The Cause Of The Kerner Commission Riots

For six days, tons of Watts’s residents flooded the streets; I witnessed crowds of angry oppressed people looting every business in sight, walking away with things that they have wanted for a long time but just did not that the means to get until this day. I witnessed gangs of people pull any white driver out of his or her vehicles and beat them repeatedly. Thinking off every unjust beating their fellow brother or sister received from racist white cops. Businesses burned to the ground, cars vandalized and set to flames, and there were images all over Watts that expressed to the nation their frustration of police brutality and social mistreatment of a community and of a race.

In the late 1800s and the early 1900s, labor was anything but easy. Factory workers faced long hours, low pay, high unemployment fears, and poor working conditions during this time. Life today is much easier in comparison to the late 1800s. Americans have shorter days, bigger pay and easier working conditions. Not comparable to how life is today, many riots sparked, and citizens began to fight for equal treatment. Along with other important events, the Haymarket Riot, the Pullman Strike, and the Homestead strike all play a vital role in illustrating labor’s struggle to gain fair and equitable treatment during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Inspired by the Wilmington Riots of 1898, Charles Chesnutt delves deep into the racial tensions of the South in his novel On the Marrow of Tradition. Despite being set well after the end of the Civil War, the struggle between the black and white races is far from over. The white race insists on maintaining complete control in every aspect of society, including personal matters. They are constantly demanding that the black community serve them. On the other end, the black race is struggling to survive the harsh conditions the white-dominated society imposes on them. Throughout the novel, Chesnutt reminds us of the ongoing battle between the two races. At the same time, Chesnutt explores the effect this has on various members in society. The youngest two characters in the novel, Dodie and Doctor Miller’s son, exemplify the conditions and consequences for the black and white races. Although they seem to be secondary characters in On the Marrow of Tradition, both Dodie and Doctor Miller’s son play a crucial role in the representation of their respective races.

Race riots are one of the major news items we hear about via the media when a social crisis occurs. The riots in Baltimore, however, were not so much about race, but more about economic and social class separations. The riots began as a peaceful protest amongst the citizens of Baltimore over the death of one of their own, Freddie Gray. Gray was a young, African-American, from a financially lower class area of Baltimore. Unfortunately, he died while in custody of the Baltimore Police. While this is a tragic loss, he was unlawfully detained by the police (Sarlin, 2015) during this ordeal. On the surface, the riots may appear as a cut-and-dry race provoked, once they are looked into further, that is not necessarily the case.

For decades racial discrimination has been a reoccurring issue that has shaped the relationships across the country. Riots, in the case of the L.A. riots, are a form of venting and a negative form of freedom of expression. Almost immediately after the jury`s decision to seize the officers of charges that included assault with a deadly weapon and excessive use of force towards King, riots broke out across Los

The Watts riots began in the summer of 1965, in a city in Los Angeles called Watts. It all began with the arrest of a young African American by a white California Highway Patrol officer. Now, it was not because he was arrested for already doing something illegal, it was for the way the police officer treated the individual. According to Lacine Holland, an eyewitness to the arrest, the officer “took him and threw him in the car like a bag of laundry and kicked his feet in and slammed the door.” (Flournoy) This caused lots of unrest among the fellow residents of Watts. This was just the beginning of years of pent up oppression for the minorities, which participated in the event. Similarly, in 1992, the Rodney King riots also arose due to the acquittal of four Los Angeles Police Department officers for their brutal beating

When the judge, Bernard Kamins, who was Caucasian declared three of the four (also white) officers not guilty the public saw his decision very racist. The riots began in the evening after the judgment, and grew over the next two days, but they would continue for several days. Angry Los Angels residents went out to the streets to show their fury. “These people are angry and they have every right to be!” said a man to the news cameras during the destruction. Authorities failed miserably to control the people. As time went by the madness did not decrease but enlarged.

This is proof that there is racial discrimination in law enforcement that affects police brutality. This also reinforces the culture of people of color being less human than white people, which takes its roots all the way back to slavery in America. When slavery was still prevalent in the United States, white people believed that black people(slaves), did not feel pain like they felt pain. After slavery was abolished, black people were still strongly regarded as inferior to white people and white people still saw them as wild creatures rather than human beings. White people saw themselves superior to every other race of people, so it was common for them to mistreat other races that weren’t white. This mindset is not as strong as it was in the past but, it is still strong enough to affect the choices police officers make during interactions with people of color. As a result of discrimination at the police level, many people have turned to court system’s to reach justice.

Arguably the most significant single factor which contributed to the 1960s riots was the issue of policing at the time. For many years there had been negative encounters between white members of the Los Angeles police force and the African Americas and this lead to resentment within black society. Many officers were corrupt and above all racist and discrimination was widespread and apparent. A large number of officers lied in arrest reports against black citizens and some even beat and tortured Black men regardless of whether or not they had committed or were even suspected of committing any crime. These officers abused their authority within the community using it not to achieve justice and order, but as a tool for

In the aftermath of the riot there were three major outcomes. One, the McCone Commission was set up by the government to study the riots. The McCone Commission found that people rioted because of unemployment, bad schools and education, and prior instances of police brutality (www.southcentralhistory.com). A second outcome following was an independent commission, chaired by former Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner, that investigated the causes of the rioting. The Kerner Commission issued its landmark report in 1968, concluding: "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white -- separate and unequal" (www.cnn.com). Another major outcome was the creation of SWAT teams. They were created with the vision of three police officers: Officer Nelson, who originally came up with the concept of a specially equipped and highly trained unit, Inspector Gates, who spear headed the push to make it happen and Ed Davis had the foresight to approve the program. The term SWAT was coined by Gates and originally stood for

The Los Angeles Riots developed as a way to show frustration at the injustice that occurred at the expense of Rodney King, with the acquittal of the four white police officers. The escalation that occurred as a result, could have been prevented, had police chief Darryl Gates mobilized troops into the affected areas immediately, instead of prolonging the deployment. As a member of law enforcement, with over 42 years of experience, there is no way that he could not have anticipated the backlash that ensued. The complete brutalization and dehumanization of black people in the United States is appalling and it has led to inhumane, atrocious fall out that has had impacts that have carried forward to the present.

In the case of Rodney king, I believe that justice was not served, because 4 officers viciously assaulted King with their night sticks after a car chase in L.A. out of the three men that were caught that night, the police claimed that king was the most “aggressive out of the three men. They also claimed that the force they used on king was “justified”. If you look at the video (recorded by George Holliday) the so called “justified” action didn’t look so justified, it appeared brutal as if they were beating animal. If you watch the video you can see Rodney King on his knee’s imploring the officer’s to stop striking him with their nightsticks, but they refused to do so. That night Rodney absorbed fifty six hits from a night stick and seven kicks from two officers. Nevertheless, the four officers’ that did the beating were prosecuted for assault but were not found guilty, which caused outrageous riots in L.A. I feel if Rodney King was Caucasian he wouldn’t have been assaulted the way he was, because you could never pay a white person to brutally

The police officers were mainly Klan members that also enforced the violence towards the blacks. The whites do not want for the blacks to get their rights

Police brutality is increasingly prevalent and is constantly being swept under the rug. The dynamic between police officers and citizens is overwhelmingly racist. Cops (white or black) are in the position of power and use that to their advantage the same way any white person would over black man. Chief Justice Taney is a prime example of how white men can make and enforce laws that blatantly disadvantage colored people. In the Dred Scott case, he used his power to ensure that black men could not be considered citizens even though he had no right or authority to do so (“Speech on the Dred Scott Decision at Springfield Illinois” 111-120). The same racist institution that allowed Taney to make that decision decided Timothy Loehmann was not at fault for Tamir Rice’s murder. The justice system is built on and fostered by this racist power

The video never gives any reasoning to the protests. While most modern protesters tend to be about race and police violence, protesters that are both black and white are shown, equally abused by police. However, they do have a lower class look to them. The police on the other hand, are all shown to be white. This might be indicating that while in the past the power has all been in the hands of white people, in the future lies more integration. Something not shown in the video, out if hundreds of protesters and police, is a single