Stoned

Abstract

This article discusses a case study from my dissertation, “Drive Time,” which I am now expanding into a historical monograph. As a sensory historian, I am rereading the Watts rebellion of 1965, an event that officials, at the time, dismissed as “insensate.” By beginning with sensory data points, like the trajectories of the rocks that protesters threw, I foreground patterns of intentionality and meaning making that local law enforcement and others discounted or completely missed. For instance, protesters selectively pelted cars with white drivers and selected white-owned businesses for looting and burning. Local officials repeatedly focused attention on the intoxicated driver, who emerged as a racialized figure despite both statistical and anecdotal evidence that white Angelenos—especially police officers—also exhibited high rates of intoxication and even heavy substance use. As a book, I hope that Drive Time will illustrate the ways that historians can use historical evidence regarding sensation to reveal, for example, the level of consciousness (relative impairment) exhibited by drivers and others in such historical turning points as the Watts rebellion.