New York Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones argued that rioters destroying property is “not violence” — and referring to the crimes as such goes against what’s moral.
“Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence. To use the same language to describe those two things, I think is really not moral to do that,” Hannah-Jones, who is Pulitzer Prize winner, told CBSN.
Hannah-Jones, who writes for the Times Magazine, said the language should be reserved for crimes such as the killing of George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis after a white cop, Derek Chauvin, held his knee on Floyd’s neck for several minutes.
“Violence is when an agent of the state kneels on a man’s neck until all of the life is leached out of his body,” Hannah-Jones told the outlet.
Her comments come as cities across the nation have been locked in days of heated protests over the death of Floyd — some of which have resulted in vandalism, looting and arson.
“Any reasonable person would say we shouldn’t be destroying other people’s property, but these are not reasonable times,” she said.
“These are people who have protested against police violence again and again and again, year after year after year and still, we can have videos of law enforcement with witnesses taking the life of a man for the alleged crime of passing a fake $20 bill.”
“The law is not respecting them. You can’t say regular citizens should play by the rules when agents of the state are not,” she continued.