Why Does The Man Always Have to Stop Me?

        It was a warm summer night in the hood, around 7 pm, on August 11, 1965. Marquette Frye, a 21-year-old man from Watts, was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol on Avalon and 116th under the suspicion of drinking and driving, even though he was just a couple blocks from his home. The officers did a series of sobriety tests on Frye, then concluding that the car needed to be impounded. His mother, then soon many others, joined the commotion. To the Watts resident, this was just, "one racist traffic stop too many." One could easily understand from the situation that the police were using their power to essentially inconvenience the lives those in the ghetto even further, all while building the officers' quota too. If our government (including the police force) continues to institutionalize groups based on race, using unnecessary force and tactics on only those who are from the lower-income neighborhoods who all also happen to be minorities, especially during the epicenter of the Civil Rights Movement in America, the authorities should also be cautious. They should expect the people to react, considering how race issues were being dealt with at the time.
           The rough policing of the ghetto's of LA derive from the historical red-lining of communities. While Los Angeles didn't have the blatant segregated facilities like the south (which is where most of LA's African-American population is from), restrictive housing covenants mapped out racial and economic communities. They disabled blacks from living outside of LA's southern basin. Even if an African-American family could afford a nicer home on the West Side, the banks would see the locations and deny the loans. Because of these established communities, wealthier whites at the time wanted to seclude themselves more, as the separations are exemplified when creating these two atmospheres. Police made sure black people stayed in their neighborhoods, and this meant a lot of abuse from police; they would randomly question individuals all the time, asking things like, "Where are you going? Shouldn't you be in your neighborhood? Where are you coming from?" This constant negative interaction makes the people feel like they are criminals when in reality, they are just existing.
           Similarly to the riots in 1992, the verdict comes out for Rodney King and the police, and the police are found not guilty, and in response, just like 1965, the people riot, violence and looting ensues, people get injured, arrested, and even killed--all because of ill-feelings with the police. This feeling of the people of these communities in LA stems out generations of mistreatment. Because the Watts riots follow the period of MLK, the government criticized the rioters, stating that their violent upheaval won't solve anything, but only bring destruction, which is also a reoccurring theme in the 1992 riots as well. This perception by the government of the struggle for justice being violent and dysfunctional only further fueled the movement. The people realized that maybe violence can be justified when trying to achieve something; the US government uses violence all the time around the world to get its way, so why is it wrong if black people do the same? Months before the 1992 riots, the same national guard, who was pointing their weapons at the Iraqi's during Operation Desert storm were pointing the same guns at Americans, at Los Angelinos.

-Govinda Tulsiram    


CRIPS AND BLOODS Made In America Documentary @14 minutes