Rodney King, the Riots Out in L.A., And My Understanding and Comprehension of Racism and Police Brutality

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was a student in high school, only Black kid in the classroom. A young girl didn't understand why people were upset and tearing up Los Angeles. I understood, explained why, out of frustration, and then went back to what I was doing. I often wonder if it was even worth the angst at that time. I didn't live in Los Angeles, I lived in Ohio where police brutality certainly did exist, and riots did occur as one had in Cincinnati a decade later, but knowing what I know about race relations now I should have let that one go instead of trying to explain why Black people are the way that they are and why we often feel the way that we do about those of other races.

Her life beared nothing in resemblance to mine. I was a young punk in a school I shouldn't have been attending; I wasn't middle class, I barely got into the school if it weren't for my scholarships and I never felt as though I fit in there. I liked private school; I had attended since I was in 4th grade and my mother took me out of public school for behavioral issuse, but I hated private school, as I was never on the same socioeconomic level as the other students there and never truly fit in. Racism was something that I simply accepted; but what happened to Rodney King and the riots that follwed was a reminder that despite my comfortable existence at a school in the suburbs and the public school system I had turned my back on there were other issues in the country.

Racism sucks, but what else can you do about it and what should you want to do about it? There is a difference between being racist and just being misinformed. As a child most of us are just misinformed, we cannot truly articulate any of our talking points and we are just going along with the flow. That was 20 years ago, I was 18, and like most eighteen year olds I thought that if I was angry enough, if I tried hard enough, that I could change the world. But at eighteen you can't even change yourself.

Nobody cares, but you want everyone to care. At the end of the day negroes burned down their neighborhoods, killed people, stole from their own businesses, were shot at by Korean store owners and harmed a truck driver that was in the wrong place at the wrong time. None of that accomplished anything at the end of the day. Sure police departments are under constant scrutiny but I doubt if you are in the wrong place, at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing, that police brutality would not occur. Just because you do not hear about it in Los Angeles and Cincinnati anymore doesn't mean that it does not exist. Try the cops in a city like Cleveland, Detroit, Baltimore, Atlanta, Washington DC or New York City and see what happens to you. Just out of curiousity, get too comfortable with being pulled over in Chesapeake or Virginia Beach and tell me how well that worked out for you.

Rodney King was an idiot doing the wrong thing and while he did not deserve what happened to him he did deserve to get slapped around a bit for his stupidity. The thing is that Black angst, anger, self-righteousness, beligerence, whatever the depth of our emotion and the way that it is displayed to the nation is one thing, but our memories are short. Rodney King continued to get into trouble with the law. Blacks do not even live in the same neighborhoods that were destroyed anymore. You don't hear about South Central anymore becuase it isn't the same neighborhood that it used to be back then. Blame gentrification, blame the majority Hispanic population, blame anyone. It doesn't matter because those neighborhoods were left for dead in those riots. We can riot and we can say that the President does not care about Black people and we can do all of these profound things but we can't lift ourselves out of the economic situation that we're in. Black actors are lining up to take parts in Tyler Perry films now. It is not because the roles are that great, and it definitely is not because anyone would mistake him for being an artist.

Twenty years later I still find myself in those strange situations. I don't expect anyone to understand, and I really don't care if anyone did. Reminds me of the movie Malcolm X where the young White girl asks Malcolm how she could be part of the movement and he isn't interested. Later on in the movie he realizes that true Islam has nothing to do with race, and sees how he was being used and exploited for power in the Black community by his own people. He was killed by his own community as well. Too often we kill ourselves; we'll go to bat for someone that has committed their own crimes because we can identify with them because we are also out committing those crimes but at the same time we won't come to the help of someone that is in the wrong place at the wrong time that just happens to be Black. I'm not saying that we are deserving of what happens to us, but too often we're just stupid and arrogant and should stay where we're at instead of going somewhere we're not welcome. Instead of getting loud and beligerent over what is ignorant we could get loud and beligerent over what truly matters.

That is where things get difficult and a bit hazy, and we rely on someone else to do it for us because our brains hurt and it is too much to think about. You only have to set the bar but so high, and a Black person will just say "oh the hell with it" and just walk away and you never have to worry about anything changing because it is too difficult for the average Black person. Plus chances are good that he can't find another Black person that wants the same thing bad enough to take the time out to sit down and figure it out, and push materialism, the herd mentality, and conspicous consumption to the side. I am talking about what actually happens with some and what people actually think about us, not all, but some, or rather those that matter whose opinions you should care about because they might actually be able to help you out (though are not willing to unless you can do something for them).

That is the only thing I learned, over all of those years at those private schools. What is it that I wanted to take away from those situations? People are interested in other people that have the same amount of money that they have. I was accepted in circles I never thought that I would be, as a token, during my senior year, just to realize that things were not what I thought they were during my freshman year of college which was okay because freshman are supposed to put things behind them. But I quickly realized that my own people were doing the same thing to me in college.

At the end of the day we can destroy our own neighborhoods and some things might change out of fear but absolutely nothing is going to change out of respect. You might get a government mandate or rule for change, but you won't get any change because anyone truly wants you to be included and sit at the table. There are people that accept us, a lot of people, that are truly intrigued and want to know more but they are too afraid someone will lash out the way that I did twenty years for reasons understood but were still uncalled for. Everyone just wants to fit in, and everyone wants to get along. Every ten, twenty years the city is at its boiling point and we tear down, just to rebuild again. If you didn't learn in the sixties, the seventies, the nineties, or over the last decade; the ghetto is no place to be, they are not going to rebuild (they never have) and one needs to get out while they can. When they rebuild, it is for the rich and the middle class, not for you, who has to live wherever Section 8 or whichever program you're on tells you to live at. That isn't a Black or White thing, that is just how the world works ...