The Watts Riots got started fifty years ago today. What began as a minor DWI arrest snowballed into several days of rioting.
The LAPD had a long track record of brutality-based policing when it came to minorities. It was further exacerbated by the LAPD's moves to reduce corruption. The brass's bright idea was to isolate police officers from the population by means of eliminating almost all foot patrols. The LAPD also led the way in militarization of the police forces.
It paid off with the Watts Riots. And it has taken this country almost fifty years to face up to any of that.
Update: Ayup.
A blog by a "sucker" and a "loser" who served her country in the Navy.
If you're one of the Covidiots who believe that COVID-19 is "just the flu",
that the 2020 election was stolen, or
especially if you supported the 1/6/21 insurrection,
leave now.
Slava Ukraini!
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
4 comments:
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Personally, I blame the rioters, then and now.
ReplyDeleteAnd the same dynamic is playing out in Ferguson right now.
ReplyDeleteRegarding blaming the rioters, when you've been beaten, abused, shut out of the American dream, enslaved in all but name, what is there to lose by rioting? Which just goes to show why right-wing racist bullshit is so dangerous to America. The right wing operates by turning America into "us" (real people) and "them" (untermenschen, NOT real people), where it's okay to treat "them" like second class citizens, deny them jobs based on their membership in the untermenschen group, etc. The problem is that people don't volunteer for the job of being untermenschen. Well, there was one group who did, but they made the mistake of thinking that the self-proclaimed ubermenschen were civilized and surely wouldn't do something so crass as create death camps... a mistake that Americans, a violent and unruly lot, have never made.
In short, if you created second class citizens, don't be surprised that there are riots. Because Americans don't play that. Never have, never will. You're going to be waiting a long, long time if you expect Americans to be good little step'n'fetchits when they're made into second-class citizens.
So in Missouri, the legislature passed a law that kids in failing schools can transfer out. The failing school has to pay for that, of course, which drives them deeper into the hole, but that's not my point.
ReplyDeleteWhat happened with one high school (Normandy H.S., St. Louis) was that the kids who transferred out found out, very fast, what they had been denied. Kids who had been at or near the top of their class were struggling because Normandy was little more than a warehouse for kids, a way to keep them off the streets. Because the school's physical plant sucked, the teachers were overwhelmed and underpaid, there were hardly any computer facilities, the books were old, etc., etc., etc.
The kids now know all that. So does the world. But do you think anything's changed?
Most places are like St. Louis. The black folk live in one area, the white folk in another, the kids go to separate schools which are nowhere near equal. And nobody in Jefferson City or any other state capitol gives a damn.
Nothing's changed.
In a way it's even worse today, because we've exported all the low-end jobs to China or to illegals (who can't file OSHA complaints or sue for wage violations because they are, duh, ILLEGAL). Or replaced them with technology, like the modern hydraulic-claw trash trucks that replace a half dozen men who used to dump trash cans into trash trucks with one piece of technology. At least back in the 1960's a black man could hope for a job dumping trash cans into trash trucks or doing manual labor in the farm fields if he couldn't do anything else. Today... not so much. Those jobs are gone.
ReplyDelete