震惊世界的洛杉矶暴乱，给美国留下了什么？

从1921年的塔尔萨大屠杀、1982年华裔陈果仁遭白人殴打死亡、2020年乔治·弗洛伊德被警方跪压致死，到最近在纽约水牛城发生的大规模枪击事件，我们可以看到，美国少数族裔长期以来一直是种族仇恨犯罪的受害者。

1991年3月3日，醉酒的美国非裔司机罗德尼·金因超速被警察逮住。据旁观者拍摄的视频显示，金面部朝下，四名警察用警棍不间断痛殴他56次。金不是第一个，也不是最后一个被警察殴打的黑人，但这是这些暴行第一次被展示在世界面前。

On March 3, 1991, African American motorist Rodney King, who was intoxicated, had been caught speeding. Taken by bystander George Holliday, the footage shows four police officers reportedly striking King 56 times with their batons while he lay face down. King wasn't the first black man, or the last, to be beaten by police, but it was the first time it was caught on camera and shown to the world.

On April 29, 1992, a jury acquitted four white police officers accused of beating King. Following the initial uproar on April 29, the city plunged into five days of looting, assault, arson and murder in one of the worst episodes of civil unrest in US history. More than 60 people were killed, 2,300 injured and more than $1 billion in property was damaged. 

"And I'm going, this is something really real here. People are angry," Ryan, 85, a longtime resident of South Los Angeles, where the LA riots sprang up, told China Daily.

"It was devastating; it was very hurtful," she told China Daily.

"It wasn't that I was afraid of the people, I was just afraid of like, how does our city recover, where do we go from here," said Smith-Pollard, who serves as the assistant director of community and public engagement at the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture.

Most of the violence was concentrated in South LA, a predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhood, as well as Koreatown, where resentment had grown between Korean and African Americans. In all, more than 60 people died, most were black and brown, thousands were injured and nearly $1 billion in property was damaged, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Critics blamed the city's lack of a detailed plan for the crisis and the police department's slow response to stopping the violence that spread throughout the city. Some witnesses also accused the police of leaving the poor communities of color to fend for themselves while directing armed personnel to affluent areas like Beverly Hills.

That's why the ensuing verdict was so painful because people couldn't believe that even with sound and images, nothing changes, "that is just too disrespectful", said Smith-Pollard, who serves as the assistant director of community and public engagement at the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture.

1992年4月30日，美国洛杉矶发生暴乱的第二天，一名警察举枪瞄准了一名抢劫者。JOHN GAPS III/AP

"A slap to the face" was too soft a term to describe how his community had felt in the wake of the acquittal of the officers and the Korean grocer, Michael Lawson, president and CEO of the Los Angeles Urban League, told China Daily.

"We were skeptical but hopeful at the same time; that verdict dashed our hopes," said Lawson, who was listening to the radio in his car when the jury's verdicts came 30 years ago.

"When you compare Rodney King and George Floyd, it's 30 years apart, and the police departments across the country are doing the same thing they were doing without cameras and thinking that they can get away with it," Lawson said. The difference with Floyd's murder is that it resulted in a conviction, in 2021, he added.

"Those of us who are old enough to remember held our breath, when the murderer of George Floyd was sentenced because we knew that time after time after time, the officers get acquitted, and finally, we have a situation where the officer was convicted," he said.

The Los Angeles Police Department had 37 instances of shootings by police in 2021, compared with 108 in 1992. Thirty years ago, 60 percent of the officers were white. Last year, white officers made up 28 percent of the force; Hispanics, 52 percent; Asians and Pacific Islanders, 11 percent; and blacks, 9 percent, according to the department's year-end review.

Lawson acknowledged that progress has been made in relations between communities of color and law enforcement over the years, but "there's a lot of work to be done. It's not just LA, it's across the country now," he said.

“It’s hard to not be disheartened when you see the same struggle 20 years later,” said Gina Fields, Chair of Empowerment Congress West Area Neighborhood Development Council. “It makes it a lot harder for us to just let go [of] what happened in the past, and forgive and forget.”

"There was a lot of anger in the community, and people didn't really have a place to put that anger," said Fields.

Brenda Stevenson, an Oxford University history professor, told China Daily that swathes of the neighborhood were plagued by high unemployment. Residents also had trouble getting affordable housing and adequate education and health resources. That, along with the high incarceration rate of African Americans and Hispanics, contributed to the unrest, she said.

The socioeconomic injustice that existed in 1992 is still present today, she said. In addition, the homeless population, made up mostly of brown and black people, has grown tremendously. The underlying racial disparities were further exposed during COVID-19, when ethnic minorities had limited access to treatment and testing, she said.

"There are so many things that are going on today that are both similar to and in some cases worse than it was in 1992," Stevenson said.

Between 1960 and 2016, in metrics such as income, housing, transportation and education, residents in South LA still lagged far behind others in Los Angeles County, according to a study by researchers from UCLA called "South LA since the Sixties". In 2016, a full-time employee in South LA made an average of 60 cents for every dollar earned by a county resident.

"Fighting for our rights still doesn't necessarily get us what we need in our community," she said.

"We are so segregated that you can literally live your life not interacting with people of another ethnicity if you don't want to," Fields said.

"I think what needs to be done to address racial disparities is to really think about how communities of color must work together to fight racial oppression instead of allowing ourselves to be pitted against one another for scraps of attention and resources," Joe said.

"There is a current narrative trying to pit black and AAPI communities against each other. But the attacks and targeting of AAPI people are squarely rooted in white supremacy, which is embedded in American racism," she told China Daily.

Many interviewed for this article preferred to use the word uprising, instead of riots. It was "a demanding of equal and fair treatment", Fields pointed out.

和30年前相比，由于激进主义和技术的进步，不同的种族群体有了更多的接触，但积极分子和专家表示，我们需要付出更多努力来推翻这个“种族主义的系统”。

"We also understand why people do it because a riot is the voice of the unheard," she said.

Compared with 30 years ago, ethnic groups are engaging each other more, there is also more accountability because of activism and technological advances, but activists and experts said more is needed to overturn "a system of racism".

"Until you've lived it, and walk in the shoes of racism, until you've been followed around in a store when you are just trying to shop; until you try to return an item of clothing into a store and they accuse you of stealing it; until you stood at a counter, and have someone white just walk in front of you like you are invisible, which happens day after day after day with me. Until you've lived that life, you don't really understand how it makes your heart feel," Fields said.

记者：刘茵梦

翻译：Kayla Ma