TPPM Watts: (26) Violence

[Paul Nightingale]

And then ...

"... violence is never far from you: because you are a man, because you
have been put down, because for every action there is an equal and
opposite reaction. Yet to these innocent, optimistic child-bureaucrats,
violence is an evil and an illness, possibly because it threatens
property and status they cannot help cherishing."

One the class dimension has been fully recognised, the NY
reader--insofar as they can be recognised as middle-class--is no loner
observing a face-off between working-class black kids and working-class
white cops. One can imagine the second sentence above rewritten using
"you" (ie along the lines of, 'this is what you think, you're no
different to ineffectual "child-bureaucrats"').

In the concluding paragraphs, then, the use of "you" to incorporate the
reader, seems to be less in evidence, precisely because it is needed
less. Asking the reader to empathise, in effect, would offer them an
escape route, one the text denies them.

"They [the 'child-bureaucrats'] remember last August's riot as an
outburst, a seizure. Yet what, from the realistic viewpoint of Watts,
was so abnormal?"

Cf, from the opening: "The verdict, to no one's surprise, cleared the
cop of all criminal responsibility."

If "no one" can be "surprise[d]" its because this is par for the course;
one might only be surprised if the situation was "abnormal". Hence, the
question above ("what ... was so abnormal?") demands that the reader
acknowledge (more precisely, perhaps, forces them to acknowledge that
they cannot avoid acknowledging) "the realistic viewpoint of Watts".