LA Riots
Believe it or not, Los Angeles was just waiting for an event like the Rodney King verdict to explode. All that was needed was that one spark to ignite the anger in the citizens of South Central and cause the area to explode. One of the recent and most significant riots took place on the streets of Los Angeles on April 29, 1992. The case was controversial because Rodney King was a black male beaten with excessive force by four white Los Angeles police officers. The not guilty verdict of the four officers may have been the initial cause, but the riots were not about Rodney King and the issue of racism; rather they were more about the class tension between poor and rich. The riots were due to all the underlying festering rage that had been building up in the residents of Los Angeles and the disbelief that police, even when caught on tape, could get away with such brutality. Although many people believe the riots were caused solely by the King verdict, in reality, these widespread brutal actions were a justified protest to the social injustice and economic inequality in which people live. It was obvious that the media focused on the issue of discrimination and portrayed the riots as black rage on the streets due to the not guilty
It is this fact that a large percent of LA citizens: mostly minorities, has their own stories of police brutality and injustice in the system that caused such uproar after the Rodney King verdict. People identified with Rodney King's struggle as a minority against the LA police force. The civil rights activists said, "the log shows that LAPD offers apply a different set of standards when dealing with minorities" (Serrano). It was this problem over the years that had been festering in minorities and lower income areas that stood behind the "No Justice, No Peace" outcry of LA people and rioters. Thus, the injustice system within the LAPD must be changed if we are to move on and avoid such tragedy to happen again in the future. At the same time, the city's minorities are engaged in racial warfare. Blacks and whites, other minorities and whites have engaged in conflict, yet blacks and Koreans have drawn the largest battle lines. Divisions with whites rise out of the fact that Blacks in LA do not like the image that they are given through the media and this is only one of the reasons that due to our system of inequality. Tensions between Koreans and blacks had been building for years before the King verdict until they finally exploded. One of the them was the Latasha Harlins case: A black teenager girl named Harlins who was a honor student at local high school and she was shot in the back of the head by a Korean shopkeeper because of an quarrel of a carton of orange juice. Controversially, the shopkeeper received only a six month suspended sentence and was ordered to do six months of community services (Oliver, Johnson and Farrell 121). Again, just another verdict that led and worsened the conflict between the Koreans and Blacks. There were countless acts of violence committed between Koreans and blacks that ranged from not only looting and burning of Korean stores but to gun battles and shootings. Thus, the riots arose out of the f
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Approximate Word count = 1309
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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