Protests across Los Angeles have stirred up painful memories of the city’s notorious Rodney King and Watts race riots, when African American anger over police brutality resulted in deadly clashes.
Like the current demonstrations, both the 1992 and 1965 episodes in the US west coast metropolis were triggered by police violence against black men.
The 1992 beating of King by four police officers was even filmed by a member of the public — a precursor to the viral social media footage of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis on Monday last week.
Photo: AFP
“Sadly, in many ways, ain’t nothing changed but what year it is,” University of Southern California law professor Jody David Armour said. “There’s a pervasive and persistent pattern of police brutality against black Americans that triggers massive protests.”
However, activists and academics point to key shifts, especially concerning the racial identities of those involved.
The violence in the neighborhood of Watts in 1965 was sparked when police conducted an identity check on two black men in a vehicle.
Watts, along with other mainly black areas in south Los Angeles, were the focus of violence then and in 1992.
However, they have remained quiet over the past week.
Instead, looting and brawls have raged across tourist hot spot Hollywood, and affluent areas such as Beverly Hills and Santa Monica.
Community leader John Jones III is among those pre-emptively calling for calm in Watts neighborhoods.
“People [here] are definitely following what’s going on throughout the city... They get the anger and rage,” he said.
However, “we’ve been through this a few times already... They understand the stresses of a riot, the stresses of tearing down their own neighborhood,” said Jones, who runs the East Side Riders Bike Club for local children and distributes meals.
Youths from his community are going to areas like downtown to protest, he said, but admitted that he cannot be “100 percent sure” none are involved in criminal acts like looting elsewhere.
However, with “smartphone journalism,” residents are showing “more than one face looting,” said Allissa Richardson, author of Bearing Witness While Black and an assistant professor of journalism at the university.
“Before we would have seen with the Watts riots or the Rodney King riots people of color doing most of the damage in their own community, and America kind of shaking its head,” she said.
“Now we’re seeing outside actors come in who don’t look like the victims of this actual killing — white activists coming in and destroying and defacing property,” she added.
Both the level of organization — and identity of those protesting — are also different in the Black Lives Matter era, Armour said.
“Many of the marchers you see out here on these protests over the last several days are non-black marchers,” he said, noting many young white, Asian and Latino participants.
“And so I think there’s a growing recognition ... that we do have profound problems when it comes to valuing black lives,” he added.
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