I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to get along, as Rodney King pleaded.
I was listening to NPR this morning as I drove around on some errands, and the
topic was a look back at the Los Angeles riots of 1992, following the acquittal
of the LAPD officers. I didn’t get to hear the whole program, but a couple of
callers seemed reasonable and offered some interesting insights. One however
stuck in my mind. This was from a 35 year old guy who was close enough to the
action to have smoke coming in his windows.
His reaction to the violence was initially empathic. He felt that the anger
being vented was well-founded and there were unresolved issues in the community,
in turn creating tensions which erupted when the verdict was announced. But his
empathy turned to frustration and anger when, as he put it, the leaders of the
community that was obviously angry and seeking redress for long-standing
problems did nothing to rein in or discipline their community. His empathy gave
way to anger and for the first time, he found himself using the N word in his
thoughts. His openmindedness and tolerance were thrown back in his face,
essentially, and he began to objectify a whole group of people, based on the
very visible actions of a few.
I was digesting that and thinking about how that could happen — it seemed quite
plausible, given the state of race relations today — when another caller made
it clear that anyone who expressed that viewpoint was, is, and would always be a
racist. He saw no problem with what he called the uprising and in fact,
expressed regret that the riot didn’t make its way out to Simi Valley and burn
it down. At that point, I switched stations: I had reached my RDA of anger.
But I came away from the conversation with questions.
If this was an uprising, what was the specific cause and who were the leaders who could sit at a
table and represent the rioters?
How does property violence solve anything? The Boston Tea Party was a clearly defined
statement: burning down Korean groceries that exist to service the community that is
destroying them is not so well-defined.
It was clear that the caller who defended the riots was living in a polarized world of Us
vs Them, and his Us included the rioters while Them was white people. He also had objectified a
whole group of people, but I don’t know if he did it himself or if it’s a received idea.
Is this the mindset for which MLK gave his life? If he were to speak today could he get an audience?
Would he be heard over the divisive rantings of whomever this person regards as a leader?
Addendum:
So I have thought some more about this. In reading this over, I see a person representing a group of unfairly treated people, discriminated against for their ethicity, demonizing or otherwise de-personalizing another group in the same way. For one of the former group to call someone of the latter a racist and then verbally attack the group, referring to them by their ethnicity, seems a tad hypocritical. Anyone who takes that position is a racist by definition, so whence comes the moral authority to attack what they perceive as racism against themselves?
It’s troubling indeed to think how far apart we must be when all we have in common is mutual hatred and mistrust.
As the saying goes, ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” I looked up the quote on Google to make sure I had the wording right and found a page of similar ideas.
I especially liked this one by Mary Wollstonecraft: “No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.” What else explains destroying the work of shopkeepers who chose your neighborhood as the one they wanted to serve? The irony is, lack of businesses, services, and investment is what makes these neighborhoods so risky. I don’t expect deeply meditated political strategy from an angry mob, but again, where were the leaders who could quell the violence and reassure the business community that these areas are safe and potentially valuable markets?