What is perhaps most striking from these pastiche accounts of horror and mayhem is the way that the whole community suddenly shifts from one mode of being into another mode. No one declared war, per say, and it isn't like two organized armies are going against one another. Rather, the ability to easily distinguish "Us and Them" made the neighborhood easily fractured, and when the stability was gone, war broke out.
The first moral conclusion that can be drawn is that it is extremely dangerous to judge by skin color, for the typical reasons, but also for the reasons implicit in this narrative; when a person automatically becomes the "enemy" just for having white or black skin, then the conflict easily flies out of control, and it is nearly impossible to reign that back in. Once the riots begin, there is almost no turning them around until they take their course. The broader city was of course feeling aftershocks from this for months and years.
When the narrative shifts, there is a critical lesson offered about oppression. These two communities became tangled up in a game of "Which of us is more oppressed?" Instead of teaming together for meaningful demonstrations against the oppressors, the two communities who need support most spiral into conflict, damaging their communities severely and making their own streets unsafe. The riots are sad because they make already unfortunate circumstances into nearly unlivable circumstances, damaging their valid political views in the eyes of the community at large.
