Imagine a battered wife, beaten almost to death by her abusive husband repeatedly for years, who finally snaps because she can't bear it any more. So she beats him up severely in self-defense, then the police show up & arrest her.

That's what you're seeing at BLM riots. 1/

THAT'S why some of us can't bring ourselves to condemn the rioting with the fierceness many folks expect of us. It's not that we are in any way okay with rioting: it's that we sympathize so much with battered people who have finally snapped after lifetimes of unbearable abuse. 2/

Folks without emotional intelligence don't comprehend grieving so deeply with those who grieve that you feel the pain pouring out of these protests, so they misread our reticence as approval of rioting/violence, or partisan hypocrisy, or intellectual inconsistency, or worse 3/

If you can't see BLM riots through this lens, you aren't seeing them as they are. Crime is never acceptable, but we should come down much harder on the lifelong oppressors that made some protestors finally snap than on the battered and broken desperately fighting back for once 4/