When LA's wounds left a nation scarred

'Too disrespectful'

"For people to see that it was like, 'Oh my God, we finally got footage' because this happens all the time," she said. "So now, we are not just mad about Rodney King; people are mad about every other black and Latino man who had a Rodney King experience, and nobody knew about it, and nobody could do anything about it."

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", she said.

"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. His organization is dedicated to helping African Americans and others in underserved communities.

"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.

Floyd died on May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis after Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, knelt on the black man's neck for more than nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and pinned to the ground. His death, which a bystander captured on her cellphone, sparked protests around the world against racial injustice. Still, the black community waited with great concern for Chauvin's sentencing because police are rarely held accountable in the US, Lawson said.

"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.

Gina Fields was a college student studying at the University of California in Berkeley when the riots broke out in 1992, but the tension in Los Angeles during the months leading up to it was not lost on her.

"There was a lot of anger in the community, and people didn't really have a place to put that anger," said Fields, who grew up in South LA and now heads the Empowerment Congress West Area Neighborhood Development Council.

Many African Americans were being pushed out of South LA by the influx of immigrants from South Korea, Mexico and Central America. The black neighborhoods in the city continued to shrink, while Korea-town and other ethnic communities expanded, she said.

"Prices were rising, rents were going up and the money people were making wasn't increasing," Fields told China Daily.

African Americans also faced hurdles in getting business loans. They were instead given to Korean Americans who opened liquor stores in black neighborhoods, she said.