The one single impression I got after watching the riots last night
was how many (if not most) of the participants were white. Its difficult to determine proportions and percentages of crowd demographics from watching confused and chaotic TV news coverage, but the impression was clear and unshakable. This was not a segregated race riot. It was fully integrated.

The protest may have been primarily about police oppression of the black community, but I suspect that other, even deeper, sources of rage and frustration were being tapped. I’m not implying these white protesters were not genuinely outraged by reports of police brutality against unarmed blacks. I just think that there are other factors operating here that may have encouraged Millennials to finally understand how their own troubles might be intimately related to those of others.

Perhaps Corona, international trade, global conflict, student loans, climate change, housing shortages, all sorts of seemingly unrelated phenomena are starting to be seen as aspects of one single dynamic.

And that’s a good thing.