportunists in New Orleans everyday, just like there are in other cities. The emptiness of the city just gave them a larger stage, and a seemingly larger effect. I decline to believe, yet, that average people turned into animals under the stress.

Now if you want to watch and examine something ugly, wait until the money really starts flowing and professional looters descend. They ain't gonna be poor, and most of them ain't gonna be black.

[joe]

well put, ralphus.

'the majority of the people looks like the "innocent until proven guilty" guest-stars on COPS'

I don't get it. What do you mean?

[mediageek]

I don't know how you'd measure a "sense of entitlement," Shannon.

Playing it fast and loose, I suppose you could look up how many of them were on public assistance of one sort or another. But then that wouldn't actually tell you the mindset of the person, just that they are.

*shrugs shoulders*

[Shannon Love]

joe,

"Urban riots in this country date back to before the War of Independence."

True, but completely irrelevant because we are not talking about rioting here. A riot occurs in the first place because people are angry and wish to attack some other members of community. We are talking about a significant segment of the community taking advantage of a disaster to to attack others or to enrich themselves. As the article makes clear, this is very rare behavior that requires it own explanation.

The three blackouts provide conditions as close to a controlled experiment as we are ever going to get in sociology. The same type of event, occurring in the same area with two events producing radically different outcomes than the third. What changed from 1965 to 1977 and then from 1977 to 2003?

It is a little impossible to argue that cultural and political environment of 1977 closely resembled those of either 1965 or 2003. In 1965 New York city was still the premier city on the planet. By 1977 it was well on its way to near collapse after following rather far left policy prescriptions for over a decade. By 2003 the city had been rejuvenating for over a decade by rejecting most of the ideas that reigned in 1977.

Again, this isn't about rioting. Anyone might riot if provoked enough but the vast majority of people will not exploit a disaster to enrich or revenge themselves. Emergent cooperation and spontaneous-altruism are the expected behaviors. It requires special circumstances to produce widespread anti-social acts in a disaster.

[fyodor]

I'm not jumping into bed with Shannon on this per se, but I have some bones to pick with his critics.

joe,
I remember you ridiculing people who were "afraid" to discuss values. Are you now ridiculing the possibility that values can have effects on people's behavior? Or only that left-liberal values can have negative effects on people's behavior? Are you using liberal-bashing to dismiss ideas and possibilities the way you've accused others (not without some merit) of using Bush-bashing?

Jesse,
Your counter-examples would seem to suggest that a "sense of entitlement" is not sufficient for post-disaster looting, but not that it cannot be a contributing factor. And while I agree that a "sense of entitlement" may not be as easy to measure as Shannon seems to think, does that mean we shan't talk about it and its possible effect on people at all?

[Ironchef]

I, personally, blame the looters for being looters.

[Jesse Walker]

Fyodor: I'm willing to concede that the looters felt they were entitled to loot. But there's a big leap from that near-tautology to Shannon's sweeping statement: "The best explanation is that the zeitgeist of the 70's created a sense of entitlement among many that led them to believe they had a moral right to use the blackout as an opportunity to enrich themselves and strike out at others." As Joe pointed out, there were riots in the '60s where crowds behaved much as they did during the blackout of '77 -- yet "the zeitgeist of the '60s" did not prompt New Yorkers to riot in 1965.

While I don't agree with all of it, Shannon's second post is much more defensible. New York was in much worse shape in 1977 than it was in 1965. Therefore, it was more prone to riot. All sorts of innocuous events can set off such disorder; in that case, it was a blackout.

[Jason Ligon]

Is it that uncommon? My perception is that there is a riot pretty much every time the lights go out, especially if its hot. I thought the answer to "Why?" was a simple "Some people are just crappy."

To me, it is just the Invisible Man question. When people feel like the lights are out and there are no consequences, they act like monkeys.

[Will Allen]

Let's first get a handle on how pervasive the lawlessness was before we start coming up for explanations as to why it happened. If a study had once been conducted as to why child molestation in day care centers had become so pervasive, the answers may not have been useful.

I will also use this space to note that one of the most widely disseminated myths pertaining to the inadequacy of federal relief efforts, the tearful account by Parish President Broussard of how an elderly nursing home resident was left to drown, has now been shown to be just that, a myth.
Seems the phone calls he related as having been made from the woman to the woman's son in the days after the storm were actually made from the son to the elderly woman in the days prior to the storm, as the son attempted to ascertain from nursing home owners that they would in fact evacuate. As it is now known, the nursing home owners repeatedly turned away offers of evacuation, and then abandoned their residents to death by drowning, as the Coast Guard was attempting to rescue as many as possible.

When I heard Boussard's account on Meet the Press, it seemed obvious to me that it wasn't on the level. I suspect many anecdotes will be shown to be similarly suspect.

[Jose Ortega y Gasset]

Rather than focus on the looters, consider the behavior of the persons who were evacuated. I know a few people who have worked directly with the refugees (or evacuees if you prefer). The experience has been described, how might I put this delicately, as less than satisfying. There is apparently a very highly-developed sense of entitlement among some refugees. On a purely personal note, one of my employees provided shelter to extended family members. After a week, he sent them packing to other relatives.

It would be interesting to see how many evacuees use the post-disaster support to move out of poverty... and how many spend this largess foolishly.

I believe it was the book, "Band of Brothers" where an American soldier oboserved German citizens sorting through rubble and neatly stacking bricks to rebuild. Clearly, this is not quite the culture of some areas of New Orleans.

[Jesse Walker]

Jason: It is uncommon -- extremely so. Your perception is wrong.

Will: I strongly suspect that the lawlessness will prove not to have been as pervasive as initially reported. But some mass looting clearly happened, and some physical violence clearly happened; since both are unusual under such circumstances, some sort of explanation is warranted. I don't think it's too early to start speculating.

[Jason Ligon]

Ah. One thing about riots is they get a lot of press. My perceptions of reality have been distorted by the MSM!

[Don]

The complaints of refugees on TV suggests an attitude of entitlement. So I tend to agree with Shannon & JO y G.

[fyodor]

New York was in much worse shape in 1977

At least that gave rise to some good movies, like Taxi Driver and Escape From New York!!

[joe]

"A riot occurs in the first place because people are angry and wish to attack some other members of community." There are many reasons riots occur. Sometimes, they want to attack people and end up looting their stores. Sometimes, they want to loot and attack the people available for looting. Sometimes, a crisis occurs, people do desperate things, there aren't any authorities, and things snowball. In practice, you can't actually distinguish among these - rioting mobs are made up of individuals, who don't exactly hand out agendas beforehand.

"We are talking about a significant segment of the community taking advantage of a disaster to to attack others or to enrich themselves." We don't know how significant that segment was. History tells us that TV footage of riots and looting invariably creates an exaggerated impression of how many people took place, and how big a portion of the community took part.

"As the article makes clear, this is very rare behavior that requires it own explanation." What, a Category Four Hurricaine hitting, flooding the city to a dept of 3-4 meters, levelling vast swaths of the city, and leaving many thousands of people trapped and desperate, witout a functioning civil order or means of rescue, isn't a good enough explanation for you? It wasn't the lights going out overnight.

"What changed from 1965 to 1977 and then from 1977 to 2003?" A lot of indicators went from low to high to lower during that period, in New York and nationally. Murder rates. Cocaine usage. I know - in 1963 and 2003, we had a president that was born in New England, while in 1977, we had a president from the South.

fyodor, I'm not afraid to discuss values. Shannon just has a weak case. And "dependency" is not a "liberal-left value," any more than bloodlust is a "conservative-right" value, or hardheartedness is a libertarian value. They are, at worst, the outcomes of those factions' policies, but they are not the values of the belief systems themselves.

"Some mass looting" could mean there were 50-100 well organized people, along with a slightly larger number of opportunists and a whole lotta people looking for food, or just watching the show.

[joe]

Jason, "Ah. One thing about riots is they get a lot of press. My perceptions of reality have been distorted by the MSM!"

Quite so. Riots and their aftermath are highly telegenic, can be effectively framed (visually and verbally) into much bigger events than they are, and are easy to present in a manner than resonates with familiar, even comforting, narratives the viewing public already understands.

[mitch]

Have people read the firsthand account that appeared in the New York Press of one man's experience of violence and looting in New Orleans? Everyone seemed to get excited about the guy in the sports stadium who didn't know what sort of rifles the U.S. military is outfitted with, so maybe people will find this account interesting as well.

http://www.nypress.com/18/37/news&columns/bobbybellew.cfm

[Jason Ligon]

"...any more than ... hardheartedness is a libertarian value."

Haven't you read The Virtue of Hardheartedness? A day without kicking harp seal pups is a day without sunshine, I say.

[Don]

And "dependency" is not a "liberal-left value,"

Of course it is. The left uses it to maintain political support.

[joe]

*Sob* That seal pup could be YOU, Jason!

[Jason Ligon]

"Riots and their aftermath are highly telegenic, can be effectively framed (visually and verbally) into much bigger events than they are"

Interesting comment from Our Man on the Left. There is that strain of lefty thought that holds, freud-like, that riots are the most important indicator you have that social adjustments need to be made. I had a prof in college, for example, who spoke very passionately about the need to pay the poor with redistribution so you don't have to pay the state for riot control. Every reduction in redistribution would lead to more riots. Don't you know how terrible riots are? That sort of thing.

So, our man joe is not of the Hobbesian left?

[Jason Ligon]

"*Sob* That seal pup could be YOU, Jason!"

Don't worry joe, I put on a blindfold before I go after them. I call it my 'veil of ignorance'.

[fyodor]

lol on the seals...

But first of all joe, at least now I got you discussing substance, which you didn't do before. Maybe that was because of time constraints or autistic, I mean artistic, license, but I'm just reacting to what you said, not to what you invisibly really meant.

Next, you're the first to use the word "dependency." Shannon used "sense of entitlement." I think the notions that being poor is caused by others being rich and greedy and that private property, particularly in the hands of those who have more of it or of big corporations, is theft, is seriously propagated by the left. To what degree the left has managed to spread that belief and to what degree it is responsible for encouraging or enabling looting I don't rightly know. But I don't think it should be dismissed out of hand as gratuitous liberal-bashing.

[fyodor]

All that said, the point that 1965 was just as ripe for a riotous zeitgeist as 1977 is a convincing one.

[joe]

Jason, my point about the media puffing up scenes of rioting, and your college prof's point about rioting indicating structural problems, neither confirm nor refute one another. I'm not sure what you were going for.

fyodor, ok, I see the distinction. Shannon, by "liberal-left values," were you going for culture-of-dependency or Marxist levelling?

[Shannon Love]

joe,

"Shannon, by "liberal-left values," were you going for culture-of-dependency or Marxist levelling?"

I would have to go with a Marxist "property is theft" idea as creating the belief that it is okay to use the cover of a disaster to steal. I can say for certain that more than a few Leftist commentators used variations of that argument in justifying the disorder back in 1977, a phenomenon that was new at the time.

But I used the word zeitgeist specifically to signify that the disorders of 1977 were a result of the broad spirit of the times and not just a matter of a political philosophy. This was the "Me" decade, the era of Carter's Malaise and the previous years had seen the children of the upper classes routinely rioting in demonstrations. Police were widely regarded as impotent. Crime was exploding everywhere in normal circumstances and nobody seemed to be able to do anything about it. A general sensation of breakdown, disorder and helplessness permeated the general culture of the era. A blackout would have just been the straw that broke the camels back.

The private evacuation of New Orleans, with its history of crime corruption, impotence and its concentration of racially correlated poverty basically recreated the zeitgeist of the 70's. Those left were those with the least positive view of society and those most susceptible to the idea that society owed them something and that now they could take it.

Perhaps "entitlement" was a poor phrasing. I intended to convey the idea that people exploit disasters to steal or attack others when they believe that doing so is morally justified at anytime. The disaster merely gives them the physical environment to act out their preexisting moral choices. Its easy to see that the zeitgeist of the 70's viewed it as more moral to steal and strike out against others for the many perceived injustices of American society than did the zeitgeist of 1965 or 2003.

And just to reiterate, I think that the stories of disorder in NO will turn out to have been exaggerated. I think the local authorities so mistrusted the people of NO (long before the storm) that they assumed they would turn into animals. Every rumor of disorder simply fed into this preconceived notion. It was really striking how the NOPD, for example, distanced themselves from the people and often refused to talk to them or come into direct contact. They were terrified of the people even though reporters were wandering through the crowds unmolested. That kind of alienation didn't pop into existence the night of the storm. It had been there for quite some time.

If you wanted to look at a culture of dependency, I wouldn't look so much at the ordinary citizens but rather the political class who seemed to think that they couldn't do anything without the help of others. They seem to have gotten so addicted to Uncle Sugar that they didn't take the most elementary actions to help those who couldn't help themselves.

[Phil]

Anecdotally speaking, my wife works for the Red Cross, and is in regular contact with people on the ground at various shelters. Without getting into too many specifics about what she does, etc., I can tell you that she has related stories to me in which a nontrivial number of evacuees refuse to attend orientations, or job fairs, or housing fairs, or other such vehicles designed to get people back on their feet with a place to live and work. They want someone to give them a job and a house and clothes and so forth. (They've actually said so: "I don't want to go to no job fair -- why can't someone just give me a job?") So, the feeling is out there. I don't know that a few anecdotes indicate a trend or anything else; it's just one more data point.

[fyodor]

Police were widely regarded as impotent. Crime was exploding everywhere in normal circumstances and nobody seemed to be able to do anything about it. A general sensation of breakdown, disorder and helplessness permeated the general culture of the era.

Shannon,

Echoing Jesse's critique of an earlier post of yours, this passage seems to go way past "a sense of entitlement" OR popular ideas about the morality of theft versus the legitimacy of private property.

[joe]

Shannon,

When did you turn into gaius marius? 😉

[Jason Ligon]

joe:

"my point about the media puffing up scenes of rioting, and your college prof's point about rioting indicating structural problems, neither confirm nor refute one another."

The point was that to a guy like the good prof, you can't puff up a riot to make it look like more than it is. A lot of effort is spent in certain lefty circles making all riots out to be more significant than they are. It is part of the hobbesian narrative.

[Crushinator]

The residents of New Orleans were all well aware that the politicians, police, and local businessmen fattened their wallets on the public till. The deserted, dark, flooded city lay prostrate and vulnerable - a veritable beggars' banquet of looting opportunities. The poor probably started to loot for necessities at first, but once you grab a box of canned goods or case of bottled water you realize there is nothing to stop you from grabbing a television. I suppose the looting was widespread amongst the general population. Most stores and businesses were probably picked to the bone (and possibly private residences). I contend that the looters started out to meet their survival needs and naturally progressed into "getting their fair share of the loot".

I also second Janis' comment. The real looters will be the politicians and well-connected businessmen who will rape the taxpayer via no-bid reconstruction contracts.