Riots a Warning to Quit Ignoring the Wrongs

Early into Day 3, the local newscasters were telling their viewers that they would be searching for the good news, the good people, the heroes, the hopeful, the rebuilders in Los Angeles, particularly the south-central part.

“We really haven’t had a chance to do that until now,” the anchorwoman said, her voice apologetic, yet measured, to convey the appropriately dispassionate tone.

It appeared that the television news staff had a meeting about this. It seemed they were worried about giving off the “wrong” impression of their city, the one that tends to demoralize the good folks, regardless of their color, the same one being broadcast and captured in newsprint around the world.

The impression was that Los Angeles is a jungle where everyone with a weapon--a gun, a torch, or a fist--was seizing his 15 minutes of fame.

The impression was that Los Angeles is Beirut, only here the passports into different parts of the city were the color of a person’s skin.

The impression was that shame as a deterrent against wrong, in a city where looters bring their cars to maximize their haul, was now a cynical joke.

Except these “wrong” impressions, broad strokes surely, were dead-on right. We’ve glossed over the ugliness for far too long.

A trucker who wondered into the wrong intersection on his way to deliver a load of gravel was beaten nearly to death. “Why?” the question was asked of one of his rescuers, a black man. “Because he’s white.” The response was matter-of-fact.

Some looters, in Los Angeles and elsewhere, merely shouted the name Rodney King, a new shorthand for revenge, when the cameras zoomed in.

We shudder when we hear all this. Many of us didn’t know the extent of the hate and rage. When you cover up ignorance, misery and hopelessness for so long finally the truth explodes like shrapnel in your face.

Remember that Gil Scott-Harris song, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”? Well, back in 1973, Scott-Harris couldn’t have known that an amateur cameraman would capture the beating of Rodney King on film nearly 20 years down the road.

The image of a crowd of white cops clubbing and kicking a black man senseless as he lay on the ground was televised repeatedly around the world.

And I, like millions of others living a comfortable life of the white middle class, thought that this evidence would go a long way toward righting some wrongs. I believed reform, at least within the LAPD, could head off a revolution of a larger sort. I even believed that one day, someday, Chief Daryl Gates would leave.

I thought the charges filed against four cops for brutalizing King were as good as slam-dunked through. One of the guys was even heard laughing about the beating on tape. I figured the cops would serve some jail time for such flagrant abuse.

Except a jury in Simi Valley, 10 of them white, one Hispanic and another Filipino-American, put the wrong entirely in King’s court. The way they saw it, he deserved what he got. He was an ex-con who had tried to evade the cops, drunk, maybe “dusted” on PCP.

He put the men in blue to a lot of trouble, probably even made them work up a sweat. Serves him right, the jury ruled. They saw the beating as justified punishment on the spot.

The jury members, requesting anonymity in the newspapers and on TV, said they were surprised by the violence that erupted after the verdict was read. Reading their words, listening to their voices, I believed in their shock.

Their reality, worlds away from that of a Rodney King, shielded them from seeing what most of the rest of the nation saw so clearly on film, a beating of a prone man that could only be justified in a sadist’s mind. Forget for a moment the color of everybody’s skin. What happened was wrong.

Yet the jurors are no more ashamed of their take on justice than are the looters on the streets of Los Angeles who said they were just getting their due. Justice, always subjective, never seemed more peculiar than now.

And, in the meantime, a city shuddered, officials floundered, lawlessness reigned.

So does it matter that most people are not thugs, or racists, or that their moral compass is still intact? Of course it does, but let that not be an excuse.

Let’s not worry so much about the image problem that the bad guys, regardless of their race, have given us all. We need to fight back with a whole lot more than P.R.

In that sense, I hope even this violence can do us some good. It can make us afraid to keep ignoring the wrongs. We’ve been warned.

In reponse to requests from readers of last Thursday’s column about electing pro-choice women to high office, the phone number for EMILY’s List, for Democrats, is (800) 275-8897. The number for the Republican WISH List, in Los Angeles, is (310) 288-0056.