EVERY few years, the US rediscovers the profound divide that still threatens to pull the country apart, despite all the economic progress and its alleged recovery from the global downturn. The height of the civil rights movement saw hundreds of contestations — including the riots in Detroit in 1967 that left 33 African Americans and 11 whites killed, plus a few thousand people arrested — and multiple eruptions of violence in the aftermath of Martin Luther King’s murder in 1968.In 1970, black students were killed in a confrontation with the police at Jackson State University, Mississippi. In 1980, riots broke out in Liberty City, Florida, after officers were acquitted for killing an unarmed black man. Result? Fifteen dead, in the worst episode since Detroit. Then we had the beating of Rodney King in 1991, filmed by a passer-by and aired all over the world. Once again, the acquittal of the murderers led to violence, resulting in 55 killings and more than 2,000 people injured.And the l...
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