Riots were deemed criminal only once Black people drove them

Evidence

This was not a surge of purposeless criminality, as many white observers claimed; it was a sustained revolt. Throughout American history, white mob violence had been understood as thoroughly political in nature. It was obvious to everyone concerned that white people frequently became enraged when their status or power was threatened, and that they were willing to maintain the racial order through violence—including burning buildings, looting homes, and attacking or lynching Black people. But when Black rebellions swept our nation, they were cast as deviant, criminal, and irrational. Hinton observes, “It was only when white people no longer appeared to be the driving force behind rioting in the nation’s cities, and when Black collective violence against exploitative and repressive institutions surfaced, that ‘riots’ came to be seen as purely criminal, and completely senseless, acts.” — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 396

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Hinton’s observation operates as a reframing move exactly parallel to the book’s central thesis: labeling is a function of who wields power, so the same acts are ‘political’ when white and ‘criminal’ when Black — a textbook instance of deviation-vs-design attribution.
• XREF: Mirrors the reader’s core distinction: what counts as ‘deviation’ (Black riots as irrational) versus ‘design’ (white mob violence as politics) depends on who narrates origins. — connects to: Almost no white rioters against Blacks faced punishment — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 492