The Los Angeles Riots


We all have our own particular images of the riots in Los Angeles but the one that keeps playing over and over so horrifyingly in my mind is of the truck driver dragged from his truck, beaten, on his hands and knees, and then, from the right, we see a young man come in and smash something over the truck driver's head, the truck driver collapses and the young black man does a joyful little jig and dances off, to the left.

This brief flurry of violence tells a story of hundreds of years and if we do not interpret it correctly we are never going to heal in this country. A picture is worth a thousand words, a gesture worth a thousand pictures. Frankly, I am tired of the lies and platitudes emanating from pulpits, auditoriums and capitals. Racism is rampant in America. The plague of AIDS pales before the virulence of (racial) prejudice. White people, especially in those moments when they have to drive through Oakland, Richmond and Watts, scorn the Blacks for their penury, while Black people, on the other hand, every waking moment of their lives, inarticulate, jobless, crime weary, have every reason imaginable to despise us whites for our lawns and collegial comforts.

If we fail to understand why this is so, then please spare me your platitudes of peace and reconciliation Rodney King, George Bush or anyone else. Yes of course, what Rodney King said was philosophically beautiful and exactly the message White America would want to hear from Black America. We can still beat on the Blacks and they will still ask for forgiveness. This is like a parent who has beaten the hell out of his kid and then the kid turns around and asks the parent to forgive him. Oh, isn’t everybody happy now!

We are living in a very sick society. Who can deny, much less forget that we saw four men beat another man mercilessly. There it was on CNN television for the whole world to see. What kind of justice exists when these four men are then acquitted of any crime whatsoever? In school we read about the Nazis and the Jews. We are taught the horror of the Holocaust. We are appalled at what the Nazis did to the Jews, the assumption being, I suppose, that if we are taught these things and appropriately disgusted then we will not allow them to happen again.

What are the figures for Black people in America? 40 to 50 percent unemployment? Eighty-five percent of black children are raised in single-family homes. Sixty percent of black males in Los Angeles County have "done time". Drugs are four times as prevalent among Black as Whites. One in a hundred Blacks goes to college compared to one in seven Whites. Infant mortality is twice as high among Blacks as Whites. This is not even a semblance of equality. I mean, when Rodney King says, "let’s get together" I want to cry for his (ignorant) innocence. When George Bush says we must heal I am disgusted by his diffidence. I am ashamed to be an American. What have I to be proud of here anymore? The beautiful history I learned when I was a child, the wisdom of Jefferson and Lincoln, the hope of peace of Woodrow Wilson, the New Deal of Roosevelt, the vigor of Kennedy -- all that has slowly eroded since Viet Nam, through twelve years of Conservative indifference to the fundamental problems in this country.

I am sick and tired of hearing that we must get together. Unequal people cannot get together; one will always know he is inferior and the other will always know he is better. Until we Whites decide to make amends once and for all, amends for all the centuries of slavery and inequality, and make things equal, then there will be no meaningful "getting together". Of course, I want more than anything to get together, to be friends, to work together, to live together, love together -- but only as equals. Again, spare me the bullshit about how awful this burning and violence is when I know there are thousands and thousands of Black schools in this country without sufficient books, teachers, desks, Bunsen burners or computers. Spare me your anguish for that poor truck driver unless you can prove to me that the people of the United States and the United States Government really care enough to invest the billions of dollars necessary to bring about total, absolute, unequivocal equality among all people in this country; as in educational parity, health care, housing, dignity and equal opportunities for the "pursuit of happiness." Please spare me the hypocrisy of "togetherness" because I am tired of the lies and I wonder if I am the only white person in America who understands the violence, who thinks to himself, that if I were Black I too would be out in the streets with a vengeance wrought from generations of servitude, condescension, indifference and hate.