I’ve been thinking about this, and it reminds me of how in the late Sixties and early Seventies, the nascent skinhead culture, which fetishized Afro-Caribbean music, often settled on Asian immigrants as the targets of its anger. There were West Indian skinheads, too, and gangs of black and white youths would occasionally join up to hassle South Asian shopkeepers and immigrants. There are a number of deeply unpleasant ska songs by West Indian immigrants to Britain that celebrate this alliance, with titles like “Skinhead a Bash Them.”

this very famous piece was written after the rodney king riots in LA in 1992.

my theory: that your riots followed the pattern of the rodney king riots. afro-caribbean people protested real police brutality, riots began, and the racially-inspired looting of the brown people (south asian/turkish/islamic storekeepers) by the black people began. white skinheads joined in the looting even where no afro-caribbean police brutality was occurring, and the conflict was essentially one of black people protesting the much-resented economic toehold that the brown people have gotten in british society.

then cameron and johnson and the broom brigades started issuing their barely-coded racist backlash statements, more ominous than the riots themselves.

meanwhile, the bbc reports your police have equipment over 17 years old — too heavy to run in, and so hot police are dehydrated after a few hours’ work in which they are compelled to carry and drink liters of water. also, that they’re clueless when it comes to working with “gangs”. i doubt very seriously “gangs” had anything to do with any of this.

as an american, i am sorry this mayhem has come to you. it is the mark of a truly polyglot and armed society and i hope you all deal with it better than we have.

Thank you.