being look at the work of a scholar named joe fagen from the 1960s, and a lot o

you can look at the work of a scholar named joe fagen from the 1960s, and a lot of those interviews and the commission report itself don't put much stock in the influence of agitators, of black militants, that's not who people said influenced them to do what they did. i think that that argument is important. it is important to think about because it shows the divided way people thought about this violence and the divided way that people thought about the issues, the social issues that were at the center of it, to use shorthand term, right, african-americans in cities or people of particular leftist political ideas, right, radicals, activists, they said these disorders were caused by discrimination and police brutality really. in all of the instances i gave you as examples, all of them involved an altercation that involved police officers, so there is something going on about the relationship between urban black people and police officers at the center of this issue. that's one way that people interpreted the violence, and another way was it has nothing to do with that. it has to do with