Televised rebellions fueled a racist claim that civil rights caused crime

Evidence

Others went further, insisting that integration causes crime. That type of fearmongering failed to prevent the passage of major civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1965, but the imagery associated with the rebellions, as well as the scale and scope of the destruction, helped fuel the racist argument that civil rights for Black people led to rampant crime and disorder. Many white people pointed to the images on their television screens, as Black people burned buildings or looted stores, and claimed that white people had good reason to fear the changes that were being forced upon them, and that Black people must be controlled at any cost. What was happening in the streets was criminal, they argued. Nothing more and nothing less. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 399

Categorization

• SHARE: This precise causal inversion — imagery of rebellion used to argue civil rights causes crime — is the kind of mechanism a reader studying racial backlash narratives would prize.