Economic Roots of Violence

When it comes to why we're beginning to see some of the unrest that led up to the presidential election of 1968, including the racial violence we're now suffering today, it's impossible to point to a single cause. But I'd like to suggest a major one.

Overall, the level of violent crime has been dropping steadily in the U.S. for many years, but when killings happen now, they often seem more charged with hatred and fear than in the past--especially when they appear to involve prejudice toward one identity group or another. Gays, African-Americans, police have all been targets in recent killings--the horrors we've witnessed in Orlando, Minnesota, and Dallas seem charged with the sort of bias that our society in many ways has outgrown since the 60s. Behind that bias is a certain kind of despair. A pervasive sense of hopelessness--powerlessness--underlies these eruptions of gunfire. I believe you can find a major source of that despair in the decline in economic opportunity we've been suffering for decades.

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