I don't get it

Reading this article commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Detroit riots, there are many things I get. I get anger at systematic discrimination the city's black population thought they'd left behind in the south.  I get anger at "their" blind pigs being targeted--a place where, for good or ill, many found comfort.  What I don't get is how rioters immediately started to destroy their own neighborhoods, and how that pattern was repeated nationwide.


At a certain point, absent compassion for the innocents in those neighborhoods, I would anticipate that the response to "if things don't change, we'll burn the whole d*** city down" would be "have at it."