In August 2014 Darren Wilson, a police officer, shoots and kills unarmed eighteen-year-old convenience-store shopper Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
In October 2014, eighteen- to twenty-two-year-olds at Keene State College in New Hampshire erupt in a massive drunken riot and turn the campus into “a kind of war zone,” which includes throwing billiard balls and full bottles of alcohol at the police, pulling street signs out of the ground, setting fires, overturning a car, and reportedly threatening to kill police officers.
No one calls these students thugs. Eighty-seven percent of the students at Keene State College are white. They are “kids” having fun at Halloween. The college president says his students have failed to “pumpkin responsibly.”