Causes of Race Riots in the United States, Essay Example

American society has long faced the plight of racial violence. The most dramatic cases of racial tensions and racial violence were the 1965 Watt Riot and 1992 Central South Riot both in Los Angeles, California. Through careful analysis of these two riots and one more – the zoot suit riot of 1943, also in LA – this paper attempts to answer the question whether the confrontations were caused by political and economic instability rather than racial tensions.

Zoot Suit Riots

The so-called zoot suit riots that occurred in LA back in 1943 were the result of the racial tensions. Victoria Wolcott observes that during those riots white soldiers, primarily sailors and Marines, who had come back home, engaged in frictions with Mexicans and African Americans (Wolcott, 2012, p.51). The riots got their name by the type of suits worn by Mexicans. In particular, Caucasian servicemen embarked in infiltration of the recreation spaces for the working class frequented by black and Mexican youth. The latter were rather easy to spot and subsequently abuse because of their specific outfits. The conflict was also made up of young Mexican Americans as well as African American soldiers at military bases who held vociferous protests against being excluded from recreation facilities.

The reporter Carey McWilliams (1990) describes the riot in following way: the streets of downtown LA were covered with a mob of marching sailors, soldiers, as well as civilians, who started beating every man wearing a zoot suit once they saw him; the mob included several thousand men who jerked people of Latino origin from their seats in a movie theatre and in streetcars only to severely beat them outside.

Historians agree that racial tension was the biggest cause of the zoot suit riots. White servicemen considered Latino youth to be essentially inferior to Caucasians. That attitude had been largely formed by the media that propelled discriminatory attitude to Latinos, who were often referred to as Chicanos. Mexican Americans were severely segregated and had to live in the worst part of the city. They were viewed by many as unnecessary elements of the LA society which had to be cleansed (Ruiz & Korrol, 2006). Thus, the reason was purely racial or ethnic.

The 1965 Watts Riot

The rebellion known as the 1965 Watts Riot took place on August 11, 1965 in Los Angeles. That Wednesday Marquette Frye, an African-American man aged 21, got arrested in Watts, the Los Angeles’ neighborhood, for drink-driving. The struggle that accompanied his arrest grew into 6 days of violent rioting and resulted in thirty-four deaths, more than a thousand injuries, around four thousand arrests, and property destruction that valued as much as forty million U.S. dollars (Martin Luther King, JR and the Global Freedom Struggle, n.d.).

Examining the reasons that led to that unprecedented and stunning “explosion”, as white Angelenos perceived it, Janet Abu-Lughod, distinguishes a few. Specifically, Abu-Lughod (1999) observes that one of the major reasons for one of the worst confrontations on the ground of the ethnic tensions was dissatisfactory economic conditions that black Americans faced in post-war Los Angeles. In particular, the end of the World War 2 saw many African Americans relocating to the urban centers. According to Abu-Lughod, if in 1930 fewer than 39, 000 and in 1940 around 65,000 black residents lived in Los Angeles, in 1945-1946 their number was more than twice as large as in previous years – nearly 133,000 residents. In 1950, the number of African Americans, according to the census, was 171,200 (Abu-Lughod, 1999, p.247).

However, the majority of black residents lived in appalling conditions in overcrowded ghettos: in Watts and on Central Avenue. From the available sources it becomes clear that most newcomers, who arrived with hope to break the poverty circle, were unable to do that. The employment that they typically got was seasonal. Besides, it was low-paying (Abu-Lughod, 1999, p.248). At the same time, the slums were growing and getting overcrowded. Despite the fact that Los Angeles got considerable revenues as an automobile metropolis, the amenities did not equally extend to all residents. That situation reinforced the race and class based differences that had already been sharp. Indeed, as observed by Massey and Mullan, between 1960 and 1970, the segregation on the ground of race and ethnicity increased (Massey & Mullan, 1984, p.836). As a result, the rigidly segregated black community was the poorest in the city (Abu-Lughod, 1999, p.259).

Black people lived in slums with appalling conditions. Charles Abrams, a housing critic from New York, provides the following description of the living conditions of African-Americans in Los Angeles ghettos: “(…) In one wooden tenement I saw a single hot-water faucet servicing some seventy-two families, a condition outlawed in New York City fifty years ago.” Abrams further adds: “Shacks made out of old crates and little garages on back alleys house thousands of recent immigrants.” (Abrams, cited in Abu-Lughod, 1999, p. 260).

Ironically, the political response to the housing problem was quite passive. To be more accurate, public housing programs found little support in the city government due to anti-black and anti-communist moods. As modern historians note, this enhanced the marginalization of the minorities and led poor people to the so-called commodity riots (Abu-Lughod, 1999, p.262). Alongside this, the unemployment problem and poor schooling were the wrongs that led to the 1965 Watt riot and other riots. The indignation of the black people, which was sparkled off by a typical altercation between a black motorist and a white officer, rose as African Americans felt denigrated in the light of the civil rights movement in the States (Abu-Lughod, 1965, p.263).

In summary, the race riot that took place in Watts, Los Angeles, in 1965 can be attributed to the combination of negative factors that affected African-Americans there. Importantly, these were appalling social conditions that black people had to live in. Equally important was the desire to establish racial equality in the light of the national movement for civil rights. At the core of the riot, lied failure of the city politicians to recognize and adequately address the problems of African-Americans, whom they persistently treated as inferior people.

South Central Riot of 1992

The riot that broke out in South Central LA back in 1992 is believed to have been the most destructive U.S. riot of the 20^th century. It started on April 29, 1992, but was sparked off by earlier events. In particular, four police officers had been caught brutally beating a paroled felon Rodney King. King was intoxicated and resisted arrest when he was finally caught as a result of a high-speed chase down Los Angeles streets. Four police officers were filmed by an unknown citizen as they were beating King with police batons as well as kicking him even after they saw he could not resist any longer. Released to the mass media, the 89-second video resulted in outrage across the country. Rodney King got released uncharged, and the police officers were charged with overuse of force and assault using a deadly weapon. The 12-person jury, which consisted solely of white members, acquitted the officers as “not guilty on all counts, except for one assault charge against Powell that ended in a hung jury” (The Day in History, n.d.).

The public uproar grew into violent confrontation. Traffic in south-central LA was blocked with African American rioters beating dozens of white motorists. Three black men beat Reginald Denny, a truck driver, nearly to death. As the police were very slow to respond, the riot spread across other parts of the neighborhood. By the morning of the following day, there were hundreds of fires burning throughout Los Angeles, with hundreds injured, and more than a dozen murdered. The next 24 hours saw new outbursts of violence in which Koreans who owned liquor shops in the black neighbourhood defended their stores with rifles.

The intrusion of military troops and special riot-trained officers ordered by President Bush brought the city under control by the end of the following day. Overall, three days of rioting and violence caused deaths to 55 people, injuries to over 2,000 people, and arrest to 7,000 people. Reportedly, the cost of property damage was 1 billion U.S. dollars to include the cost of 4, 000 burnt buildings (The Day in History, n.d.).

Unlike the 1965 Watt Riot, that riot was not purely black. By the time it sparked off, Watts had already been settled with Latinos. In particular, McArthur park district, home to many Salvadorans in LA, became the place where rioters burned, looted, ignored the curfew, and subsequently went to jail. Mike Davis, the author of the article “In L.A., Burning All Illusions” published June 1, 1992 in The Nation, provides the following statistics: after the first 5, 000 arrests across the city have been analysed, it appeared that 52 % were disadvantaged Latinos, 10% were whites, and just 38% were African-Americans (Davis, 1992, p.743).

Analyzing the reasons that led rioters to violence and looting, Davis observes that the area (McArthur Park), which was home to thousands Spanish-speaking residents, suffered from the high rate of unemployment, with many people being made redundant from their low-paying jobs. In fact, Davis says, within the two years of economic recession, the unemployment rate had tripled in that and other Los Angeles neighborhoods. Apart from that, the crowds got distressed by “the rapidly growing colonies of homeless companeros ”; teenagers were forced to look for minimum wages. In the air, the looted future had already been felt, as residents of McArthur reported to Davis. When poverty-stricken residents saw on TV how crowds helped themselves to masses of desirable goods, they got mesmerized by the vision. They engaged in a riot then, which “arrived as a magic dispensation” (Davis, 1992, p.743).

In summary, the 1992 riot in Los Angeles was sparked off by the racial issue. At the same time, it would not have reached its actual extent had there been no economic and social prerequisites for it. Specifically, the biggest cause of this riot was, as demonstrated by the analysis above, the economically and socially disadvantaged position of black and Latino populations.

Conclusion

Having analysed three different cases of racial riots and racist violence in the period during and following the World War 2, the author of this paper has come to the following conclusion. At the core of these riots there typically was a structurally important political issue: in zoot suit riots, it was the city policy to denigrate Mexicans, which eventually triggered the riot; the Watts riot also started because of the inadequate policy-making with regard to black people status and needs; in 1992, the riot reached its extent because the tension in the society was very high (that tension, in its turn, was caused by unemployment and government’s inefficiency in resolving it). Only one riot could be termed as purely racial: it was the zoot suits riot. Two subsequent riots in LA were caused even more by economic dissatisfaction and instability rather than racial issues, although both of them were initially triggered by the problems related to race. In a nutshell, one can say that the political and economic instability accounted for the after-war riots to a greater extent than existing racial tensions.

References

Abu-Lughod, J. (1999). New York, Chicago, Los Angeles: America’s global cities. University of Minnesota Press.

Davis, M. (1992). In L.A., Burning All Illusions. The Nation, June 1, 1992, 743-744.

Martin Luther King, JR and the Global Freedom Struggle (n.d.). Watts rebellion (Los Angeles, 1965). Retrieved from http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_watts_rebellion_los_angeles_1965/

McWilliams, C. (1990). North from Mexico: The Spanish-speaking people of the United States. Contributions in American History. Greenwood Press.

Massey, D., & Mullan, B. (1984). Process of Hispanic and black spatial assimilation. American Journal of Sociology, vol. 89, 836-873.

Ruiz, V. & Korrol, V., Eds. (2006). Latinas in the United States: A historical encyclopedia. Indiana University Press.

The Day in History (n.d.). Riots erupt in Los Angeles. Retrieved from http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/riots-erupt-in-los-angeles.

Wolcott, V. (2012). Race, riots, and roller coasters: The struggle over segregated recreation in America. University of Pennsylvania Press.