Torn Between The Present and The Past
The frame jiggles erratically. The coding at the bottom of the grainy black-and-white image says it is March 3, 1991. Now the camera rests and we see a black man writhing in the dirt. We see police officers, sometimes two or three at a time, swinging batons with full force onto his legs, his back, his head. We see him stretch out his hand; we see them strike it. Twice he attempts to rise; we see them stomp him down. The camera pans. We see another policeman on the edge of the frame, tugging on a cord attached to the black man.
There are other things to notice. It is night-time, but the scene is white-lit by headlights. As the frame widens, we may discern a certain boldness here: Other officers ring the action, their hands resting on their holsters as they look on. At least two cars pass along a street forming the base of the frame. One slows for a look. No one in the frame looks our way. The camera’s distant gaze, looking down, trembling in and out of focus, sweeping the figures around the frame, seems unsanctioned. We are not supposed to see this.
Ten years later, the videotaped beating of Rodney King continues to be a lens through which we see Los Angeles and the rest of the nation. It has become, with time, far more than a brutal revelation of police misconduct. It looms instead as the crest of a two-decade-long racial cold war, the zenith of a culture of irreconcilability. What we could not see in 1991 as we argued about the implications of the beating is how recent history has prepared us for a series of televised racial embroilments. First came the Tawana Brawley rape hoax. Then King. Then the killing of Latasha Harlins by a Korean shopkeeper in South-Central Los Angeles, the O.J. Simpson debacle and, last year, the Florida ballot battle. These out-sized media events became the new arenas of ethnic struggle. A segregated society that long ago stopped talking honestly about race was consigned to engage in periodic, simplistic debates. Often the debate was framed by the rawest of video images, torn between the meaning of the moment and the history that caused the moment. In this culture, reality was always subject to interpretation and rarely was there any incontrovertible evidence, be it a videotape or DNA. The fact that these spectacles were televised should have made them our common ground, but instead it warped them: So obsessed is TV with the immediate that it obliterated the importance of the past.
The culture of irreconcilability pits two world views: Some of us are determined to see an event as burdened by a thousand links to injustices unseen and histories unwritten. Others see a discrete, isolated incident that has no context beyond the moment. So the Rodney King videotape struck Melanie Lomax, then the Police Commission president, as “reminiscent of a police force in the Deep South,” a simulacrum of black motorists profiled, of marchers fire-hosed, of black backs flogged and black necks stretched. The L.A. police chief at the time, Daryl F. Gates, saw in the same video “an aberration,” “a one-incident situation” with no symbolic power and no context beyond the moment.
That same cultural dynamic allowed Republican chieftain James A. Baker III to stand before the microphones in Florida last year and describe the presidential ballot squabble as “new, uncertain and controversial territory,” while a civil rights attorney named Barbara Arwine appeared before a NAACP forum and said: “This is not new. Florida has a rich history of voting-rights abuses.” One side claims the present, the other claims the past.
The side that claimed the present saw the state’s electoral system as a relatively good system pushed to the breaking point by an extraordinarily close election. If there were “irregularities,” they were random, evenly distributed and belied by the overall regularity of Florida’s voting system. That poor areas had more problems with voting than wealthier areas was attributable to chance or, at worst, machine error. Manual recounts were prevented by strict procedures that preserved the level playing field. “We’ve had a vote. We have laws in this country,” said Karen Hughes, spokeswoman for then-Gov. George W. Bush. “We have a constitutional process.”
The other reading, championed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, extended the historical boundaries of the event as far back as outrage would allow. Election Day traffic stops were not coincidence--they “showed a pattern of targeted racial profiling” reminiscent of Reconstruction-era voter obstruction; disproportionate numbers of shoddy voting machines found in Florida’s poor communities echoed the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson decision, which upheld segregated public facilities. A “colorblind” law that disenfranchised ex-felons was part of a long legacy of racially skewed prison populations, poll taxes and constitutional slavery.
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TRADITIONAL AMERICAN IDENTITY OFTEN TILTS AWAY FROM the side of history. We are a nation founded on modern ideals, a “New World,” where religious adherents could forge New Jerusalems and businessmen found new opportunities for success. This is the famed sanctuary where the immigrant can forget his old untouchable status, his hovel on the potato farm, his fate under the pogrom, his arduous journey inside the cargo container, across the border, and become something new: American. Here, no one cares where you came from or who your parents are. America only cares about who you are now and how hard you will work today.
One reason the culture of irreconcilability so often involves black people is that African Americans are not immigrants. Their journey to liberty has always been conducted here, on this soil, not in a world of memory an ocean away. Black people were never allowed to forget their low status, even after emancipation. Being an individual is fine, but for 400 years individualism was denied to black people, marked as they were--legally, politically, culturally--by their skin. Black culture is redemptive, restorative, built on a collective experience, hinged on finding what was lost and repairing what was broken. Every stride forward is made possible by those who came before. White people, whether they want to be or not, are part of this history, privileged heirs of a racist environment, a system, a legacy.
In this contextual world view, the King controversy could never be about just one man or one group of police officers. The legal battles that ended when King’s attackers were acquitted of nine of 10 charges in a Simi Valley state court were proxies for dueling histories. That was why many whites were so surprised at the verdict and so many blacks seemed so weary.
By the time we met Rodney King, blacks and whites were already lobbing rhetorical bombs at each other through the airwaves. The 1980s are usually remembered for their economic impact--most noticeably the loss of many better-paying industrial jobs to plant closures and the lowering of wage scales as Latino immigrants flocked to Southern California. But it also marked one of the most racially divisive periods since the early 1960s. This was a decade of race-baiting by repetition of code words: Ronald Reagan’s mythical “welfare queen,” Vice President George Bush’s Willie Horton attack ad, Central Park “wilding.” It was a time when an ex-Klansman named David Duke landed a Louisiana Assembly seat and Sen. Jesse Helms held onto his North Carolina Senate seat with a TV ad suggesting that blacks received preferential treatment over whites. Louis Farrakhan rebuilt the Nation of Islam, and rap music took on a militant and subversive edge. The late black nationalist Malcolm X became more popular than he ever was when he was alive. The 1980s was the era of Angry White Men and “Niggas With Attitudes,” two sides veering further and further apart, with less and less to say to each other--unless there was a microphone or TV camera present. Only the loudest, harshest riffs entered the electronic debate, with precious little analysis.
In 1987, the Rev. Al Sharpton gained national attention when he took up the cause of a 16-year-old Wappingers Falls, N.Y., girl named Tawana Brawley, who claimed a group of white men raped her. In fact, the case was a hoax, and eventually the subject of a successful defamation suit against Sharpton and his allies. Its greatest contribution was to increase growing skepticism about blacks’ racial grievances. Rising crime had already made a dent. Three years earlier, Bernhard H. Goetz became famous for shooting and wounding four black teenagers in a New York subway station because the “shine in their eyes and their body language” intimidated him. Many Americans, including Chicago columnist Mike Royko, supported him: “I’m glad that Goetz shot them. I don’t care what [Goetz’s] motives were or whether he has all his marbles. The punks looked for trouble, and they found it. Case closed.”
This fear of black people was not racism but warranted, social critic Jared Taylor argued in his 1992 book, “Paved With Good Intentions,” because blacks were more likely than any other group, statistically, to be involved in violent crime. “Are the police then gunning for blacks or are they simply shooting the people who are the most dangerous? Are they racist or just doing their jobs?”
Taylor’s arguments were grounded in the idea that America had turned the corner on racism and that black people were keeping themselves down. While black poverty and incarceration spiked in the 1980s, America’s most famous black man, Bill Cosby, seemed to be underscoring Taylor’s position: If you worked hard enough, you, too, could be like Dr. Cliff Huxtable of “The Cosby Show,” replete with fashionable sweaters, a tranquil family life and a successful medical practice. The show provided the context for critics like Taylor to argue that the deepening of America’s black underclass had less to do with white racism than with an ingrained sense of victimhood, entitlement and black self-hatred. Conservative scholars, heady during the Reagan era, redefined victimhood--once the result of racial prejudice, poverty, addiction and lack of opportunity--as a kind of passive-aggressive political ploy. They accused black leaders of using their “moral capital,” built up during the civil rights movement, to unfairly exploit latter-day white guilt and paternalism. Affirmative action, almost sacred in the ‘70s, was derided as outdated “reverse discrimination.” Multiculturalism, the idea that educational institutions should include and respect new and ethnically diverse voices, became “political correctness.” Black people who claimed they were being discriminated against because of their race were accused of playing “race-card politics” and “the politics of blame.” These pitched ideological battles were fought most fiercely on op-ed pages, bookshelves and during talk shows. Elsewhere, the same debates were more muted.
In the workplace, some employers strove to avoid mounting discrimination lawsuits by adopting diversity training programs, affirmative action policies and zero-tolerance policies for discriminatory behavior. Overt racism became unfashionable, backward, uncivilized. Derogatory remarks--even in the company of other whites--became impolite. Some, like black social critic Shelby Steele, said these developments represented the demise of racism in America as we know it. Others said that it simply created a more inhibited, politically correct American discourse and more stealthy, less confrontational forms of racism.
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WHILE RACE RELATIONS WERE TAKING ON AN INCREASINGLY VEILED character, technology was conspiring to reveal images more visceral than ever. By the year of the King beating, nearly one in seven American households owned video cameras, and sales had doubled in four years. Local newscasts weren’t shy about using homemade tape. Fox Television had introduced “Cops” in 1989, sending small camera crews throughout the country (mostly Florida in those days) to ride along with police officers. With no moderation or voice-overs, audiences were left to interpret the images however they liked. Context was provided entirely by the viewer; it was not surprising that “Cops” was a favorite of both law-enforcement officials and prison inmates. The meaning of photographic images had never been more fluid and open.
By the time George Holliday hit the “Rec” button, black “moral capital” was all but depleted with whites. And as the furor over the King beating exploded, there was little automatic acknowledgment of injustice toward blacks--no matter what the video showed. Instead, there would be a battle between two schools of perception, one that would set the stage for the rest of the ‘90s. Police leaders and defense attorneys soon swaddled the images with a context that cushioned the blows: King was a paroled felon. He led police on a drunken, slow-speed chase through the Foothill area. When he was finally pulled over, he taunted the officers with a rude little jig. When they pepper-sprayed him and hit him with a Taser, he failed to lie down. King was a monster, a giant, a beast, a PCP addict with superhuman strength. When they struck him with 56 baton blows, he failed to lose consciousness. King, in the view of his attackers and their believers, directed his own beating.
Two weeks later it happened again, as a Korean American grocery store owner shot an unarmed 15-year-old black girl over a $1.79 bottle of orange juice. A security camera recorded the incident on tape. In the tape we see Latasha Harlins walk up to the counter with the bottle in her backpack. She has $2 in her hands. Words are exchanged and Soon Ja Du, 49, believing that Latasha is stealing from her, reaches over the counter angrily, knocking the juice to the ground. Latasha shrugs Du off and rocks her back with three swift punches to her face. Du falls to the floor, quickly rises and hurls a chair at Latasha. Then Du reaches under the counter and pulls out a gun and aims it at Latasha. The pace slows. Latasha picks up the orange juice bottle, places it on the counter and turns to leave. Du pushes the bottle back to the floor and steadies her two-handed aim. Du fires one bullet through the back of Latasha’s head. She drops.
The videotape clearly shows a crime: a middle-aged woman shooting an unarmed adolescent girl from the back. But the battle of perception would be fought on the margins of the picture. African Americans argued that the videotape was irrefutable proof of Du’s guilt. The image evinced Korean American racism toward black people. African Americans in South-Central had complained for years about high prices and disrespectful service at Korean American stores.
But this time, it would be Korean Americans and whites who put the videotape in a wider context. They believed it showcased the dangers of the ghetto: Soon Ja Du may have overreacted, but that year there were nearly 1,000 felonies in the area around her store. Armed gang members constantly intimidated and berated the Dus, who commuted to their shop from the San Fernando Valley. Whatever happened to that adolescent girl on the videotape was seen through the race debates of the 1980s and couched within the context of black crime. In court, Du’s lawyer repeatedly referred to Latasha’s 150 pounds of heft and her fight-scarred knuckles, which Du described as “iron-like.” Like King’s, Latasha’s very body was inscribed with malicious intent, transforming Du’s act of aggression into a defensive act. In the end, Superior Judge Joyce Ann Karlin would overrule the jury verdict of manslaughter.
Coming so soon after the King videotape, Latasha’s death saddened and angered many African Americans, but it is worth noting that the Los Angeles riots were still a year away. Most black people held out hope that these two videotapes would be powerful instruments of justice; and they held out hope that justice itself was intact--even for them. Even after Soon Ja Du’s sentence was reduced to 400 hours of community service and reimbursement for Latasha’s funeral costs, most African Americans remained calm. Disappointed, skeptical, but calm. Most black people were calm even after the King beating trial was moved out of Los Angeles to the Simi Valley, then a predominantly white community that was home to many conservatives and off-duty police officers. Even a Simi Valley jury with no black panelists, they thought, would be swayed by the King videotape. How much more obvious could police abuse be?
When the jury acquitted officers of most of the beating charges, black people--and Latinos--rioted, killing 58 people and causing more than $1 billion in property damage. Even here the culture of irreconcilability played out: Social theorists argued for years over what kind of outburst L.A. had witnessed (and often caught on videotape). Was it a spontaneous protest against police brutality? Against poverty? Against deindustrialization? Or was it just a massive criminal enterprise? A pack of no-good marauders and thugs looking for an opportunity to steal TV sets? Within scarcely two years a white Bronco was coasting down the Golden State Freeway and America was asking the same kind of questions: Is O.J. Simpson a jealous wife-killer or another black man oppressed by the system? Certainly, the evidence against him was compelling, but many blacks--their backs pushed to the wall by the conservative social critiques of the ‘80s--saw the case more broadly. They may have believed that Simpson was guilty of killing his wife, Nicole Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman. But they also knew police and the courts had been giving black people hell for years. Simpson’s attorney, Johnnie Cochran, played brilliantly to that subtext, infuriating many whites, who saw it as yet another example of drawing on a bankrupt account of moral capital. When prosecution witness Det. Mark Fuhrman was heard on tape uttering racial epithets and describing how he had framed black suspects, the case grew even more polarized, leaving citizens of all races drained and, in many instances, scarcely able to carry on civil conversations with the other side.
In the wake of these wars has come a police corruption case that has yet to set off the same media-charged shock waves but has implications for race relations in Los Angeles. The Rampart Division scandal unfolded in secret, without a surreptitious cameraman or a grainy videotape. Former anti-gang officers Rafael Perez and Nino Durden allegedly preyed on marginal victims, stealing their drugs, roughing them up, secure in the knowledge that these were the kind of people who hardly ever filed reports--or showed up before cameras. Gang members, prostitutes, drug dealers, illegal immigrants, Spanish-speakers, poor people--these were their targets, people who don’t generate a lot of attention. There is no crystallizing moment here--just scores of tainted LAPD cases under review--and an innocent, unarmed man named Javier Francisco Ovando. Perez said he and Durden shot him in 1996, then planted a gun on him and falsified a police report stating that Ovando shot at them first. Paralyzed from the waist down, Ovando had served three years of a 23-year sentence by the time he was freed last year.
Apart from the print media, news coverage of the Rampart scandal has been subdued and, outside Los Angeles, scant. The story has been told through a plodding, unassuming investigation into the facts. The racial element is also entirely different in this case. Both the corrupt officers and their victims are of multiethnic backgrounds; if there is any divide, it is one of class, or native-born Americans versus foreign-born. Rampart is a story that conventional pictures and sound-bites cannot contain.
At first glance, Rampart suggests that changing demographics in Los Angeles may have moved us to different challenges--beyond the impasse of black-white relations--by simply leaving the problem behind, unsolved. But it also tells us that we don’t know how to engage each other without the prompting of big images and news events. Television is a fine frame for political battles and marketing wars, but over the past 20 years it has coarsened race relations. Television images alone do not build consensus; Rodney King taught us that. Electronic images hold truths enough for us all, no matter our ethnicity, gender, class or personal identities--but little clarity. Often the media invite us to come as we are, and to leave as we are. And, yes, we can form opinions and shout them out loud, and then stew in self-righteousness in the safety of our living rooms, but that doesn’t mean we’re engaging with the other.
True interracial accord must happen when there is no “news of the day.” Often this is tedious work. It can be frustrating work. It can be silent work. It is work performed in the gaps and shadows of the media’s gaze, outside the frame. Often it is the work of individuals and groups meeting together, sacrificing some of our precious identity and history, surrendering some of our notions of the present and the past.