The Media’s Blind Spot: Why ‘Teen Takeovers’ Are Really About Race

The long Labor Day weekend is almost here, and police in many cities are preparing for what has become a grim summer ritual: the teen takeover. These events—organized on social media, erupting in crowded downtown areas—have escalated into large-scale brawls involving fists, knives, and guns. Bystanders and officers get hurt. Businesses get damaged. And on the national news, commentators wring their hands over a familiar phrase: “these kinds of takeovers have become all too common.”

But according to a new commentary by Jeffrey Folks at American Thinker, there is something those same commentators are leaving out. Something big. Something the mainstream media, in his view, simply do not want to tell you.

The takeovers, Folks argues, are largely—though not entirely—Black teen takeovers. And he says the media’s refusal to say so outright is not an oversight. It is a choice with real consequences.

What the footage shows

Folks points to a string of high-profile incidents this summer, starting with the Wisconsin State Fair in Milwaukee. The footage aired nationally, and the coverage focused on the chaos. What wasn’t said, he notes, is that the crowds shown were overwhelmingly Black—including women punching, kicking, and striking a police officer.

He cites Fox News reporting that “malls, beaches, and restaurants become battlefields,” with “massive crowds of juveniles overwhelm[ing] public spaces” in New Jersey, Georgia, Wisconsin, Detroit, and beyond. One of the most violent incidents occurred at a Washington, D.C. Chipotle, where a group of teens entered and began fighting and throwing chairs. Hundreds more brawled outside in the streets. Folks observes that all of the teens visible in the video appeared to be Black—a detail, he says, that went unmentioned by every commentator.

The pattern repeats. At a shopping mall in Glendale, Wisconsin, body cam footage showed police battling Black teens and teens striking officers. At the Bayshore Mall takeover, dozens of Black teens were seen brawling—a small slice of a larger crowd organized on social media. Folks draws attention to the demographics: Glendale is 65 percent white and only 16 percent Black. Yet the participants in the takeover were overwhelmingly Black. “Whites constitute 65 percent of Glendale’s population,” he writes, “but by and large they are not out there rampaging and causing harm.”

In Chicago, hundreds of teens flocked to the Loop for fighting and looting. The footage, again, showed mostly Black participants. In Charlotte, North Carolina, more than 40 takeovers have occurred this summer, with most of those in the videos Folks reviewed being Black. Charlotte’s population is 33 percent Black. Chicago’s is 28 percent. At Chicago’s 57th St. Beach, an estimated 400 to 500 teens gathered—again, largely Black, as visible in video of the event.

The question Folks keeps returning to is simple: why?

A double standard in reporting

The answer he offers is not about demographics. It’s about accountability—or the lack of it.

Folks points out that the media will readily identify race when it suits the narrative. He cites the Tybee Island, South Carolina, mêlée, where some of those involved were explicitly described as white female teens. Yet in incident after incident involving Black teens, the racial description is conspicuously absent from coverage.

That asymmetry, he argues, sends a message. “Society refuses to face the facts and hold them accountable because they are black.” And when the chance of arrest is almost nil, he adds, there is little deterrent. In all of the takeovers he reviewed, fewer than a dozen participants were arrested.

This is not a problem that will solve itself with euphemism, Folks insists. “It would be better, for the public at large and for participants in the takeovers themselves, to identify the problem exactly as it is: not a problem with ‘teen’ takeovers, but with ‘black teen’ takeovers.” Only by naming the problem, he says, can we move toward solutions.

What solutions look like

Folks does not stop at diagnosis. He proposes a concrete set of responses: arrests for all participants, longer sentences, and what he calls “attempts at re-education.” He cites Florida Lt. Gov. Jay Collins on the need for parents to take responsibility for educating their children and tracking their whereabouts. He also suggests that curfews in many cities, including Chicago, are not early enough and are not strictly enforced. If young people were kept off the streets to begin with, he argues, there would be far fewer takeovers.

Some cities are trying after-hours activities for teens. Folks acknowledges the effort but notes it has not ended the takeovers. In major cities this summer, they’ve occurred at multiple locations every weekend.

He frames the stakes in moral terms. “Conservatives care about the well-being of all persons, and especially about the well-being of our youth,” he writes. “In every teen takeover, young people are injured and sometimes killed. Above all, conservatives value human life, and the lives of our young, white and black, are put at risk every time a takeover occurs.”

A deeper cultural critique

At its core, Folks says, the problem is not about past discrimination. It’s about how Black teens—especially males—are being brought up today, and a society that hesitates to correct them when necessary. He dismisses the argument that difficult circumstances explain the behavior, noting that millions of whites grew up in hardship without rampaging through shopping malls. He also rejects the notion that historical injustices like slavery and Jim Crow should lead modern-day Black youths to be excused for lawlessness, calling it a sort of “non-monetary reparations.”

In his view, Black American teens today have never experienced discrimination. “If anything,” he writes, “they receive preference in schooling and hiring and can look forward to future promotions ahead of whites.”

The root cause, he concludes, is “society’s refusal to hold blacks to the same standards as whites.” Until that changes, he says, the takeovers and the violence will continue.

“Now more than ever, the ability to speak our minds is crucial to the republic we cherish,” he adds—a reminder that this essay is, above all, an argument for candor, uncomfortable as it may be.

Whether one agrees with Folks’ framing or finds it deeply problematic, his piece raises a question that the coverage itself has largely avoided: when the footage is this clear, why is the language so careful?

Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/08/the-big-secret-about-teen-takeovers/