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In Twilight, Anna Deavere Smith views a recent flash point of United States racial tensions through various voices. Her focus here is on the infamous “Los Angeles riots,” including the key incidents that led up to them, which include, Rodney King’s video-recorded beating, the indicted police officers’ subsequent acquittal and the attack on trucker Reginald Denny. Putting in their two cents on these and related larger issues are a wide range of people from Los Angeles. Ex-LAPD chief Daryl Gates, who insists unarmed black King’s ruthless billy-clubbing by white officers had “nothing to do with race”, is one of them among community activists, media members, lawyers, assault victims, assailants and various other ordinary citizens. The play title, Twilight, refers to the hours after the verdict, when events of violence and property theft and destruction began to unfold. This metaphoric grey area creates a sense of uncertainty among the people in Los Angeles and no one can understand America’s justice system and what it means to be an American.

America is considered to be the land to pursue your dreams, the land of opportunity. Minorities struggled to find this in Los Angeles in the early 1990’s. People began rioting because that was the only way they would be heard. Minorities felt hopeless and isolated in this skewed political system. Minorities had no other means to communicate with out society during that time, therefore they had to riot. Gladis Sibrian said, “There is no sense of future, sense of hope that things can be changed. Why? Because they don’t feel that they have the power within themselves that they can change things” (252). Unfortunately, minority groups felt that they had no power and therefore could not instill change in American society. They turned to destruction and violence because it was the only weapon they had to be heard. Our government, mainly the police departments, took every ounce of confidence and dignity minorities had and shattered it. America is the home of the free and the land of the brave but the Los Angeles police department unfortunately contradicted this motto and shamed our nation.

Word count: 351

Reading Rodney King/Reading Urban Uprising discusses the 1991 beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police provides rich case material in how an attack perceived as unjust can backfire. Drawing on nonviolence theory, an original framework is developed to analyze attacks as potential backfires that are usually, but not always, inhibited. Attackers can use a variety of methods to inhibit backfires, including covering up the attack, devaluing the target, reinterpreting the events, using official channels, and using intimidation and bribery. Writings on the Rodney King beating include evidence on the use of each of these methods. Studying the backfire process offers improved understanding on how to oppose unjust attacks.

Race discrimination involves treating someone unfavorably because he/she is of a certain race or because of personal characteristics associated with race. Color discrimination involves treating someone unfavorably because of skin color complexion. Minority workers in the 1980’s were treated differently than white workers. They did not earn the same wages and therefore perpetuated the poverty. Race/color discrimination also can involve treating someone unfavorably because the person is married to a person of a certain race or color or because of a person’s connection with a race-based organization or group, or an organization or group that is generally associated with people of a certain color. Discrimination can occur when the victim and the person who inflicted the discrimination are the same race or color.

Hollywood cinema is one of intellectual colonization. It attempts to pass off its distorted realities and values of a ruling class as natural and desirable to Third World peoples, including Chicanos. It is not a cinema that asks us to pause and reflect on our situation. Instead, Hollywood films attempt “to take our minds off” our daily problems by pretending to be entertainment, creating a feeling of well-being and a false sense of security. It is largely escapist fare. Cheech Marin focuses on the discriminate deportation of Chicanos (United States citizens) based on their skin color. He uses humor to poke fun at the stereotypes of Mexican-Americans but at the same time he is getting his point across.

I found it interesting to see how difficult the naturalization process is for immigrants, more specifically, Mexicans. There are high fees, discrimination, anxiety, fears and intimidation.  “Immigrants who become naturalized citizens are believed to be as, if not more than, patriotic to their new country than white Americans” (Adrian Felix 602). Immigrants often work twice as hard as Americans do and take the jobs that Americans would never even think twice about. America is thought to be the land of opportunity and a place to pursue your dreams. But how can this be when we alienate certain races? We constantly put ourselves above the rest of society.

Discussion question: Why would the United States make it so difficult for Mexicans to enter the country? Is it solely based upon stereotypes?

In the war economy of Los Angeles, vast numbers of migrant workers from around the country found work in the overwhelmed shipyards down in Long Beach. Bob Jones, an African-American worker who is the leader over a small group of workers, one step below foreman. Despite the oppressive racism of 1940s Los Angeles, he has made a comfortable place for himself, with his job, a new car, and a beautiful girlfriend. Nevertheless, that racism is cause for obsessive and violent reactions. Despite his ability to make a life for himself, he resents the constant reminders of white dominance in his society. Jones reacts by lashing out at the world around him, and it repays him in violence, but in surprising mercy as well.

Bob is unable to resolve the conflicts among the different classes in Los Angeles, such as the antagonism between the established black bourgeoisie represented by the Harrison family and the more recent, working-class black migrants going towards wartime jobs. Having no language for his bodily and psychic pain, alienated from all aspects of society, and stripped of his future, livelihood, and freedom, Bob cannot create a coherent thought of community in America. There is no safe place that will protect him from racial violence. Instead, isolated and criminalized, he is ultimately drafted into the American military, a part of American society in the external sense, and forced again to become a new migrant.

Discussion question: Is America really the land of opportunity? Did immigrants/minorities have a fair chance economically speaking?

According to Greg Hise’s Border City: Race and Social Distance in Los Angeles Los Angeles and history are not terms that connect easily in the popular imaginary of American society and culture. To a certain extent, accounts of this city’s past suggest and at times imitate turn of the century promotions intended to bring immigrants to a land of prosperity and progress. Los Angeles imposed new districts and zones instituting social segregation and in turn, remapped the city.  Exposing the limited conception in history that social space is independent of space of practice, Hise asserts that zoning and social segregation are interrelated and produce coordinates of racial meaning. Social segregation (by race-ethnicity, income, gender) and functional segregation (zoning activities and assigning these to certain districts) are signature aspects of American cities that are used both in a process of place-making and identity formation that defined space in the city.

Hise’s work shows that space is both physical and social, and switches how borders informed immigrant conceptions of the city and required the appropriation, relocation, and annihilation of Mexican cultural landscapes from view. Social segregation is inherently part of American culture regardless of formal law. Using Los Angeles as an example, “racial topography” is very prevalent in city zoning. Hise found that ethnic groups throughout the city tended to reside in common neighborhoods. He concluded that the formation of identity takes place at multiple scales through space, “from an individual body (with its psychological and sensory perception of internal and external and of bodily boundaries) to an urban district, to the nation state and its boundaries with other nations” (556). In other words, identity formation takes place at multiple levels, within the self, within a school district, a community, a state, a nation state, as well as in relation to that nation compared to other nations. There are constant, often conflicting, influences in the formation of identity, especially for minority students. They are identified by where they live, where their ancestors are from, how much money their family has, the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, and whatever else can be used to label them.

Word count: 354

In Chinatown, people in positions of power are never what they seem to be, and their true nature is always harmful to the people beneath them. Cross, who has no official power but who has used his money to essentially run most of the city and the outlying area, uses the people he controls as pawns for his personal gain. This movie was based on the actual events taking place within the city of Los Angeles. Upon reading Hundley’s piece, The Great Thirst, I noticed the corruption of power within the water department just as it was shown in the movie.

In Chinatown, one of the characters, Noah Cross, says, “You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and right place, they’re capable of anything.” This is the explanation Cross gives Jake during their final confrontation at the Mulwray mansion. This line suggests there is evil in everyone’s heart and that given the right provocation, anyone is capable of committing a heinous crime. But on a deeper level, Cross doesn’t mean what he says in the slightest. The calm and even tone of Cross’s voice suggests that he sees his actions as reasonable and understandable indulgences, an even more sinister facet of his character.

Discussion question: How can this controversy be seen as a corruption of the American dream?

Ngai shows that immigration restriction, particularly national-origin and numerical quotas, re-mapped the nation both by creating new categories of racial difference. This yielded the “illegal alien,” a new legal and political subject whose inclusion in the nation was a social reality but a legal impossibility, a subject without rights and excluded from citizenship. Questions of fundamental legal status created new challenges for liberal democratic society and have directly informed the politics of multiculturalism and national belonging in our time.

I found it interesting to see the difference on opinion between the European immigrants and the non-European immigrants, such as the Japanese, Chinese and Mexican. Those who looked white were assimilated into American culture and ultimately became “Americanized”. However, I could not understand why the other groups of immigrants were not accepted into American society. Was it solely based upon the color of their skin and how they looked? The Immigration Act of 1924 called for a certain percentage of immigrants to be from a specific country, but why were some countries and areas more favored over others? It makes me question the foundation of racism.

Discussion question: Is racism solely based upon appearance?

Robin D.G Kelley introduces the idea of the Jim Crow South in his writing of We Are Not What We Seem’: Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South. They mandated racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly “separate but equal” status for black Americans. In reality, this led to treatment and accommodations that were usually inferior to those provided for white Americans, systematizing a number of economic, educational and social disadvantages. These inequalities applied to both public and private spaces. African Americans often created their own spaces so they could harbor a sense of pride and respect. These private spaces threatened white people and created a large uneasiness between the two races. With the development of these “black spaces”, whites feared they would lose all power over the African American race. It leads me to ask this question: can equality really ever be attained? Different cultures and societies can be accepted, but they will never completely be accepted.

“As Earl Lewis so aptly put it, African Americans turned segregation into ‘congregation’” (79). Churches, bars and beauty salons became “black space”. The more these spaces became popular, the more whites feared for their power. The fact that these spaces were being made was out of their control and this directly affected them as a race. Before, white people were able to do what they pleased and they took full advantage of it. These “black” spaces empowered African Americans and it brought them a sense of community, something whites were constantly trying to get rid of. Without these spaces, blacks would have struggled in every day society in terms of receiving equal treatment. This is very demeaning for whites. It shows society how cowardly they were and how wrong some of them were when they did not accept other races as equal. These spaces brought African American people together, but they further widened the gap between blacks and whites. Nothing can ever ensure happiness to all races. Even though blacks created communities, they were still outsiders because white people refused to cross that line to be a part of them, and vice versa.

Word count: 355

Playing Indian is a historical study of America’s interesting fascination with Indians. Americans insisted on retaining their civilized selves while embracing a sense of “savage freedom”. Deloria engages white readers in a complete discussion on race and identity. Beginning with the Boston Tea Party, Deloria looks behind the crude Indian dress-up show that the colonists staged. When colonial rebels wearing mock he addresses and war paint dumped crates of tea into Boston Harbor, their Indian play was more than just theatrics. It was an attempt to create a native identity apart from the Old World. While history books may describe this event as a patriotic rebellion, Deloria suggests the colonists dressed up like Indians in order to stake an original claim to this land. Americans have adopted Indian attire, images, and traditions for both political and individual needs.

Americans have always looked to the Indians to help define a national identity. But this has been difficult. What it means to be American is still in question. The reason is because white America has never known how to deal with real Native Americans. Many colonists admired Native Americans for their freedom and their connection to the land yet American Indians also stood in the way of frontier expansion and land acquisition. “There was, quite simply, no way to conceive an American identity without Indians…at the same time, there was no way to make a complete identity while they remained” (33). This contradiction explains some of the suffering Native Americans have experienced since white people came to this continent. “Indianness was the bedrock for creative American identities, but it was also one of the foundations (slavery and gender relations being two others) for imagining and performing domination and power in America” (182). Americans adopt other cultures and often times other races’ qualities but as a nation, are too proud to admit that they are ‘borrowed’. Americans adopted Indian ways and then took complete control over them. It is a way for us to feel powerful and to not lose that sense of authority.

Word count: 341

In Playing Indian, Phillip Deloria addresses how Americans are perceived. Many colonists admired Native Americans for their freedom and their connection to the land. Yet American Indians also stood in the way of frontier expansion and land acquisition. The reality that colonization neither wiped Native Americans off the continent nor fully assimilated them into the Euro-American culture largely explains this identity dilemma.

I found one of Deloria’s points extremely interesting. “For American colonists, Indians broke down these oppositions, serving as a savage Other while at the same time representing an American Self” (32). It makes the reader question the true meaning of an American. When reading textbooks and historical documents, one rarely gets the feeling that Indians’ characteristics are a tremendous part of our being as humans. Colonists liked the fact that Indians represented instinct and that raw connection to the earth. As Europeans, this is what they were lacking. However, they were too afraid to admit that they approved of “Indianness”. Americans then felt that they had to ‘play indian’ instead of outwardly embracing their culture. Since Americans cannot commit to either culture, European or Indian, they are stuck in the middle, left to question who Americans really are.

Discussion question: How would Americans be different than they are today had they not been influenced by the Native Americans?

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