April
29, 1992 brought forth a changing tide within the city of Los Angeles,
California. January 7, 2009 marked a loud day of remembrance in the city of
Oakland, California. Both days marked the beginnings of civil unrest in
response to unjust and excessive violence upon African- American men at the
hands of White police officers and law enforcement. Angelenos took to the
streets in support of Rodney King, 27, a victim of police brutality after a
traffic stop on the I-210 freeway in Los Angeles, a year after the violent
encounter. The five Los Angeles Police Department (L.A.P.D.) officers involved
in the case were acquitted of excessive force. Oakland residents entered the
public eye in anger of 22 year-old Oscar Grant’s fatal shooting committed by a
Bay Area Transit (BART) officer at the Fruitvale BART Station on New Years Day.
In both cases, video footage surfaced of the violent acts and wildly incited
national attention. In the case of King, extensive coverage arose both on
television and in newspapers, including the Los
Angeles Times, which published over forty articles covering the civil
disruption. The Grant controversy and public reactions did not reach the extent
of the coverage in Southern California. Though, in the age of digital media,
online journalists, bloggers, photographers and videographers-independent and
affiliated- helped usher images and information into the public sphere.
While the events did make way for conversation
surrounding racial relations in America and injustice within urban communities,
the photographic representation of African- Americans remained problematic. In
a study by Paul Martin Lester, it is noted that during and after the civil
rights era the production of African- American images saw an increase in major
newspapers and magazines. The images specifically “related to criminal
activities and social problems as a result of the protests and riots in the
streets in several U.S. urban areas” (Lester, 382). 17 years separated the two
tragic cases, but did that change the light in which African- Americans and
urban community members were represented in photograph? In places where there
is minimal everyday representation, what does each photograph distributed say
about the subject groups and spaces?
SOUTH CENTRAL LOS ANGELES: APRIL 1992
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| Image 1- Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times |
On April 30, 1992, a day after the riots,
this photograph was captured. It displays a man running past a burning store
with a shopping cart full of Huggies diapers. The caption labels the man as a “looter”.
The photograph adds him to a list of African- American criminals. However, this
photo also speaks to other social structures in action within urban America:
economic accessibility and mobility. While looting occurred in large numbers, reasoning
behind the act of looting varied. Aside from the fact that the man within the
photo has looted a basket of diapers, it could be read that he is a father
providing an absolute necessity for his family. Such lack of prosperity should
be put into question when families lack the necessity of survival. Other photos
bearing a similar message included a father and son departing from a grocery
store with armfuls of grocery items and individuals fishing through heaps of
canned and boxed food goods in a ravaged supermarket. There was an economic
need that was not being met by the powers that be. This provides some context to
one of the many other reasons that spurred such a destructive riot.
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| Image 2- kili-Casundria Ramsess / AP Photo |
Other
photos in the realm of looting closely resembled this one of groups pillaging non-grocery
stores for more expensive goods. This act may not be seen as done out of
necessity in comparison to the previous one. However, economic gain could
result of such action. After the riots, much of the pricier goods such as
televisions and electronics, hardware items, and, in this case, shoes and
clothing items, were sold at discounted prices throughout the community. For
that matter, these “looters” were not seen as looters by their peers. Many who
were considered as looting would not consider their actions as such a negative
thing, but “instead regarding these activities as justifiable and legitimate”
(Ginty, 859). It should also be noted that the act of looting, while seen as
not as much of an affective form, is a form of political violence and demonstration.
The context of which it is done is socio-politically motivated. However, without
this scope on the issue it is “best categorized within the criminal sphere”, thus
adding to the problematic gallery of bodies of color in mainstream media
(Ginty, 861).
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| Image 3- Kirk McKoy/ Los Angeles Times |
Flames
and smoke engulfed the city for a week. Through the coverage it received, South
Central L.A. was seemingly a dystopian environment. Citizens took to the streets
in various fashions to promote the disdain and grievances felt for the actions
of the five L.A.P.D. police officers. The rioting was surely a response to
something much larger. Over the course of five years preceding the King incident,
the Department had “lost or settled more than 300 police brutality lawsuits”
(Rosenfeld, 485). So, why would this case be the one for such explosive action?
Unanimously, media sources were outraged by the videotaped violence imposed on
King and the ruled acquittals that followed. The general media were angered by
the unorthodoxy of the actions taken, but for Black media, the events were
viewed as a “part of a long- standing, intolerable tradition” (Rosenfeld, 485).
The city immediately went up in flames, literally. Businesses were pillaged and
set afire and racially targeted ones, most visibly Korean owned, resulted in
gunfights between owners and rioters. Community members aimed their vocalized irritation
towards lines of cops, and later, President George Bush’s lines of sanctioned
National Guard soldiers. 53 people were killed and over 2,000 were injured as a
result of the rioting. L.A. was definitely a war zone at the time and tension
remained at the heart of urban issues for years to follow.
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| Image 4- Kirk McKoy/ Los Angeles Times |
These
next three photos complement each other and provide clear messages. Protesters
lined the street corners in
Image 3,
providing their sentiments towards the verdicts. “Burn Baby Burn!” reads a sign
one protester is holding, supporting the actions of the enraged citizens. “No
Justice! No Peace! This Time We Mean It!” and “It’s A White Man’s World” reads
others as a woman resounds noise with a pot. Juxtaposing the image of the
protesters in the foreground is the presence of a passing police car in the
left background of the photo. While
Image
4 does not contain the presence of a body of a protester, “Look What You
Create[d]”, spray- painted on a building wall, provides an equally affective
message as the businesses next door distorts in flames. The language of each
photo builds the case for a city that felt the effects of neglected issues
within U.S. social structures. Racial tension is clearly attributed to the
workings White leaders of the nation- the government. With justice not being
served in all areas, peace is withheld. “Those with naming power, or the
ability to identify particular acts as deviant, are likely to possess other
forms of power such as political control, access to media or a privileged
position in a deeply divided society” (Ginty, 859). The population viewed as
the subjects of the riots is one that is disempowered. The images of shattered
glass, overturned cars, injured bodies, aggressive behaviors, flames, smoke,
and ash are all symbolic of the turmoil faced by community members. It was only
a matter of time before the internalized pressures of society would become
embodied externally. Dishearteningly, the media sought photographic image of
such chaos without critical representation of the issues associated.
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| Image 5 - Steve Dykes/ Los Angeles Times |
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| Image 6- Lori Shepler/ Los Anegeles Times |
Narrowly were the issues presented as Urban Los
Angeles issues with King’s misfortune as a catalyst. L.A.P.D. worked to enforce
proper “justice”, as seen in
Image 5,
and in
Image 6 shows the presence of
the National Guard, working to handle the situation where local law enforcement
couldn’t sustain. The presence of law enforcement is evident throughout the
spaces of the event and its responses. The eerie image of armed soldiers on
decrepit and crumbling city streets with a backdrop of a charred building,
still in flames, insists that Urban L.A. is something of a dystopia. The answer
here seems to be to employ the troops. The pleas for social change were lost in
such distorted images of minority communities, whose images are surely not
underrepresented in times of disorder and criminal activity. The context in
which these events are viewed need reformation. The portrayal of Black bodies
and bodies of color are problematized and criminalized without question of
power structures at hand. 17 years later these photos were produced.
DOWNTOWN OAKLAND: JANURARY 2009
Protests
ensued a week after the accidental shooting of Oscar Grant. At night, riots
began to build. They ended the next day. Protests would occur at various
moments throughout the year and another riot took place on July 8, 2010 after
the verdict of the BART officer was read. That too ended after a short amount
of time. The images presented here closely resemble that of the previous ones.
Protesters, looters, flames, law enforcement. This time around, national
newspaper and televised news lacked coverage of the events surrounding both the
case and the following riots. Image 7
shows a group of cops detaining a Black protester. Image 8 presents a protest in the street bearing messages of racial
injustice. Image 9 shows rioters
setting aflame a dumpster. Image 10
focuses in on a group of looters breaking into a shoe store. The unchanged
representation of urban civil unrest shows the unchanged state of the nation. A
shift in information and image dissemination and analysis is a necessity for
such progressivism to occur.
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| Image 9- AP Photo |
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| Image 10- AP Photo |
Works Cited
Antony,
Mary G., and Ryan J. Thomas. "This Is Citizen Journalism at Its Finest’:
Youtube and the Public Sphere in the Oscar Grant Shooting Incident." New Media & Society 12.8 (2010):
1280-296. JSTOR. Web.
Ginty,
Roger M. "Looting in the Context of Violent Conflict: A Conceptualisation
and Typology." Third World Quarterly 25.5 (2004): 857-70. Taylor
and Francis Online. Web.
Amitava,
Kumar. "Los Angeles Riots and Television." Economic and
Political Weekly 27 June 1992: 1311. JSTOR. Web.
Lester,
Paul M. "African-American Photo Coverage in Four U.S. Newspapers,
1937–1990."Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 71.2
(1994): 308-94. JSTOR. Web.
Rosenfeld,
Michael J. "Celebration, Politics, Selective Looting and Riots: A Micro
Level Study of the Bulls Riot of 1992 in Chicago." Social Problems 44.4
(1997): 483-502. Print
Twomey,
Jane L. "Newspaper Coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising: Race, Place,
and the Story of the "Riot": Racial Ideology in African American and
Korean American Newspapers." Race, Gender & Class 8.4
(2001): 140-54. JSTOR. Web.
