Los Angeles: A Center of Change

Many people strive to live in Los Angeles; there is a reason for its high population, and

crowded freeways. Many people immigrate to this place looking for work and better education.

They think all of Los Angeles looks like Beverly Hills and everyone enjoys their life. But in

reality, very few people get to live so lavish. Los Angeles has one of the highest costs of rent,

gang problems, and dirty cops. The Los Angeles riots of 92 was caused by a court decision

which found four cops not guilty of beating a man, Rodney King, nearly to death. This was not

the first riot in Los Angeles caused by race. Even today, in 2017, tensions are rising and

minorities are fed up with their mistreatment and inequality by the police and government.

Another riot is soon to appear, all it needs is one flick and it will be ignited. In the short story,

Los Angeles, the narrator, Richard Rayner, lives on Franklin and Grace, in a very ghetto place

in Los Angeles. He accounts his own viewings of the riots and writes them in great detail and

truthfulness. While Los Angeles is known as a center for equality, justice, and opportunity,

locals, especially minorities still live in fear because of police brutality and racism which led to

the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

In Los Angeles, the tensions are coming to a boil because of injustices that seem to

happen on a daily basis. This has caused movements like Black Lives Matter and the rise of neo-

Nazism. Today in the news you see protests against people with Nazi flags, I thought that would

have never happened in 2017. The Nazi symbol stands for something truly violent, since it stood

for Hitlers Third Reich and extermination of the Jews, and I can see why left wing activists are

willing to put their life on the line in order to stop their anarchy and psychopathy. In the story,

the narrator almost every day sees African Americans being harassed while being arrested.

Rayner, the author and narrator of the short story, Los Angeles writes, Several times during
the past year, Id watched from my study window as officers of the Los Angeles Police

department stage elaborate busts on the streets. The officers always whiteThe suspects always

black, usually young, often well-dressed, were dragged out and made to lie on the groundThey

were cuffed with plastic thongs that, from a distance looked like the tags with which I closed up

bags of rubbishwhile the officers talked among themselves or, swaggering to and fro,

conducted an ad hoc interrogation: Shut the fuck up and dont move, I heard on one occasion.

Feel clever now, black boy? Be careful now, Im in the mood to hit me a homer (173-174).

This passage scares me and many will find it sadly relatable. The narrator has gotten used to

seeing abused from his window it is almost expected, as if it were part of his daily routine. Since

his neighbors did not speak against this brutality, it makes him racist. He could have put a stop to

it, since he decided to not do anything, he is almost as bad, he is too lazy to tell anyone who can

make a change such as the news. He and his neighbors wouldnt do anything, since they lived in

a bad part of town, and they had been accustomed to it. He writes that the suspects were usually

black and well dressed. Eventually, those being tormented started a revolt (the riots of 92)

because they were tired of this abuse. The cops assume that all African Americans are poor so

since these ones dressed nice must have stolen these clothes, so that gives us a good reason to

attain them. That does not sound like justice to me, it is in fact injustice, and violates many rights

that violate the constitution and our natural, human rights that are applicable to everybody on

Earth. The officers use tags which look like they are used to close trash bags. Officers wont

even use handcuffs because they dont believe blacks are worth using them and a feeble string is

enough to keep them restrained.

Los Angeles has had a lot of racist and police brutality happenings recently. The police

chief during the early 90s, Daryl Gates, publicly stated that the reason so many African
Americans died from the controversial carotid chokehold used to detain suspects before tasers

were invented was that their veins and arteries do not open up as fast as they do on normal

people. (175). This man was in charge of one of the biggest police forces in America only 30

years ago. Oxford dictionary defines racism as such: Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism

directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.

Daryl Gates directly said that blacks are inferior to normal people because their arteries arent

as reactive as everyone elses. Accounts of police brutality are still happening all around Los

Angeles. In the article written by Christine Pelisek, In Los Angeles, Questions of Police

Brutality Dog LAPD she writes, In the early hours of Dec. 4, 2010, the Los Angeles Police

Department was called to a parking lot in Hollywood by a couple who couldn't get a woman to

come out of their Scion. After a bit of coaxing, the officers were able to get the visibly

intoxicated woman, who was later identified as Natasha Dennis, out of the backseat of the car.

She was arrested for public intoxication, handcuffed, and officers attempted to place her in the

back of a squad car. One of the officers videotaped the incident with his personal video recorder.

The video, which later ended up in the hands of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's

office, appeared to show Officer Jorge Satander firing a Taser twice at the handcuffed woman

and later displaying a Superman logo under his shirt. Another officer could be heard laughing

and singing in the background. (Christine Pelisek). Not only does police brutality happen to

blacks but people of all kinds. This type of behavior is abhorrent and is a disgrace to our country.

We are supposed to trust police with our lives but how can we do so when so many of them are

unfair with their ruthlessness.

In everyday, minor occurrences it is worse for black people. An article published by the

linguistics, psychology, and computer science departments from Stanford University, writes
Police officers speak significantly less respectfully to black than to white community members

in everyday traffic stops, even after controlling for officer race, infraction severity, stop location,

and stop outcome. (Stanford University). They got their conclusion by looking at body camera

footage that some police officers wear. Right off the bat, police officers will not give African

Americans the benefit of the doubt. The police see their color and assume that they are going to

give them a hard time, run away, or assume they have committed a crime. This article should not

exist if the police did their job correctly. Their job is to enforce the law and the constitution.

Everyone knows the constitution says everyman is created equal. Why do the police not treat

blacks equally? Even if they run a stop sign the police is disrespectful to them. The racist cops

are only making the problem worse, if the black community does not get treated with the same

respect then the tension between cops and African Americans will only grow larger.

Most of the bystanders in Los Angeles during the time were racist. Even the narrator of

the story was racist. While mentioning the African Americans that have died during the riots he

was only giving the facts, not an opinion or narrative of their deaths, just the numbers. But he

spends a couple paragraphs writing about the white trucker who was pulled out of his truck and

almost beaten to death. The narrator said as he watched the trucker being beaten, This didnt

make me suspicious of these particular blacks; it made me want to kill them. If any of them had

been in my power in that moment, as Reginald Denny was in theirs, I would have done it gladly.

I actually saw myself with a gun in my hand. Pow. Pow. Pow. (179). Rayner writes with such

tenacity and brutality. When he was mentioning the Rodney King beating he wasnt this angry.

He wasnt mad at the blacks being abused by the police on a daily basis. Only the white guy

being beaten pushed his buttons. The same treatment did happen to a black man on camera,

Rodney King, and he only described what was happening, barely mentioning his opinion on the
police brutality case. Innocent African Amercicans fighting for equality who died were

mentioned. But he wasnt mad when telling us the numbers, just how many perished.

Racism exists in many cities, even more so in some parts of the country. Los Angeles is a

place where most citizens are striving for equality, justice, and freedom. There is a reason why

the riots of 92 and 65 took place in my hometown. Its because of the citizens. Nowhere else

have there been people who stood up because they were tired of being mistreated just because of

their skin color such as we did. We stood up and fought for our right to the pursuit of happiness

because we are entitled to it. Rayner recounts seeing children as young as seven joining the fight.

They knew that even at that young age that if they stayed silent they would have continued living

in this oppression that is still apparent and alive in America. Los Angeles is a beacon of hope for

everyone being burdened and oppressed because of their skin color. Black Lives Matter, one of

the biggest movements for black equality started in Los Angeles because of the people. There is

still a long way to go; racism is still persistent in Los Angeles. People need to fight for what is

right and I believe our generation can do so. Those fifty-eight people will not die in vain. The

people are what make this city a center for change.