Posted on 08/16/2014 5:49:43 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Could Ferguson happen here? Some would say it already did — nearly five decades ago.
Days of sometimes violent demonstrations in Ferguson, Mo., erupted after Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen, was shot dead by a police officer Aug. 9, allegedly in self-defense. At the height of the civil rights movement, the Watts riots were triggered after a young black motorist was pulled over and arrested by a white California Highway Patrolman on Aug. 11, 1965, on suspicion of drunk driving.
The struggle to arrest him sparked six days of rioting that claimed the lives of 34 people, injured more than 1,000, resulted in more than 4,000 arrests and caused an estimated $40 million in property damage.
“Those same class issues, that same sense of racial inequality, social inequality, economic inequality, those same frustrations and resentments that roiled 49 years ago and exploded in the Watts riots are still in effect in 2014,” said USC law professor Jody Armour, an expert in crime and race issues. “We see them bursting out in Ferguson, Missouri, rather than in L.A.”
Why Los Angeles ‘could be the next Ferguson’
Since those same conditions still exist in areas like South Los Angeles, Watts, Inglewood and Compton, Armour said, “we could be the next Ferguson.”
Meanwhile, an incident Monday in South L.A. in which two Los Angeles Police Department officers shot and killed 25-year-old Ezell Ford, a black man described by family as mentally challenged, has also evoked strong concerns from community members. Police, in a preliminary account, said Ford was shot after he attempted to grab a gun from an officer’s holster during a struggle on the ground with that officer. Veteran gang enforcement officers had stopped Ford, who was walking on 65th Street near Broadway about 8:10 p.m., during an “investigative stop” for unknown reasons. Both officers, who police have not identified, have been assigned home duty while a probe by the department’s Force Investigation Division continues, an LAPD spokesman said.
Hundreds are expected to gather at 3 p.m. today in front of LAPD headquarters to protest the shooting.
A common thread links the Ezell Ford case in South L.A. to the Michael Brown case in Ferguson and even to the case of Trayvon Martin, the Florida teen who was shot in February 2012 by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, said Councilman Bernard Parks, a former LAPD chief. All involve young, unarmed black men who are viewed by community members as victims of the police or a vigilante and who appear to have died needlessly.
Parks warned that such events must be viewed with sensitivity in every community as tensions in one part of the country can easily inflame those in another.
“You can’t view something that happened in Florida as something that doesn’t affect Los Angeles,” Parks said. “With the Trayvon Martin issue, they had demonstrations all over the nation, and some of them turned into acts of public destruction. You can no longer, because of social media and 24-hour news, view any of these cases in isolation.”
What complicates matters in Ferguson and in South L.A. is that there are conflicting accounts of what actually happened from police and others. Because some people have already assigned blame, even the most objective investigation may not satisfy them if its conclusion doesn’t match their own, Parks said.
“There’s a need for law enforcement to understand that (racially charged) incidents will occur,” Parks said. “There has to be on a daily basis — well before these incidents occur — an accumulation of goodwill, a professional relationship, communication with the public so that if something should happen badly, that the first reaction is not to go out and get involved in a riot.”
South Los Angeles activist Lita Herron said she lived through the Watts race riots of 1965 and the “nightmare” era of 1992 — the year of the Rodney King riots — when police tried to “arrest their way out of” the community’s problems of drugs, addiction and gangs. Incidents like the death of Ford, she said, make her feel that the progress she’s seen in her neighborhood in recent years may be slipping away.
“I’m a survivor of 1992, of the (Los Angeles Police) department — who it was and always had been in our history,” said Herron, who is president of the Youth Advocacy Coalition, which offers alternatives to a gang lifestyle. “There’s always been that line between me (and them), and it’s a fragile line, and these things like Ezell Ford fractures or kills any progress. It kills trust, demolishes it. It makes what they say just talk.”
Differences noted
But Connie Rice, a local civil rights activist, sees differences between Ferguson and Los Angeles. Unlike L.A., Ferguson is a predominantly black community with no African-Americans on its City Council and very few on its police force. Two decades ago, LAPD was in a similar situation, much like the Ferguson Police Department is now — in “a state of war” with a distrustful black community.
But with the help of federal oversight, community-minded reforms and guidance from civilian police commissions, the department has largely transformed from a militarized, hostile force that few trusted to one that is building relationships with the community and earning greater trust, she said.
“I think L.A. is at the top (among large cities) if we keep up this campaign of change,” Rice said. “We have about 15 years of more work to do, but we have come a mighty long way.”
Bias, whether conscious or not, also plays a role. Armour, the USC professor, said that to many officers and citizens, the sight of a large black man seems to trigger the use of lethal force.
“If it’s a police officer who shoots a black citizen, he or she will say either I was justified because they actually did pose an imminent threat of death or serious injury to me or if I wasn’t actually justified, at least I should be excused...for expressing ordinary human frailty under circumstances of extreme pressure and stress,” said Armour, author of “Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism: The Hidden Costs of Being Black in America.”
Juries have repeatedly been shown to be sympathetic to such arguments involving police officers as well as citizens, as demonstrated in the case of neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, he said.
And studies show, Armour said, that people indeed consider race in assessing the dangerousness of an ambiguous person. A 2005 Florida State University Study, for example, found that officers in a computer simulation were more likely to mistakenly shoot unarmed black suspects than white ones until they underwent additional training.
While African-Americans are disproportionately represented in committing street crimes and in the criminal justice system, they are also disproportionately poor and disadvantaged, Armour said. He contends these issues can only be addressed by redistributing some of the nation’s wealth and power, thereby curbing frustration and resentments.
“In Ferguson, they’re looking at a lack of jobs, grinding poverty and have a general sense of hopelessness that arises out of that, and these police incidents are often just sparks,” he said. “They are flash points for a lot of grievances that have to do with class as well as with enforcement, that have to do with equal opportunities, economic inequalities as much as particular encounters with particular police officers.”
Pershing also knew a thing or two about subdoing the Muzzies in the Philippines.
The Mexicans here that I know (I speak Spanish) tell me,
“Los Negros son flojos!”
That means “The blacks are lazy!”
Most Mexicans can’t stand American Blacks and their pathetic culture. The Mexicans I know are hard-working.
One guy I know now has a successful landscaping business and is now a citizen, having married a Mex-American citizen 15 years ago. He tells me stories about how he hiked for 5 days and nights in the desert to get here initially (yes illegally) to arduously pick lettuce and avocados.
And then he laughs with ridicule when he hears the inner city blacks complain, “I can’t get me no job!” The guy said he never saw a black breaking his back picking lettuce or strawberries.
Ain't that right Chamber of Crony Capitalism and Paul Ryan (GOPe)?
Neither the Africans who come here, can stand American blacks.
Who would you hire? A guy that shows up on time, works and doesn’t complain unnecessarily or a shirker who is late, has tons of attitude, does very little actual work and calls in sick or for other reasons on a regular basis? Have you been a supervisor or business owner? I’m not excusing illegals, just explaining what’s going on. And if I want a raise I buckle down & sell one or two more plans that day. That’s the way ALL jobs should be.
And don’t get me started on Asians of every kind and American blacks.
“Civilize ‘em with a Krag.”
Speaking of Georgia, my smarter, better qualified black clients at the Iowa unemployment office (circa 1990’s) were all headed for Atlanta as if the streets were paved with gold.
When was the last time you saw American youth mowing lawns? Oh, is that because they're lazy or because there is no point in bothering to buy a decent riding mower with money they earned because there is a crew of "hard working Mexicans" who will be hired at a fraction of a formerly-reasonable wage?
I'm pissed off at the people that do excuse these hirings because they are the reason why this country is so screwed up with illiterate foreigners with absolutely no concept of American Exceptionalism or Constitutional Republicanism because the bottom line was more important than the precious heritage of this nation that was willingly traded for more bang for their buck.
Do you seriously know any kids today that would mow lawns for extra money? I have, as well as usher in a theatre, a fast food worker and grocery during high school, as well as “walking beans” (weeding soybean fields) but I couldn’t detassle corn as it turns out I was allergic to the pollen. But that was about 35 or 40 years ago.
Not anymore, which is my point! Jobs that used to be done by American youth are done by crews of illiterate illegal aliens and they've moved up to other fields.
Do you know any construction crews that are staffed with Americans? I don't, and guess what I found inside the Port-o-Potty on the job site of two $30M home builds: MS-13 gang tags.
But, hey, they don't gripe and aren't lazy. Congratulations! I hope it was worth it to flush this nation down the third world toilet!
“In the decade that followed, most blacks left to points east...The became way outnumbered...
Yep, San Bernardino, Rialto, Moreno Valley........mostly $hitholes now.
It is encouraging in general, but very stressful for anyone managing them. No concept of professional behavior at all, very limited job skills, and lashing out due to inferiority complexes...
I clearly remember Tom Bradley standing in front of the microphones with Maxine Waters inside the AME church and saying:
“No justice. No peace”. Then all Hell broke loose-—AGAIN.
Bradley should have been indicted on inciting a riot charges.
“While African-Americans are disproportionately represented in committing street crimes and in the criminal justice system, they are also disproportionately poor and disadvantaged, Armour said. He contends these issues can only be addressed by redistributing some of the nation’s wealth and power, thereby curbing frustration and resentments.”
In other words
GIBSMEDAT
He is right. Despite their glaringly flaw of falling for leftist schemes- Mexicans want to work, make money, buy stuff, be with their (large) families and eat.
Uh huh….they need to rationalize their BS reason for hiring Illegals. Those recent Illegal Immigrants are generally very eager, but their skill set, and general aptitude is so lacking their "work" is essentially valueless and often does more harm than good.
By the time they learn the job they were hired to do, they've also learned to game the system, and are more of a liability than anything else.
bump
Nope, even those areas are mostly Hispanic...Blacks had a hard time fitting in...got out numbered fast.
Many thousands headed eastbound out of state...Large numbers of them head back down south, northeast, Midwest, east coast...That exodus started a few years after the 92 event...
This is no secret...And why the black populations have increased in those places, but rapidly declined on the west coast...
I've never understood the theory underlying inferiority and superiority complexes. My personal experience is that blacks tend to (1) have an exaggerated view of their competence and (2) attribute their inability to advance despite their manifest competence to systemic racism. Surveys indicate that blacks have the highest self-esteem of any ethnic/racial group.
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