Riots and Other Forms of Ethnic Protest during Periods of Crisis

In the 1960s, during a period of strong economic growth, hundreds of American cities burned. Similarly, across the Atlantic in 2005 riots tore through France in 2005. Yet in the wake of the worst economic crisis since the great depression, poor minority neighborhoods in the United States and most of Europe have been quiet. Only in California, Great Britain and Sweden have minority residents engaged in violent confrontation with police. What explains these very different repertoires of collective action, among those most hard hit by the economic crisis? Misery just disheartens. Three factors explain the location, timing and collective action repertoires of poor minorities: 1) the activation of racial boundaries; 2) the violent policing of those boundaries; and 3) the availability of standard, successful, nonviolent repertoires.