3 decades since the LA Riots

 Today is the 3-decade anniversary of the infamous LA Riots of 1992.

The riots were in response to the Not Guilty verdicts given to 4 European-American officers who brutally beat Rodney King, an African-American man who was suspected of drunk driving.

I wrote a blog post "2 decades since the LA riots" back in 2012.

http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2012/04/2-decades-since-la-riots.html

I really don't want to spend too much time repeating what I blogged back in 2012 since much of the facts about the incident haven't changed since then.

But I do want to note that some of my predictions from 2012 were very naive in retrospect.

At the time (2012), there haven't been riots in recent years. Barack Obama was president.  Even though I knew that his presidency didn't mean "racism is over forever", I still thought we made enough progress that the days of mass riots are over

The following years proved me wrong big time, especially with the riots that occurred in Ferguson (2013) and Baltimore (2015)

I blogged about those 2 incidents 

https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2014/08/ferguson-police-and-race.html

https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2015/05/thoughts-on-baltimore-crisis.html

And of course, in 2020, was the racial uprising that made the 1992 LA riots small in comparison. That would be the nationwide reaction to the police-induced death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

I blogged about it at https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-reactions-to-george-floyds-death.html

Back in 2012, I was naive about human nature (though I wouldn't admit it back then). I thought we were making enough progress to not have a repeat of LA 1992.

But then again, I thought we made so much progress that the USA wouldn't elect an openly racist demagogue like Donald Trump. 2016 proved me wrong.

It's like the saying "2 steps forward, 10 steps back".

And regardless of whoever is president (even if Kamala Harris becomes president in 2024), the police will still over-react to things. And the police unions will still be in fierce defense of police officers who did the wrong things.  And police departments still won't be able to screen out everyone who could cause severe problems on the job. And police officers will still be too scared to report on fellow officers who do the wrong thing. (After all, the blue wall of silence is one of the most effective No Snitching programs ever).

And regardless of whoever is president, there'll still be people who lash out against injustice in destructive ways. This is magnified when there are a lot of people who don't have to report to work the next day.  (LA in 1992 was feeling the worst effects of a recession; the George Floyd incident in 2020 occurred when the nation was slowly coming out of the initial coronavirus lockdown).  This is not to excuse looters or to disparage the safety net, it's just that if you have to report to work the next day, you're less likely to join the destructive mobs burning and looting stuff the night before.  

Inequality isn't going to end soon.  Having more people of African ancestries in political power in the USA isn't going to magically wipe out all the inequalities created by 400 years of oppression.  Moving people up the economic ladder doesn't happen overnight, this takes decades. And even if more African-Americans move up the economic ladder, that wouldn't be enough to erase the racism that exists among the European-American community. In fact, I think success breeds resentment from others. Some European-Americans feel left behind and some do resent those of other races who succeed above them. Some even join the police to take out their frustrations.

And the cycle continues

I don't have all the answers. This blog post is not about the answers.

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A few articles that I found on LA Riots 3 decades later

Jeong Park. “L.A. Riots Are Remembered 30 Years Later with Hope and Pessimism.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, April 29, 2022.  https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-04-29/la-riot-30th-anniversary-day-of-coverage. 

 Randy Vasquez. “30 Years Ago, the LA Riots Changed the Lives of These 6 People.” Bluzz.  April 29, 2022. https://bluzz.org/30-years-ago-the-la-riots-changed-the-lives-of-these-6-people-3019890.html

Hal Eisner “LA Riots: Remembering 'Saigu' 30 Years Later.” FOX 11 Los Angeles.  April 29, 2022. https://www.foxla.com/news/la-riots-remembering-saigu.

“Van Jones: The LA Riots Changed America. They Also Changed Me.” CNN. April 28, 2022.  https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/28/opinions/race-la-riots-30-years-unrest-jones/index.html.

Lived Experiences

 Yes, I definitely encourage people to write and talk about their lived experiences. 

Yes, I definitely encourage people to share experiences that may differ from the majority of the society they live in.

After all, I've been sharing my lived experiences on my blog for 19 years (next year is my Big Two-O), and have been posting YouTube videos about lived experiences for 9 years (next year is also my Big One-0). I definitely encourage others to do the same.

However, the words "lived experience" have also been used by supposedly "woke" fanatics who use that term to deter disagreement from those who look different from them. 

They scream if anyone who is not (fill in blank with a racial or gender identity) even dares mention anything related to  (fill in blank with a racial or gender identity).

As if I should only be writing about things that pertain to those who are of Mexican/Puerto-Rican/German/Portuguese/Spanish ancestries who live in Hawaii?

Screw that!

I can write about whatever I feel like! 

In fact, I'll go as far as saying .... Well-rounded individuals engage in conversations about many things, even about things that have NOTHING to do with their lived experiences.

There's MUCH MORE TO LIFE than only talking about things related to your lived experience.

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Not only should this blog post be essential reading, so is this article from the New York Times written by Pamela Paul, titled "The Limits of ‘Lived Experience’"

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/opinion/lived-experience-empathy-culture.html

here are some classic excerpts

Let’s make it personal: Am I, as a new columnist for The Times, allowed to weigh in on anything other than a narrow sliver of Gen X white woman concerns?

and this

People can successfully project themselves into the lives of others. That is what art is meant to do — cross boundaries, engender empathy with other people, bridge the differences between author and reader, one human and another.

Taken to its logical conclusion, the belief that “lived experience” trumps all other considerations would lead to a world in which we would create stories only about people like ourselves, in stories to be illustrated by people who looked like ourselves, to be reviewed and read only by people who resembled ourselves. If we all wrote only from our personal experience, our films, performances and literature would be reduced to memoir and transcription.

What an impoverished culture that would be.

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Yes to all that! 

Yes to writing about Japanese things even if you're not Japanese.

Yes to writing about Irish things even if you're not Irish.

And yes to writing about the tiny Latin American community in Hawaii even if you don't share my ancestral backgrounds. 

Now, someone might say "those who don't have your experience could write something inaccurate about you and those like you".

If someone writes inaccurate things about me, I'll just respond by telling what is inaccurate and what is accurate. 

But I'm not going to be like "you're different from me, so don't write about things coming from people like me".

I'm huge on integration. The world needs more integration. 

We will NEVER have peace in this world if everyone is told "stick with your own kind". 

Do you want to know what "my own kind" is? It is ANYBODY of ANY BACKGROUND who shares my interests, and who wants to maximize liberty and justice in this world.

After all, we're only a few days from the 30th anniversary of when Rodney King pleaded to the word "can we all just get along?"

While Rodney King is no longer with us on Earth, the spirit of his worlds shall never perish from the Earth. 

It's time we start embracing his spirit!

 We need to stop segregating ourselves and start integrating with each other!