Ruptures of Rioting and Democracy from Tocqueville to the Baltimore Uprising

• In Event: Riot and Resistance: For Good or for Ill

Abstract

It is not often noted that when Alexis de Tocqueville warned against the tyranny of the majority in Democracy in America what he had in mind was the Baltimore Bank Riot of 1835, when the city’s white men turned against its richest citizens and threatened literal expropriation against the wealthy. Almost 200 years later, the Baltimore Uprising of 2015 saw the city’s Black neighborhoods rise up and, for many observers, riot against police violence and the structural inequities that still dominate the city. Yet whereas Tocqueville identified the rioting of 1835 with the dangers of excessive democracy, theorists have more generously viewed contemporary uprisings as a sign of democratic renewal. What are the possible ruptures and continuities across these two events, and what do they reveal about the uneasy relationship between democracy and rioting? While racism explains attributing contemporary rioting to Black communities resisting domination while disavowing the long history of white rioting, it does not explain democratic theorists own interests--from Jacque Ranciere to Juliet Hooker--in viewing rioting as sites of potential democratic renewal. Through a comparison of these two moments of Baltimorean uprisings, I argue in this paper that not only does racism determine how such political events as the Baltimore Bank Riot and Baltimore Uprising are viewed in relation to democracy, but that theorists themselves have turned to the concept of democracy to police the potential ruptures of rioting to political common sense. By sanitizing riots as either excesses or sites of democracy, I argue we as theorists miss the actual political claims made by rioters and thus a chance to rethink democracy in light of the radicalizations offered by rioting itself.

Author

• Quinn Lester, Johns Hopkins University