The View | Protests won’t solve Hong Kong’s economic problems, as the 1967 Newark riots show
- Black residents of the New Jersey city had reason to complain, but the violence of 1967 scared away all economic hope. Likewise, if frustrated Hongkongers continue on their current path, they will send more business fleeing to Singapore
It’s likely that few of the Hong Kong protesters have heard of the 1967 Newark riots. The college students, young folks and all those men and women of Hong Kong who have taken to the streets in the past few weeks should learn about this part of the history in America, whose political system they purportedly demand.
The economic situation in Newark in 1967 was quite similar to Hong Kong’s today, and goals of the rioters were also quite similar. Amid the trend of relentless suburbanisation in the 1960s, Newark underwent a seismic economic change. The middle-class whites and World War II veterans were leaving Newark for more picturesque Northern Jersey suburbs, while low-income blacks moved in en masse in search of jobs and affordable housing. By 1967, Newark had become one of the first cities in the US with a majority black population.
But jobs were scarce, salaries were low, and political representation in the city council remained skewed towards whites. Many blacks, especially young blacks, felt a sense of injustice, disenfranchisement and hopelessness as a result of years of pent-up grievances, much like the young people rioting on the streets of Hong Kong in the last few days. On top of all this, there was the racially charged police brutality against the black community.
From July 12 to July 17 of that year, the city virtually burst into flames, following riots incited by the police beating of a black cab driver, wrecking neighbourhood after neighbourhood. The National Guard was called in to quell the riot. When the dust settled, 26 people had been killed and more than 700 were injured, most of them black.
Half a century later, Newark appears to have never fully recovered, having driven away businesses and middle-class residents. By the time I was taking after-work classes at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in downtown Newark in the late 1990s, every night trip was still a precarious venture. Even today there are still plots in the city that languish in decay.
