I (personally) can almost rationalize rioting if the target of the violence is a symbol of the population that the mob see as their oppressor. Take for instanc

I (personally) can almost rationalize rioting if the target of the violence is a symbol of the population that the mob see as their oppressor. Take for instance, the Los Angeles riots in 1992. If significant mobs of rioters had streamed out of South Los Angeles, marched up La Cienega Blvd., taken a left on Wilshire, and then laid waste to establishments in Beverly Hills, it would make perverse sense. However, for the most part, this didn't happen. While the violence and looting was geographically widespread across the Los Angeles basin, the neighborhoods where it happened were often the same ones that the rioters lived in. The same neighborhoods that their friends and families shopped in, played in, and ultimately where they continued to live in after the six days of rioting ended. This represents something else than just a "justification". I'm not a sociologist, but as a person it's pretty clear to me that something else is going on if you decide to, proverbially, "shit where you sleep".