Carissimi vi mando il commento che ho scritto giorni fa cari saluti Peppino Ortoleva The most immediate precedent to what has happened in Britain last week may be found in the 1960s: the revolts in the black ghettos, from Watts (1965) to Detroit (1967). Among the similarities: in many cases the spark was furnished by police abuses, in some occasions slight, in others more serious; the riots had no clear political meaning, except a generic protest against racism; the vandalic actions which were among their most characteristic features very often damaged the black community itself more than any other subjects. In retrospect, it is difficult not to consider the black riots of the 1960s as an important part of the general black uprising which forced a change in the condition of the black people in the following years. It is obviously easier to sympathize with Rose Parks and the bus boycott she started, or with Martin Luther King; but the riots made it impossible for American politics to deny the emergency of a black question. In the last 20 years the conditions of the young people have in the Western world have worsened in a way that finds no comparison at least since the Great Depression. I consider it more surprising that (for a series of reasons that it would require very long explanations) this had not provoked till now almost any reaction, than the fact that when a reaction came it took forms certainly vandalic, destructive, even masochistic in some ways. The question is: will the British riots of August 2011 be remembered only for these aspects, or also as a sign that the condition of young generations is starting to be felt as absolutely intolerable?