film is a fine art

Susan Sarandon as Janet Weiss 

Autumn >>>> Spring

So for context, the “la riots” or more properly termed the La uprising was a result of the absolutely brutal and horrific beating and torture of Rodney King at the hands of LA PD and the subsequent acquittal of all the officers involved. So when you say “different decade, same shit” the “same shit” is the horrific systemic racism that leads to the death and torture of black people and the absolution of white racists and dismissal by white Americans which in turn spurns justified outrage.

It’s also important to note that the brunt of the damage occurred in Korea town because a few days after the brutality showed to Rodney King, a Korean shop owner shot a 14 year old black girl in the head because he falsely accused her of shop lifting. The shop owner was given a criminally light sentence which also sparked outrage.

The reason that there were black shop owners affected by these things is that in tandem with the shooting, gentrification saw Asian and Latino people overtaking black neighborhoods and displacing the local black communities in Los Angeles. So while these attacks were focused on members of the Korean community in Los Angeles, there were black shops that got caught in the crossfire.

It’s also important to know that almost all of the people injured and left dead were black people at the hands of a fiercely and swiftly militarized police force.

The aftermath of the LA uprising saw 2 of the officers brought up on federal charges of civil rights violations and found them guilty while the other 2 were again acquitted.

11,000 people, most of whom were black, were arrested and saw harsher punishment than the officers who beat Rodney king and the shop owner who fatally shot a 15 year old girl.

So the increasing burden of systemic racism, extreme poverty, displacement, and finally the public brutality shown to black people with absolutely no chance at justice reached a boiling point which resulted in the 1992 LA uprising.

So rather than hyper focusing on the unfortunate fact that some black business owners get caught in the cross fire as a way to pretend that you care about the material damages done to black people, how about we focus on the conditions that continue to result in these kinds of tragedies in the first place by addressing institutional white supremacy and its resulting cyclical poverty and oppression.

Because if y’all think I’m about to argue with people who are self proclaimed racists, you’ve made the critical error of assuming I value my time as little as yours is worth.