On Racism and Riots
Race and social status weren’t something I thought about while growing up surrounded by only white faces. My only window into diversity came from TV, where we watched the miniseries “Roots,” and shows like “Sanford and Son” and “Good Times.” But the historical drama didn’t introduce me to the state of race relations in 1970s America, and the sitcoms played racial stereotypes for laughs. When I was seventeen, I joked to myself that I was the only Black student in my high school when my summer tan, printed in black and white, made me the darkest student out of 900 in the yearbook.
In the same yearbook, I couldn’t help but notice a Korean American Grade 12 student named Connor, a couple of years ahead of me, whose caption below his photo made my jaw drop. It listed supposed nicknames that were racial slurs or stereotypes, including two varieties of the C-word and one with the word “rice.” Did he write them to highlight how his classmates treated him, or did the yearbook club add them for laughs? So wrong either way. I don’t recall ever seeing him in the hallways, and I was oblivious to the racism he must have endured. I also wasn’t aware of the Black neighbourhoods on the other side of the Mississippi River, only thirty miles away. Segregationist policies by land developers placed covenants on properties, restricting who could buy them between 1910 and 1953, preventing Black citizens from owning property in many parts of Minnesota.
I didn’t talk to anyone from a different ethnic background until I went to university, where I had an Asian American roommate and floormates. Racism wasn’t something we discussed. During the summer between my second and third years, I worked as a camp counsellor at Camp Pioneer, a Fresh Air Fund camp outside Fishkill, NY. I was one of two White[i] counsellors among twelve Black counsellors, four Black supervisors, and hundreds of Black campers.[ii] My campers created a nickname list for us and suggested my nickname should be “Ivory” because I resembled a bar of Ivory soap. I couldn’t disagree.
To get into the camp, boys between twelve and fifteen years old had to come from low-income homes in NYC, and single parents or grandparents raised many. They came from neighbourhoods I’d only heard of in the news, like Bed-Stuy and the Bronx. One weekend, a Black counsellor took another counsellor and me under his wing and showed us around his borough of Queens. It reads like a stereotype now, but we took sweet sips of Southern Comfort out of a paper bag while we walked along the city streets, slept on sleeping bags and blankets on his bedroom floor, and shot an amateur music video on VHS because he wanted to break into the business. I think we ate pizza for every meal.[iii]
It felt awkward to be White and an authority figure for kids at camp who had more life experience and knowledge about sex than I did, but I learned how to carry myself with more confidence and had a sense of being part of something larger for the first time. Coming from a place of privilege didn’t score me any points at Camp Pioneer, as we did our best to keep the campers safe and settle those with mental health issues.
After graduation, Sarah and I moved to Los Angeles and entered another of America’s great melting pots. We found ourselves in the minority again, especially when travelling by bus. On one memorable ride to school, I was sitting in the back of the bus reading a scientific journal article when I looked up to find an older Black man calling me “cracker” and ranting about something I couldn’t quite make out. As he left the bus at his stop, he launched a wad of spit in my direction. I was baffled and looked around at the other Black and Hispanic passengers, who just shook their heads and went back to their reading.
One evening, Sarah heard, “Out of the way honky bitch!” as a Black teenager shoved her out of the way at a bus stop in Westwood. Racial tensions ran high in the polarized world between Black and Hispanic citizens living in South Central and East L.A., and the White populace living on the Westside. L.A.P.D. officers were less peacekeepers and more enforcers, often harassing racialized and LGBTQ+ communities. On March 3, 1991,[iv] we watched with the rest of the world as they brutally beat and kicked Rodney King, twenty-six miles from where we lived. We had hope that the officers would be held accountable when they went on trial, but a jury in conservative Simi Valley acquitted all four officers of assault and excessive force a year later, on April 29, 1992.
I was doing light-sensitive experiments in a darkened lab, with the radio tuned to a classic rock station when they broke into programming at 3:15 to announce the verdict. The neighbourhood I worked in, South Central L.A., would not take it well. The USC campus and adjacent Rose Garden and Coliseum were gated enclaves of privilege, just north of Watts, where racial tensions led to the 1965 Watts riots, and I was vulnerable, riding a motorcycle to campus. I ran to my advisor’s office to tell him about the verdict and my plans to leave early, but he said he’d stay.
Nothing was out of the ordinary when I headed west on Jefferson Boulevard in the bright afternoon sun, but I turned on the TV when I got home and watched as violence erupted across the city. The media didn’t show most of the graphic scenes of violence, including the bloodied bodies of the sixty-three victims, but looped the beating of White truck driver Reginald Denny for days afterward, as they had done with Rodney King’s beating. A freelance reporter filmed Denny’s assault from a helicopter, three and a half miles south of campus.
During the riots, Rodney King held a press conference and said, “I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?”
Any thoughts? How are you doing? I’d love to chat…
[i] I’ve chosen to capitalize the word white when I refer to race to support grammatical justice and equity. The use of White is evolving, where some argue that to capitalize it supports White Nationalists, and others conclude that to leave White in lowercase implies that it is a racial norm. There is no consensus among academia or the press.
[ii] There were 5-10% White and Hispanic campers and White college-age specialist camp instructors (e.g., art, photography, orienteering).
[iii] Three years later, the band They Might Be Giants wrote about meeting a racist skinhead at a NYC party in their song “Your Racist Friend.” I don’t recall seeing any walking the streets of Queens.
[iv] George Holliday, a plumber with a new camcorder, filmed the beating just after midnight and brought it to station KTLA later that day, where it aired on the evening news. CNN picked it up the following day, and it became the first “viral video” of police brutality.