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Ethnicity and race issues united states
Case study
Race and ethnicity issues
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Testimonial injustice as simply put is “a lack of fairness or justice” in “a formal statement testifying to someone's character and qualifications”. To add more depth to the definition, Miranda Fricker, an English philosopher in her article Testimonial injustice dwells in the explanation of this expression using several cases of social and power identity. Similarly, Anna Deavere Smith, an American actress, playwright and professor also resonates with testimonial injustice through the voices of her interviewees who experienced the riots in her play Twilight. Therefore, this paper consists of determining whether Fricker and Smith agree on the definition of “testimonial injustice”? and If so, what evidence from their writings support the claim. …show more content…
Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 is a one-woman written play and originally performed by Anna Deavere Smith about the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Starting in 1991, Rodney King is severely beaten by Los Angeles police officers, a scene recorded and visualized by millions of Americans. However, the officers were acquitted the following year since they were only enforcing the law as excused by the jury leading to the beginning of the riots. After 200 hundred interviews of people connected to the riot, their testimonies are played together to make an astounding representation of the turmoil of emotions this case rose. Social identity was indeed at the core of these testimonial injustices portrayed in the play by the many brutal identity power events which were represented in Ms. Smith's piece in addition to King’s case: the attack on the truck driver Reginald Denny by rioters, shockingly videotaped; the shooting of Latasha Harlins a 15-year old girl by a Korean grocer who believed the girl was a thief; and the second trial of the Los Angeles police officers all related to the amalgam of racial issues among black, white, Asian and Mexican Americans in Los Angeles. Indeed, race and racial prejudice were big themes of twilight where the consequences of the injustices were persistent and systematically harmed the people with less societal
The film starts with an uprising after a white storeowner kills a black teenager. This incident Highlights Prejudices. The teenager was labeled a thief because of the color of his skin and the unjustifiable murder causes racial tensions that exist as a result of the integration of the high schools.
The Los Angeles riots kicked off on the twenty-ninth day of April 1992 following the acquitting of four officers who had beaten and injured a motorist in the previous year. In the year 1991, California Highway Patrol officers detected Rodney King speeding as he drove in Los Angeles. King then led the officers on a high speed chase for the fear that the court would revoke his probation for a robbery offense he had committed (Gray, 2014). He was caught and ordered out of his car surrounded by several L.A.P.D cars and this led to a struggle between him and the police officers with some of them thinking that he was resisting arrest. One sergeant, Stacey Koon, used a Taser gun to fire at him before they beat him with their buttons mercilessly. He was struck with police batons more than fifty times and suffered eleven fractures besides other injuries. George Holiday, who was a nearby resident, videotaped the ordeal and delivered it to a local television station the following day (CNN Library, 2014). The tape sparked tension between the black Americans and the whites. The blacks saw the beating as racial discrimination against their community. However, no violence was recorded from the blacks du...
The beating of Rodney King from the Los Angeles Police Department on March 3, 1991 and the Los Angeles riots resulting from the verdict of the police officers on April 29 through May 5, 1992 are events that will never be forgotten. They both evolve around one incident, but there are two sides of ethical deviance: the LAPD and the citizens involved in the L.A. riots. The incident on March 3, 1991 is an event, which the public across the nation has never witnessed. If it weren’t for the random videotaping of the beating that night, society would never know what truly happened to Rodney King. What was even more disturbing is the mentality the LAPD displayed to the public and the details of how this mentality of policing led up to this particular incident. This type of ethical deviance is something the public has not seen since the civil rights era. Little did Chief Gates, the Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, and the LAPD know what the consequences of their actions would lead to. Moving forward in time to the verdict of those police officers being acquitted of the charges, the public sentiment spiraled into an outrage. The disbelief and shock of the citizens of Los Angeles sparked a mammoth rioting that lasted for six days. The riots led to 53 deaths and the destruction of many building. This is a true but disturbing story uncovering the ethical deviance from the LAPD and the L.A. riots. The two perspectives are from the Rodney King incident are the LAPD and the L.A. riots.
Then, in the play, Wilson looks at the unpleasant expense and widespread meanings of the violent urban environment in which numerous African Americans existed th...
This incident would have produced nothing more than another report for resisting arrest had a bystander, George Holliday, not videotaped the altercation. Holliday then released the footage to the media. LAPD Officers Lawrence Powell, Stacey Koon, Timothy Wind and Theodore Brisino were indicted and charged with assaulting King. Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberg ordered a change of venue to suburban Simi Valley, which is a predominantly white suburb of Los Angeles. All officers were subsequently acquitted by a jury comprised of 10 whites, one Hispanic and one Asian, and the African American community responded in a manner far worse than the Watts Riots of 1965. ?While the King beating was tragic, it was just the trigger that released the rage of a community in economic strife and a police department in serious dec...
On the night of August 11, 1965 the Watts community of Los Angeles County went up in flames. A riot broke out and lasted until the seventeenth of August. After residents witnessed a Los Angeles police officer using excessive force while arresting an African American male. Along with this male, the police officers also arrested his brother and mother. Twenty-seven years later in 1992 a riot known as both the Rodney King riots and the LA riots broke out. Both share the similar circumstances as to why the riots started. Before each riot there was some kind of tension between police officers and the African American people of Los Angeles. In both cases African Americans were still dealing with high unemployment rates, substandard housing, and inadequate schools. Add these three problems with policemen having a heavy hand and a riot will happen. Many of the primary sources I will you in this analysis for the Watts and the LA riots can be found in newspaper articles written at the time of these events. First-hand accounts from people living during the riots are also used.
The Los Angeles riots were a release of pressure that had build up from the innocent charging of Officer Laurence M. Powell and other Police officers that "Used excessive force" on Rodney King on March 3, 1991, but that was not the only reason.(8) In the words of a singer singing about the riots "They said it was for the black man, they said it was for the Mexican, but not for the white man, but if you look at the streets it wasn't about Rodney King, It's bout this f****d up situation and the f****n' police."(9) Did the riots even have anything to do with King? Was King a minor reason for this to happen, or did King put the level of pressure right over the top? Whatever way you see it, the fact is that on April 29, 1992, anarchy was set free in Los Angeles and before the papers could write about the happenings in this city of angels, the writing on the walls could tell it all.
The riots of 1992 in Los Angeles was a devastating situation which affected the community. Anna Deavere Smith was determined to tell the story about the LA Riots, in her book Twilight: Los Angeles, from the point of view of individuals who were affected. Anna Deavere Smith interviewed many individuals asking about how they experienced the 1992 LA Riots.
Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz states how schools that claim they are following restorative approaches through their policies in discipline are not necessarily restorative, but have enough flexibility to allow a restorative response.
This is a verse of lyrics from a popular song, written by Sublime, shortly after the Rodney King verdicts, and ensuing riots in Los Angeles. These words would portray the streets of Los Angeles around midnight on the night of April 29, 1992. The people of Los Angeles become enraged over a jury verdict just hours before. Rodney King, a middle-aged African-American had been severely beaten by four Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers in March, and the four officers had just been found not guilty, igniting the blacks in Los Angeles into a revenged riot against the city and its system.
For many year humans have been trying to fight against discrimination in their communities, but it's an uphill battle that doesn’t seem like it’s been fully wiped out yet in our society. Discrimination and Prejudice has been a key issue that has affected many people around the world. In the movie that we saw in class, “My Cousin Vinny” (1992) it focused on these key issues of prejudice, discrimination, stereotypes and even eye witness testimonies. In the movie it focuses on these key issues while bringing a little humor to the viewers. In this paper I will be going into more detail of how this movie really brought to light these key issues.
The first social issue portrayed through the film is racial inequality. The audience witnesses the inequality in the film when justice is not properly served to the police officer who executed Oscar Grant. As shown through the film, the ind...
Through the film “In the Heat of the Night” racial tensions are high, but one character, the Chief of Police, Gillespie overcomes racial discrimination to solve a murder. The attitudes that he portrays in the film help us understand the challenges in changing attitudes of Southern white town towards the African Americans living there.
During the process of building the multimedia presentation about the topic “Wrongful Judicial Treatment” last weeks, were challenging and teachable for me. while I was searching for material related to this assignment and listening some protest songs such as “They don’t care about us” (Jackson), “Glory” (Legend), “Freedom” (Beyoncé) that are related to this topic. Also while I navigated through the internet reading some history about racism and cases about police brutality, watching the news where it illustrates that this topic is a day by day issue that is gaining strength in this complex world. All of these recollected knowledge has awaking me up about this topic because in the middle of living my busy life, and
This movie takes place in Los Angeles and is about racial conflicts within a group of people which occur in a series of events. Since there are a wide variety of characters in this movie, it can be confusing to the viewer. In the plot, Graham is an African-American detective whose younger brother is a criminal. His mother cares more about his brother than Graham and she wants Graham to bring his brother back home, which in turn hurts Graham. Graham?s partner Ria is a Hispanic woman who comes to find that her and Graham?s ethnicities conflict when she had sex with him. Rick is the Los Angeles district attorney who is also op...