Which Way, L.A.?
Race Relations: Then and Now
WWLA? began its 23-year run in the wake of an incident so complex we still haven’t decided what to call it. The Rodney King 'riots?" The "uprising?" The "civil disturbance?" As WWLA? winds down, we look back and measuring what’s changed and what hasn’t. One major component was race relations. Have we learned, as Rodney King famously put it, to “just get along?” As always, that question has many different answers.
By Warren Olney • • 28m ListenLos Angeles exploded in 1992. A white jury in Simi Valley had acquitted officers of the LAPD in the videotaped beating of a black man named Rodney King. The disturbance began at the intersection of Florence and Normandy in South LA. It spread over much of the city to become America's deadliest and most expensive rioting of the 20th Century. KCRW began a discussion program to explore the underlying issues. They turned out to be much more complicated than black and white, reflecting the state of race relations in America's most diverse community. It's diversity that has grown to include ethnic and religious components over years.
Photo: Ricky White wears a shirt with the Rodney King quote "Can't we all just get along", at the intersection of Florence and Normandie, where trucker Reginald Denny was beaten by four black men, setting off the 1992 LA riots, in Los Angeles, California, April 29, 2012. (Jonathan Alcorn/Reuters)
