The scenes of violence that emerged from London last week—the burning buildings and rampant looting, the police and firefighters under attack—were undeniably upsetting, but that’s not to say they were unfamiliar. The riots not only bore a strong resemblance to several recent instances of violent crime in the United States, they hearkened directly to the incendiary outbursts of racial violence that plagued this country from 1965 to 1968—from Watts in Los Angeles, to Detroit, to the H Street corridor in Washington D.C. But if the expressions of unrest are following the pattern from that previous era, the policy responses likely won’t be—and that bodes poorly for any hopes of sustainably ending the violence sometime soon.

Governments of the 1960s and 1970s were quick to respond to their restive populations with renewed investments in the social safety net and in low-skill job programs. Cash was channeled from the federal government to beleaguered cities through programs like the Neighborhood Youth Corps, a government job program for 16 to 21-year-olds; Job Corps, which trained youths of the same age; Model Cities, a program of grants to cities distributed locally by boards made up of representatives from poor neighborhoods; and Community Action Programs, which were used to hire organizers to encourage political activism in such areas. Higher courts ordered, and a government regulatory apparatus enforced, tough civil rights and affirmative actions remedies. Government at all levels began hiring greater numbers of blacks and other minorities into secure civil service positions with reliable access to upward promotion.

Today, our public officials are more apt to respond in a spirit of moral condemnation than social generosity. On August 11, when British Prime Minister David Cameron went before parliament to address the unrest, he offered only outrage. “It is criminality pure simple,” he said. “We will not allow a culture of fear to exist on our streets.” It’s a response that strongly resembled the speech given by Michael Nutter, the African-American mayor of Philadelphia, on August 7, in response to a recent spate of street violence there. “If you want to act like an idiot, move. Move out of this city,” he told the congregation at Carmel Baptist Church. “We don’t want you here anymore.”

There are a few factors contributing to this impoverished policy response. The first is that we are living through an age of austerity. England’s conservative government immediately adopted sharp spending cuts and tax hikes upon taking office. The cuts reduce housing and welfare benefits for the poor and eliminate government jobs. In the United States, the most immediate effects of austerity are being felt at the state level. A July 28 survey by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found 38 of the 47 states that finished budgeting had enacted “deep, identifiable cuts in K-12 education, higher education, health care, or other key areas” in setting spending for fiscal year 2012. Social condemnation is a conveniently cheap solution at a time of dwindling tax receipts.



Our contemporary belt-tightening, however, is also matched by a constriction of society’s moral imagination—an ethical corollary to our fiscal impoverishment. That’s most acutely apparent in attitudes towards race. In the 1960s and 1970s, white Americans were acutely aware of the legacy of injustice inflicted on African Americans, from slavery to Jim Crow. Now, the civil rights movement is largely a spent force. Polls show a growing belief among whites that anti-white discrimination is as strong or stronger than anti-black discrimination. Take, for example, a recent survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, which asked respondents whether they agreed with the statement: “Today discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.” White respondents were almost evenly divided—48 percent agreeing, 50 percent disagreeing.