The Clock Didn't Start With the Riots: Black people in Baltimore are subjected to violence all the time.

Transcript of a great talk by Coates, which gets to the complexity behind the recent violence in Baltimore: the selective use of the word "violence"; the systematic plunder of African-Americans throughout all of U.S. history (only possible by federal and state violence); and that while none of us chose to be born here or at any particular time, this is the mess we inherited, and to ignore the history that defined the present is to become party to the sins of the past.