Entitlements: Riots in Britain raise questions about whether America could face similar violence

A black man killed by police. Mobs of looters. Cities charred and shaken. The riots in London mirror some of the worst uprisings in modern U.S. history.

And there are more parallels: Stubborn poverty and high unemployment, services slashed due to recessionary budget cuts, a breakdown of social values, social media that bring people together for good or bad at the speed of the Internet. And finally, there are a handful of actual attacks, isolated and hard to explain, by bands of youths in U.S. cities.

As Americans look across the Atlantic, a natural question arises: Could the flames and violence that erupted in Britain scar this country, too?

"History shows that the social tinder for such eruptions of massive violence and looting is usually widespread poverty without hope, and the spark is typically an incident of police brutality in the absence of a culture of police accountability," said Benjamin Todd Jealous, CEO of the NAACP. "Such conditions exist in almost every major American city."

Others, like British Prime Minister David Cameron, blame "criminality, pure and simple." That echoes descriptions of some recent episodes of mob behavior in places like Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Chicago and Ohio. Stores have been pillaged, passers-by robbed, and random victims brutally attacked by dozens or occasionally hundreds of youths summoned through tools like Facebook and Twitter.

For more: Riots in Britain raise questions about whether America could face similar violence - 8/13/2011 2:08:28 PM | Newser