Abstract
Mainstream media towards the latter of the 20th century portrayed Los Angeles as an ethnically diverse city. However, non-white communities, especially Black and Hispanic members, were discriminated and excessive force were used against them by the police. The total acquittal of three of the four officers who beat Rodney King while arresting him served as the catalyst for the social unrest that followed, now known as the 1992 Los Angeles Rebellions. For six days after the verdict, 54 people were killed, at least 2000 injured, economic damages were estimated at about $800 million to $1 billion, and in addition to the local police force, the California National Guard, the Army, and the Marines were called in to stop the protests. Although popular media justified the change of venue for the trial from the Los Angeles County due to bias from the news coverage of the arrest, they also omitted key details such as the conservative, police-supporting, and nullifying makeup of the juries. This analysis aims to uncover and emphasize silenced narratives from the 1992 Los Angeles Rebellions. Specifically, this paper focuses on the court case Powell v. Superior Court and how the verdict of not guilty was reached, the emergency response by the authorities, and the effect of aforementioned response on the neighborhoods of Los Angeles with lower socioeconomic status during and after the riots such as Koreatown, and analyzes how these events were reported to the general public via local and national news stations with respect to the introduction of silences, namely at the moments of fact creation, organization, recall, and historical importance. Ultimately, these themes serve as examples of historical events that hold new perspectives from different frames of reference not normally recognized as part of the “main” history.
Powell v. Superior Court
Although present popular opinion seems to discredit the juries present at the trial, it is a crucial point to not oversimplify the trial that resulted in the acquittal of the four officers in the Powell v. Superior Court case. None were charged with assault; however, a deadlock started by Virginia loya, one of the jurors, allowed Laurence M. Powell to be charged with excessive force. She believed that the other juries engaged in jury nullification; it seemed as though their decisions were set even before the trial. Unfortunately, this does not come as a surprise, as the change in venue benefitted the defendants by more than a fair trial. Ventura County, the new location of the trial, mostly consisted of white residents with many who worked in law enforcement as an officer. Furthermore, the pretrial questionnaire exposed a right-leaning and police-supporting jury makeup, wholly explaining the opinion of the eleven of the twelve jurors insistent on acquittal.
Silencing by the Media
The population makeup of Ventura County was not published by the media, and due to the majority public opinion believing in illegal abuse by the officers, including the police chief Gates who predicted at least one guilty verdict, they were not well-prepared for rebellions. Although the proportion of black officers in the Los Angeles Police Department reflected the proportion of black residents in the city, the distribution of black residents were not uniform; that is, certain neighborhoods were predominantly black, whereas the makeup of the police forces that were dispatched into these communities were not, contributing further to the suspicion of racial profiling by the minority communities.
Korean Americans
The poor response by law enforcement lead to major city-wide crisis and violence, mainly in the form of looting. Most of the clash occurred in Koreatown, fueled mainly by the portrayal of Korean Americans in popular news as a model minority and the death of Latasha Harlins, a black teenager girl, at the hands of Soon Ja Du, a Korean-American grocer, in a shooting. Her death was a major contribution to the racial tension between blacks and Koreans, and the release of the verdict weeks later was the final straw for black Americans. Due to the lack of preparations for the riots, police also ignored calls for help in Koreatown. Neither did ambulances travel into the high-risk neighborhood and thus wounded individuals were not attended to. Therefore, Korean American store owners had to defend the shops for themselves with firearms, forming a sort of a militia. However, many who needed to rely on government law enforcement were not as fortunate, losing their life’s works in the lootings. Interestingly, the fundamental cause of the racial tension between these two minority groups is quite unintuitive. The desegregation of historically black neighborhoods and the increase in Korean migration to these areas is the lead explanation for the social tension between them. Since the people originally living in these neighborhoods had minimal contact with other ethnicities, the sudden influx of other ethnic groups caused social pressure. This is evident from the strong geographic correlation between the locations of high riot fatalities and neighborhoods that became highly diverse more recently.
Total Acquittal
However, it is only until years later that many of these narratives became known and researches were conducted. At the time of the Powell v. Superior Court case, mainstream media disregarded the ethnic makeup of the new venue of the trial and the advantage it gave the defendants, including the political leanings of the jurors. Unknown to the then chief Gates, all defendants would be acquitted save for Powell’s excessive force charge. This is one of the reasons why the rebellions that followed were unplanned for; the public, including the chief of the police department himself, expected justice for the brutality acted on by the officers. The jurors thought otherwise, and thus a chain of events led to the six days of unrest in Los Angeles.
The "Model Minority" Myth
The deceptive role of the media doesn’t end there. The image of Koreans in popular media before 1992 portrayed them as a model minority; that is, an ethnic group of people who are able to climb the socioeconomic ladder without public service or government assistance. As an exclusionist viewpoint, this is a dangerous belief, as it could be used as a reason for withholding government funds from allocating the budget for programs that would help lower-income neighborhoods made up of minorities. In combination with the powerful control that the LA Times had over the media in Los Angeles, hardships of the Korean Americans were undoubtedly absent in the news.
Journalists Explain
In the present, this is ever so more important as journalists are treated more and more as historians. People rely more on the journalist to tell an objective account of an event, while journalists are using more history to give context and justify changes to a city. In this case, journalists use the riots caused by the Powell v. Superior Court case verdict to explain the recent population changes of Los Angeles in the news. Since silences can be created at moments of historical recollection in the present, the series by the Los Angeles Times about the legacy of the 1992 rebellions silences the police brutality instance with King and the total acquittal of the accused officers involved. The collective memory of the public in the present about the rebellions only remembers the racial hostility and anarchy that led to lootings. This is used to explain why the poor neighborhoods of Los Angeles are poor; why South Central Los Angeles cannot be changed for the better. The framing or portrayal of the past in this way gives journalists the power to control the popular narrative.
Closure
The events surrounding the 1992 Los Angeles Rebellions are now remembered in popular media as one mainly about racial tension within the city and violence. However, by looking at the conclusions asserted by Twomey, we can see that the different frames of reference from the media of the 90s and the present varies in what is collectively remembered. These new perspectives allow us to uncover the silences, such as the hidden context about the trials regarding the inappropriate political makeup of the jurors, by letting us “look around” the blind spots in mainstream history. Ultimately, this strategy allows us to uncover any silence that is yet to be found about this series of events in 1992 LA.
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Image Sources
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