As a millennial, when I see young people joining angry protests that encourage violence from their participants, I’m reminded of a term coined during the Cold War : “useful idiot.” A “useful idiot” was a non-communist who didn’t fully understand communism’s goals, but who could be manipulated into helping accomplish those goals.

I challenge my fellow young people to rise above being “useful idiots” for the cause of racism and oppression by refusing to engage in the kinds of protest designed to generate violence.

Many people, including me, feel anger and sadness over the death of George Floyd, as well as a desire to show society and elected officials that the status quo for people of color is unacceptable. This response is both understandable and just. 

But a sentiment expressed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a few months before being murdered by a white man continues to ring true today: “Every time a riot develops, it helps George Wallace.” George Wallace was a 1960s Democratic Party governor and four-time presidential candidate who is best known for his vocal support of racial segregation. In other words, violent protests and riots empower racism.

Of course, our right to peacefully assemble and protest is embedded in our national Constitution. But when protests happen in times and in ways that invite violence and rioting, it generates fear in the hearts and minds of reasonable people who are opposed to racism but feel understandable concern for their own lives and the lives of their loved ones. That can lead them toward political movements and politicians who promise security and a restoring of order, but who are less committed to racial equality.

As an aside to my peers, if the name George Wallace isn’t familiar, it wouldn’t hurt to study your American civil rights history. Civic knowledge is the key to unlocking your understanding of the equality and freedom for which you are (or ought to be) peacefully protesting.

For some, the words of historic civil rights heroes may not be enough. Perhaps you’d rather read peer-reviewed research saying exactly what happened after violent protests in the 1960s. Or maybe contemporary analysis of the 2016 presidential election and similar riots that occurred shortly before then may change your mind.

If neither historical example nor data-driven analysis is your thing, then simply observe the pleas and the actions of African-Americans to stop the violence. These voices are telling the nation in press conferences that “it is your duty not to burn your own house down for anger with an enemy.” They are stopping young would-be rioters in the streets from taking the violent path. And they are screaming to younger generations to “come up with a better way. ’Cause how we doing it, it ain’t working.”

Perhaps these voices do not persuade you that encouraging protests where violence is likely will empower oppression instead of changing things for the better. If so, take a look at the exultation over the riots on social media from truly oppressive countries like China and Russia – countries where peaceful protesters are imprisoned or are simply shot by national military forces.

In America, by contrast, our right to peacefully protest was written into the Constitution, has been upheld by our legal system over the centuries, and continues to be praised today by national public officials. Of course, this history of American freedom includes the ongoing story of struggle against deeply embedded racism. And that history also must be understood, especially by those inclined to denigrate most protesters’ intentions or to dismiss all protesters as malevolent rioters.

But this underscores a problem underlying continuing racism on the one hand, and continuing riots on the other: a lack of civic understanding of what American freedom means and what it requires. This is a failing not of our national morals, principles or character, but of our educational system and of families’ ability to transfer understanding of equality and freedom to future generations.

Perhaps, then, the solution to our racial divide begins not with police reforms or restoring law and order – though both are obviously needed – but with changes to how we educate young people about American freedom and equality, and how it is achieved. Then, rather than looking to impassioned protests that invite violence, we might instead start looking in the mirror. Because in all democratic societies, systemic change begins with the people, not their leaders.

As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Violence begets violence.” Violence empowers the racism that is, in the end, a deeper and more insidious form of violent oppression. If we gain a proper civic understanding of freedom and equality, along with the tools of peace required to extend them to the oppressed, then the cycle can end with us.