American Toxicity: Twenty Years After the 1992 Los Angeles “Riots”

Abstract

The above words open Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres's 2002 book, The Miner's Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy. They speak powerfully to the ways in which society's most basic flaws are exposed by the vulnerabilities of its subordinated groups. The metaphor of the miner's canary, I believe, is also particularly apt for helping us to make sense of where we find ourselves today in the United States, twenty years after frustration and dissent exploded so violently on the streets of Los Angeles. The 1992 Los Angeles “riots,” as I have written elsewhere, were popularly depicted in the mainstream media as a “black thing.” According to the conventional narrative, it was angry and disaffected African Americans who initiated the events on April 29 when they took to the streets to protest the acquittal earlier in the day of the four police officers who had been videotaped brutally beating black motorist Rodney King. The resulting civil unrest, which the Los Angeles Times proclaimed “th...