The documentary “Riot on the Streets” presented a multifaceted and complex demonstration of anger and frustration from different ethnic and racial groups and its relation to the power institutions. The 1992 Rodney King Riots, also referred to as the L.A Race Riots, unearthed the frustrations that existed in Los Angeles with the justice system. Regarding the Asian population and specifically the Korean, the docudrama exposed the vulnerability of the community as immigrants and developed a narrative that had been ignored at the time of the event. Additionally, the docudrama emphasized a change in mentality and perspective reactionary to the riots and the losses Koreans had. Modeled and paralleled with the bendability of 24 karat gold, Koreans …show more content…
With the city changing demographically, many members of the African American community saw Korean migration as an invasion. From the black perspective, Korean migrants could be described as rude and disrespectful, as outsiders. Both representations lacked the factor of self-determination until 1992. Prior to 1992, white America and the black community had presented Korean and Asian citizens as a “model minority” or as undesirable- this evident by the depictions of rapper Ice Cube and film maker Spike Lee. The article titled “Violence and trauma as constitutive elements in Korean American racial identity formation” by Rose Kim points out that it wasn’t until after the violence that Koreans and other Asian groups felt the need and sought after the opportunity to forge their own image and present themselves to America. She states that “this narrative emerged belatedly in response to the violence and marked a significant shift in the collective consciousness of Korean Americans” (2010). The apparent distinction and divide among neighboring ethnic groups was due to the different demographic characteristics of the Korean immigrants residing in L.A. Korean migrants which were not similar to other minorities, such as African Americans and Latinos. This being in the sense that their previous socioeconomic standing was not parallel to the lower class in America. Most of them had high levels of education and specialized careers. As they were part of the Korean upper class, they didn’t see themselves as minorities. With their arrival came the assimilation into the American social and racial hierarchy- they saw their progress trumped by language barriers and by the fact that they were now considered a minority. According to Angelo Oh’s “An Issue of Time and
In May of 1992, performer and dramatist Anna Deavere Smith was appointed to compose a one-lady execution piece about the encounters, sentiments, and pressures that added to and were exacerbated by the 1992 Los Angeles riots. For her work, Smith met more than 200 inhabitants of Los Angeles amid the season of the uproar. Her script comprises totally of the genuine expressions of individuals from the Los Angeles group as they ponder their encounters encompassing the Los Angeles riots. As Smith depicted in the prologue to her play, Twilight, which she later distributed as a book, "I am first searching for the humanness inside the issues, or the crises." She strived to keep up a wide assortment of points of view, talking individuals from all kinds of different backgrounds:
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.
While Spike Lee and Delacroix's position is shared amongst many in other professions, the issue of racial identity is vastly more complex within the entertainment industry, and beyond what Stubblefield covers within a couple of paragraphs. A black individual working in entertainment must not only deal with the expectations of how a famous person should act, but also navigate the expectations of being a representative of black culture, what different demographics want the black individual to represent, what executives want the individual to represent, and the long-term consequences their roles will have on society. Furthermore, they receive public judgment through social media platforms on how well they conform to the expectations. Additionally, there still exists a catch-22 where a famous black individual will be stigmatized in the media because writers and executives either use subtle or blatant stereotypes for entertainment purposes. This, in turn, leads to stereotypes being further reinforced on both individuals and the overall
What were the causes of the prison riots in the 1990`s and how effective was the government response?
...silenced in this country, in order to have voice and be visible in society, one must strive to be a white American. They feel the need to embody and assimilate to whiteness because the white race has a voice and is seen, rather than silenced and unseen, in society. They are privileged with the freedom of not having to cope with the notion of being marked, silent, and unseen in society. This creates pressures for Asian Americans and immigrants to suppress their own cultural identities and assimilate to whiteness in an attempt to potentially be able to prosper and make a life for them in America. Asian Americans feel as though being who they truly are and express their unique cultural identities will alienate themselves even more than they already are.
Do the Right Thing should be acknowledged as one of the top one hundred films in the AFI because Spike Lee was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Do the Right Thing and Danny Aiello was nominated for Best Actor for Do the Right Thing. The readers of this essay should not have only learned about Do the Right Thing, but they should have also learned that you have to confront injustices. There are a lot of racial injustices in the world today. For example, the shootings of LaQuan McDonald and Michael Brown. And how racial injustices are in court cases where black men are guilty for murders they did not commit. This essay is not only about the movie, but also readers should confront injustices and say that its wrong. While there is no controversy for this essay, let’s “[after last night's riot] Hope the block is still standing” (Do the Right
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.
Rodney King Beating and Riots. CNN documentary (Full length). (2011, March 6). YouTube. Available at:
The United States of America is the place of opportunity and fortune. “Many immigrants hoped to achieve this in the United States and similar to other immigrants many people from the Asian Pacific region hoped to make their fortune. They planned to either return to their homelands or build a home in their new country (Spring, 2013).” For this reason, life became very complicated for these people. They faced many challenges in this new country, such as: classifying them in terms of race and ethnicity, denying them the right to become naturalized citizens, and rejecting them the right of equal educational opportunities within the school systems. “This combination of racism and economic exploitation resulted in the educational policies to deny Asians schooling or provide them with segregated schooling (Spring, 2013).”This was not the country of opportunity and fortune as many believed. It was the country of struggle and hardship. Similarly, like many other immigrants, Asian Americans had the determination to overcome these obstacles that they faced to prove that the United States was indeed their home too.
In 1982 Vincent Chin, a twenty-seven-year-old Chinese-American, was killed in a race-motivated crime in Detroit by two white autoworkers. His killers, Robert Ebens and Michael Nitz, mistook him as being Japanese, believing that it was Japanese peoples fault for the state of the auto-industry and that they were laid off work. After the unexpected conviction of fining Ebens and Nitz, three thousand dollars and serving three years probation, a pan-ethnic Asian American movement began to combat the social injustice, institutional racism, and oppression felt by Asian-American communities in America (Chin & Lam, 2009). To understand and make sense of what occurred during this period, I will analyze Chin’s case through using the intersectional model,
Asian-American rapper isn’t downplaying his heritage. The Wichita Eagle. Retrieved December 15, 2004, from http://www.cdl http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/entertainment/10306249.htm Wu, F. H. (2002). The 'Secondary' Yellow: race in America beyond black and white. New York: Basic Books.
Whenever people discuss race relations today and the effect of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, they remember the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was and continues to be one of the most i...
For those Asian Americans who make known their discontent with the injustice and discrimination that they feel, in the white culture, this translates to attacking American superiority and initiating insecurities. For Mura, a writer who dared to question why an Asian American was not allowed to audition for an Asian American role, his punishment was “the ostracism and demonization that ensued. In essence, he was shunned” (Hongo 4) by the white people who could not believe that he would attack their superior American ways. According to writers such as Frank Chin and the rest of the “Aiiieeeee!” group, the Americans have dictated Asian culture and created a perception as “nice and quiet” (Chin 1972, 18), “mama’s boys and crybabies” without “a man in all [the] males.” (Chin 1972, 24). This has become the belief of the proceeding generations of Asian Americans and therefore manifested these stereotypes.
The sun was shining down upon a small middle school in the country side as I stepped out of my mom’s car and saw groups of children staring at me, confused over why I had come to Don Juan Middle School – a place where there were no Asians at all. “What is your name?” someone asked with an angelic smile. “Yes!” I responded foolishly. Suddenly, I heard a cacophony of mocking laughter as everyone kept moving away from me. When the bell rang, I stopped and shed tears. During that lunch, I started to reflect on life, contemplating when I was in Korea. Before I had moved to the U.S., I was a somewhat naïve boy who lived in Bundang, a small city in Korea. Being constantly surrounded by numerous concrete buildings, I found no inspiration and motivation to look for my dream and the purpose of life. However, when I came to America, I valued new multicultural education and diverse campuses. I felt obliged to find my own identity and my fascination with languages and cultures made me aspire to become a diplomat. I strengthened my own identity as a Korean-American by having strong roots in my native culture while being open-minded to unfamiliar cultures. Likewise, two artists, Hetain Patel and Elif Shafak, attempted to overcome cultural barriers and sought to become a bridge among people from different backgrounds. The ability to accept cultural differences and to have a wider perspective regardless of one's language and appearance is essential for me to become a cultural bridge as a diplomat.