Monday, May 7, 2018

The Significance of the Watts riots

The Watts riots of 1965 provided the foundation for the Rodney King riots of 1992. The Watts riots is now recognized as one of the worst civil unrests in the history of Los Angeles, until the 1992 riots. The riots started as a result of a confrontation between a black motorist (Marquette Frye) and white police officers in an L.A. neighborhood called Watts. At the start of the Watts riots, a community meeting was held, that turned into an explosion of complaints about the L.A.P.D and government treatment of people of color in the past. To most of the black residents in the neighborhood, the message of the riots was clear—the violence was a result of specific grievances like police injustice and poverty. They also felt that the unrest could have stemmed from bottled-up frustrations: black people were, and are still, dissatisfied with the living conditions and limited opportunities they are given.
During the Watts riots, in the newspaper headlines from the L.A. Times, attached below, the police were shown as victims, while the rioters were depicted as the violent enemy. One headline reads, “Police and Motorists attacked”. The motorists in the title does not include Marquette Frye, but instead refers to white motorists who were attacked during the riots. Another headline reads, “Negro Riots Rage On”. Articles like these forces the blame of civil unrest on a certain group of people, instead of focusing on and addressing the many injustices people of color face.
The Watts riots were an important turning point in L.A.'s Civil Rights Movement. After the riots, several suggestions were made that would improve the community, such as emergency literacy programs, improved police-community ties, increased low-income housing, and upgraded healthcare services. However, most of these suggestions were never carried out. In addition, more than half a century later, police brutality remains a huge issue in the U.S. There have been several cases in recent years of black people dying from police brutality. These tragic incidents remind us of tensions around policing, race, and violence that have been prevalent for decades, and act as a bleak reminder that many racial issues remain unresolved.

Newspapers:
Source (Article):

-Anjali Dileep

No comments:

Post a Comment