[On April 29th, 1992,
civil unrest erupted
in Los Angeles after the four officers who had beaten Rodney King on video
were acquitted on all charges. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy King himself and
other contexts for and representations of the LA riots, leading up to a special
weekend post on the narrative
of “race riots” itself.]
On two striking
details that can help us push beyond a frequently stereotyped figure.
The frustrating
process through which African American victims
of police brutality or white
supremacist violence are demonized in the media in order to minimize their
mistreatment (up to and including murder) has become far too common, if not
indeed inevitable, in response to such
incidents in the 21st century. And of course such trends had
been a central element of the
lynching epidemic throughout its century of historic horrors as well. But
in some ways Rodney King occupied a pivotal place in that unfolding history—one
of the first such demonized victims of the media age, extending those historic
trends into the late 20th century period of cable news and constant
coverage and so on. And from the first moments after the video of King’s 1991 beating
by four LAPD officers emerged, he was linked to and demonized through a series
of exaggerated, stereotypical images: his criminal record, his history of
drinking, his resistance to the police, his seemingly simplistic statements,
even the fact that he was driving
a Hyundai. Each of those images had some initial grounding in elements of
King’s background or identity, but each was again exaggerated into a caricature
that made it easier to minimize or dismiss the unnecessary violence King endured.
Challenging that
trend requires multiple forms of response, but in the case of a victim like
King who fortunately was not killed in the course of his incident, one
important such response is to highlight other nuanced details from across the
course of his life. One inspiring such detail for King is that not long before
his untimely 2012 death (on which more in a moment), he published an
autobiography that also extended his famous comments during the 1992 riots.
Co-authored by Lawrence
Spagnola, King’s The Riot Within: My Journey from Rebellion to
Redemption (2012) links his
personal experiences and story (before, during, and after the famous early 1990s
histories) to broader arguments for unity and peace, ideas and themes that echo
his easily mocked but also thoughtful question, “Why can’t we all just get
along?” At the very least, anyone who makes fun of King’s perspective or voice based
on those snippets of video should be required to read this extended
articulation of them, to engage with the layers to the man and his identity
rather than such soundbytes and the stereotypical narratives into which they
far too often play.
Unfortunately, King
passed away just two months after his book was published, and the
circumstances of his death add another compelling detail to our understanding
of his life and identity. On Father’s Day King’s
fiancé found him drowned at the bottom of his swimming pool, in a striking
echo of his father’s death: King’s father
Ronald King had drowned in his bathtub on Father’s Day, 1984, 28 years to
the day before King’s death. Like Ronald, Rodney had struggled with alcoholism throughout
his adult life, and a combination of alcohol and drugs in his system had likely
precipitated heart problems that led to his death. But it also strikes me as unlikely
that the precise date was a coincidence, particularly given that Rodney’s death
emulated his father’s on Father’s Day; that is, whether Rodney’s death was in
any overt way a suicide, it seems clearly related to the personal and psychological
legacies of his father’s death as well as his own struggles. And in any case, this
tragic final stage in King’s life clearly reveals a far more complex story and
man than any of the stereotypical images and narratives allow for, making plain
the need to push far beyond those caricatures in search of the real Rodney
King.
Next King
context tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
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