Gonzales 1

Andrew Gonzales

Mr.Farlow

English 1A

October 23, 1997

Violence of a Minority

The world was shocked by the video tape showing a black motorist being beaten by

white police officers. No one had expected that a jury viewing this tape would find the four

police officers to be not guilty of using excessive force against Rodney King. The Los Angeles

Police Department was unprepared when the personal shock over the trial outcome turned into

angry and violent crowd behavior. Koreans did not seem to anticipate that the black rage

against the white establishment would be diverted into looting their grocery stores and burning

their small businesses. City officials, the police and local merchants did not expect Hispanic

immigrants, who were becoming known as the new silent majority on the Los Angeles scene,

to be found in large numbers among the participants in the rioting and looting that took place

after the verdict. In essence, the Los Angeles riots appeared to be a reenactment of the

violence that took place during the Watts riot of 1965, in that in each of the cases the causes,

economic consequences, and psychological impact of both the riots were strikingly similar.

One reason that the Los Angeles riots were unexpected was the belief that too much

had changed in the lives of urban blacks for a repeat of the 1965 Watts uprising. Certainly, Los

Angeles in 1992 had a black mayor, an interracial city council, and a reputation as a multi-

cultural melting pot. Federal efforts such as civil rights laws and affirmative action would also

seem to lessen the past racial problems of Los Angeles. Health, education and social service

programs were in place to lessen the pain of poverty and despair in the ghetto. South Central

had become a racially mixed area of Asians Hispanics and blacks. The prospects of black

residents burning and looting neighborhood stores once again seemed absurd.

The 1990s perspective on inner-city problems focused on impoverished blacks in a

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deep depression facing poverty, chronic unemployment, welfare, broken families, teen

pregnancies and school dropouts. This was a group appearing to harm itself more than others

through gangs, violence, alcohol and drug abuse. The level of despair and hopelessness would

seem to be too high to mount racial uprisings similar to the 1960's, when soaring hopes of the

Kennedy and Johnson era were disappointed (Sears, 209). The one recent exception was the

Miami riot of 1980 and, after all, Miami with its explosive combination of Cuban expatriates,

Haitian refugee, poor blacks and Southern white was viewed as an anomaly (Gooding, 53). In

retrospect, the initial surprise about the 1992 Los Angeles riots reflects a failure to realize that

the treatment a blacks and the living conditions of poor blacks had changed less than we had

thought. Meanwhile, the potential for violence was heightened by a social and economic

transformation that was occurring in and around the inner-city black neighborhoods.

There are three factors which can be noted as being the defining characteristics of the

causes of the Los Angeles riots. First, the conditions of poor, urban blacks or the "underclass"

have not improved and remain a critical source for urban uprisings (Gooding, 124). Next,

black-white tensions remain high, as race relations are in troubled state due to personal and

institutional racism, and can easily explode into violent episodes. Third, the combined effects

of foreign immigration and economic restructuring, present in many U.S. cites in the 1990's,

are leading to inter-ethnic hostilities (Gooding, 139).

First, the fact that little has improved in the conditions of poor, urban blacks is a

disturbing but a well-documented fact. That is, a large group of inner-city blacks continue to

live an isolated ghetto life of poverty, chronic unemployment, crime, poor, schools, violence

and despair. That is, despite the outlawing of racial discrimination in housing, many poor

urban blacks continue to live in highly segregated urban neighborhoods. Thus, while the

explosive growth of suburban employment was taking place in recent decades, poor urban

blacks did not benefit (Sears, 211). Moreover, this impoverished group has seen job

opportunities around them dwindle even more as economic restructuring resulted in a decline

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in city manufacturing jobs. The presence of an underclass in U.S. cities was often noted as a

causal factor in the riots in the 1960's. Unfortunately, many efforts with the goal of

fundamentally changing the living conditions of large numbers of poor, urban blacks have fallen

short (Sears, 212). As a result, desperate acts of violence and destruction take place on a daily

basis, and can escalate into events such as what occurred in Los Angeles in 1992.

Next, black-white tensions in the U.S. are still present, and race relations remain highly

charged. The blatant expressions of racism by whites are less common now than in the 1960's.

However many whites continue to feel uncomfortable about living around large numbers of

blacks, or busing white children for the goal of school integration, or supporting policies to

improve the conditions of poor urban blacks. Clearly, the economic conditions of blacks have

improved and racial discrimination has declined. Yet, many blacks continue to feel the sting of

prejudiced attitudes expressed by whites, while they may also experience mistreatment due to

their race and color and importantly, many perceive themselves as possible victims of

discrimination when they encounter the criminal justice system or other societal institutions.

Black -white tensions were potent forces in explaining the riots in the 1960's. For

instance, the 1965 Watts riot began when a crowd turned violent as a white policemen arrested

a black motorist (Gooding, 143). In a similar place and a different era, feelings of mistreatment

by whites and distrust of the criminal justice system still run high in black communities.

Today, a video of white police officers beating a black excessive force, resulted in anger,

violence and riots.

Third, inter-ethnic hostilities have recently emerged as a new and dangerous urban

trend (Cohen, 117). Many large U.S. cities in the 1980's experienced high growth rates in both

Hispanic and Asian immigrant groups while black population stagnated as the black middle

class moved to better neighborhoods, and whites were migrating to the suburbs. Cities with

the largest increases in minority population in the 1980's were Los Angeles, New York, San

Francisco and Miami (Cohen, 119). Their minority populations now include not only blacks,

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but also large numbers f Asians and Hispanics. Inter-ethnic hostilities in inner-city areas

emerged as the poor urban blacks found themselves surrounded, and in some instances

displace, by large numbers of newly arrived foreign immigrants. Hispanics, many of whom

were poor and undereducated, were now competing with blacks for scarce job opportunities,

shopping in black stores, and living in black neighborhoods. Asians, many of whom had

arrived with capital, higher education and entrepreneurial skills found their American Dream

limited to operating inner city businesses and convenience stores with poor blacks and poor

Hispanics as their customers and employees.

In sum, disadvantaged blacks were joined in their inner city neighborhoods by Hispanic

immigrants, who were also experiencing prejudice and discrimination. Asian immigrants

replaced the whites as business and store owners in economically depressed neighborhoods.

The economic restructuring of cities led to job losses, adding to the competitions and tensions.

The results were growing inter-ethnic hostilities taking the form of local conflicts and disputes

between blacks and Hispanics, blacks and Asians, and Asians and Hispanics (Cohen, 123).

Examples of the inter-ethnic hostilities have become all too common in Los Angeles. Before

the riot, a Korean merchant shot and killed a young, unarmed black girl who was thought to be

stealing. Blacks then staged a boycott of Korean grocery stores. A white judge later ruled that

the Korean grocer would not have to serve jail time for the killing. During the riot, Korean

stores and businesses were targeted for burning and looting by blacks and Hispanics. Korean

merchants responded by mounting and armed defense of their property, having assumed that

the local police were not going to protect them. The perceptions that whites are indifferent

toward the plight of inner city minorities, and that the police and courts do not ethnic tensions

escalating into personal violence property destruction.

In relation to 1965, the Watts riot occurred in three parts. First, one saw the broader

white context as characterized by both a high degree of racial isolation and a new "symbolic

racism" that had replaced the old-fashioned Jim Crow racism of the old South (Sears, 255).

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This new form of racism- symbolic racism-was described as a blend of traditional American

values such as individualism with the mild stereotyped white prejudice common to northern

whites. A second component was a collection of long-standing grievances widespread among

blacks in Los Angeles, including police brutality toward blacks, gouging by merchants,

perceptions of racial discrimination, and the negative attitudes held toward the black

community by such public leaders as the Mayor and Police Chief (Sears, 257). These

grievances tended not to divide along demographic lines among blacks; rather, they tended to

be fairly widely distributed throughout the black community. The riot itself was triggered by a

typical grievance, involving an individual black who felt maltreated by an unsympathetic

institution, largely managed and staffed by whites, following its standard operating procedures.

The third component was a theory of the new urban blacks. The great migration of

blacks from the South to Los Angeles had occurred during the 1940's and the 1950's, so the

first generation of young Los Angeles natives was coming into maturity only in the mid-1960's.

This new generation of natives were urban and Northern-socialized, better educated and more

politically sophisticated than their largely rural, Southern, and migration forebears, and more

angry, disaffected, anti-white, and proud of being black as well (Sears, 259). Through their

actions the rioters tended to reflect these last two components: they were more aggrieved than

non-rioters, and they tended to be young, Northern and urban-reared, anti-white, pro-black,

disaffected, and frustrate. These actions were interpreted as supporting the view that the

rioting had been, to some substantial degree, a racial protest against bad local conditions, as

well as reflecting more general support among the coming generation of young Northern blacks

for confronting racial inequality directly (Sears, 259).

The area of the rioting seems superficially similar: South-Central Los Angeles. To be

sure, the heart of rioting in 1965 was Watts, an area around 103rd Street and Central Avenue,

whereas in 1992, its heart was some distance to the northwest. But in both cases, the rioting

was centered in areas that had been predominantly black since World War II (Gooding,

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71).The social and economic status of the black population has not dramatically improved in

that period. Americans general were, in 1965, in the midst of the great post war economic

surge (Gooding, 75). It was and era that had finally and irrevocably integrated the European

immigrant groups of the late 19th and early 20th century into mainstream American society,

many into the middle class. Blacks were the major non-integrated group, and the most

disadvantaged (Gooding, 77-78). In 1992 this was still true . More young black men were in

prison than in college, unemployment was soaring, most black children were being raised in

female-headed household and so fourth.

At a larger level, many macroeconomics changes had impacted severely on blacks in

the area. The globalization of capital and labor had resulted in the loss of hundreds of

thousands of industrialized jobs in areas close to South Central Los Angeles in the 1970's and

1980's. As a result, unemployment and welfare dependency skyrocketed (Gooding, 91). Even

the great economic development that had taken place in Los Angeles in that period had been

concentrated downtown and in West Los Angeles, bypassing South Central. On top of all that,

the Bush and Reagan administrations had systematically dismantled many public welfare and

safety services, leaving the area with fewer resources for dealing with its serious social and

economic problems.

However, the catalytic agent in 1992 was quite different, both more noteworthy and

more sympathetic. The individual black drunk driver whose failed arrest by the CHP began in

Watts riot was little noted and quickly forgotten. In contrast, Rodney King's beating was broad

cast throughout the world, as was the jury verdict that stimulated the rioting. Opposition to the

King verdict was overwhelming in all ethnic groups; over 60% of the whites in Los Angeles

disagreed with it (Cohen, 24).

The participants in the rioting in 1965 were almost all black. Mexican-Americans were

not seen as major players in the social drama. The small sample of Mexican Americans

interviewed after the 1965 rioting received only brief summary treatment, and in any case their

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attitudes were almost identical to those of white. In 1992, by contrast, over half of those

arrested were Latino. This change paralleled the dramatic increase in Latino residents of South

Central Los Angeles, though obviously it was not compelled by that demographic change.

The targets of looting and burning in 1965 were not thoroughly documented. But in

1992 the violence was obviously quite systematically aimed at Korean merchants. No other

ethnic group came remotely close in terms of loss: 54% of those businesses that were totally

lost had been owned by Koreans, of whom the largest number sold apparel (Cohen, 24). Some

organized vigilante Korean defense forces literally fought off invaders at gunpoint, and other

Koreans simply abandoned their properties in the face of the intense hostility toward them.

Attitudes toward the authorities wee quite different in the two years. In 1965, the races

polarized quite sharply, whites supporting them and blacks, feeling they were ineffective or

worse. Blacks were overwhelmingly unfavorable toward both the white mayor and the police

chief. In 1992, all ethnic groups felt the LAPD was ineffective and were vehemently negative

toward Police Chief Gates. The mayor again polarized the races. but in the reverse direction:

this time blacks supported the mayor, who was black himself. Most important, though, blacks'

estrangement from the criminal justice system continued; most felt that it treated them unfairly.

In 1965, the dominant view in each ethnic group was that it was a black protest. In 1992, only

blacks saw it as mainly a protest; whites, Asians, and Hispanics saw it mainly as looting and

crime. Unhappily there are no day-by-day data on this point; many observers felt that it initially

look like as a racial protest of the King beating and verdict, but evolved into looting and chaos

later on (Cohen, 25).

Finally, several of the immediate effects of the riots seem to me noteworthy. First, the

King verdict seems to have increased blacks' belief in racial discrimination, greater belief that

blacks are treated unfairly, and more black alienation. Blacks much more that other ethnic

groups believe that the rioting was a racial protest . Second Asians became more pessimistic

and more negative toward blacks, and there in no evidence of a wake-up call having been

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received by whites. Blacks remained the group most often bearing the brunt of negative

stereotypes and discrimination. Third, the entire community did show a marked loss of

confidence in the police and especially Chief Gates, a loss of confidence that contributed to the

passage of a later ballot proposition cutting the power of the police chief and increasing civilian

control over the police. And fourth, the world wide news reporting capacities of CNN sped the

word of the King verdict, the Denny beating, and the rest of the events around the globe in an

instant. Yet, surprisingly there was little spread of rioting, much less than in, for example 1967

or 1968. Perhaps these effects help us to understand the modesty of the rebuilding efforts that

have occurred in the area subsequent to the riots.

The simmering racial tension provading America's inner cities boiled over into violence

in Los Angeles on April 29, 1992, when a predominantly white suburban jury acquitted four

police men of excessive force in the video taped beating on Rodney King. The verdicts

shocked both the black and white community and violence broke out. Windows were smashed,

stores looted, and fires were started in mostly black sections of South Central Los Angeles.

Fifty one people died, two-thousand one hundred more were injured, and the riots resulted in

over one billion dollars in property damage. In some respects, the Los Angeles riots may

appear to be a reenactment of the violence that took place during the Watts riot of 1965, in the

way under privileges black communities brought it upon themselves to protest their anger

against a system that had failed them. However, in each of the cases the causes, economic

consequences, and psychological impact of both the Watts riot of 1965 and the Los Angeles

riots were strikingly similar.