Sadly, at the Hot 97 Hip Hop
concert on Saturday at MetLife Stadium in Rutherford, New Jersey, contact
between concert attendees and security turned violent. Commentator Geraldo Rivera blamed
the music for the violence. A
concertgoer claimed, “the way they
treat us is barbaric. If this was another concert this would've never
happened". Both of these
conclusions are dangerously wrong.
Twenty-six years ago in October
1989, Andrew Katz a college sophomore dressed in bright tie-dye was also at the
Rutherford Stadium then known as Brendan Byrne for a Grateful Dead
concert. He was found lying face
up in a pool of blood with the top of his skull bashed in. Although no one was charged in Andrew's death, nine guards
were charged with assaulting Deadheads during the five day concert run.
Two markedly different types of
crowd and styles of music, yet violence ensued at both concerts. At the Grateful Dead concert, the crowd
was white and the music anything but violent or aggressive. Thus, the default arguments that the
violence was a product of the violent lyrics or the race of the crowds do not
apply.
The similarity of both concerts
was that attendees showed up at the concerts without tickets and then tried to
get in to the sold-out shows.
As DJ Ebro pointed out on his
show following the concert, “You can’t just jump the fence and then get mad and
throw bottles.” “You cannot throw bottles at the police,” his co-host added,
“what is wrong with you?”
It is
time our culture stop blaming race and violent music and start demanding that
our youth, black and white, respect property and authority.
No comments:
Post a Comment