{"id":113923,"date":"2017-05-01T17:34:55","date_gmt":"2017-05-02T01:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=113923"},"modified":"2017-05-01T17:34:55","modified_gmt":"2017-05-02T01:34:55","slug":"venerating-havoc-academia-and-the-media-have-learned-nothing-in-the-25-years-since-the-l-a-riots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=113923","title":{"rendered":"Venerating Havoc – Academia and the media have learned nothing in the 25 years since the L.A. riots"},"content":{"rendered":"

Heather Mac Donald writes<\/a>: Another five-year anniversary of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, another opportunity for media glorification of racial mayhem. The New York Times outdoes itself this year with a fawning profile of one of the sadists who stomped and bludgeoned trucker Reginald Denny nearly to death on April 29, 1992, as Denny tried to maneuver his truck through the already anarchic intersection of Florence and Normandie in South Central Los Angeles.
\nHenry Keith Watson, an ex-con who had just assaulted an Asian man, stood on Reginald Denny\u2019s neck and head as others kicked him. Watson never served any time for his participation in this grotesque explosion of racial hatred. The Times notes admiringly that Watson apologized to Denny on a talk show.
\nThat forced contrition\u2014an apology was a condition of his probation sentence as well\u2014was short-lived. \u201cNow, 25 years later, Mr. Watson is not in the mood to say sorry,\u201d Times reporter Jennifer Medina writes. Of course not. Why should he be? Watson \u201ccalled himself \u2018an angry black man\u2019 one afternoon this week as he sat on the porch of his home,\u201d Medina reports. \u201cAs he has done each anniversary, he is selling Florence and Normandie T-shirts and throwing a block party on Saturday\u201d\u2014a natural way to commemorate a conflagration that took over 50 lives and caused an estimated $1 billion in property damage. The Times does not bother speaking to any of the thousands of victims of that racial mayhem, instead foregrounding Watson\u2019s complaints about ongoing \u201coppression.\u201d \u201cNothing has changed, nothing,\u201d Watson grouses. A friend of Watson\u2019s, Nathan Smith, who was on parole in 1992, predicts that another riot is likely. Back then, Smith says, \u201cWe all felt like, \u2018We\u2019ve been telling you we\u2019re angry and you\u2019re not listening, so now we\u2019re going to show you.\u201d \u201cShowing you\u201d consisted of burning down businesses that have struggled to survive constant robberies and assaults on their employees and have only succeeded due to a fierce work ethic. \u201cShowing you\u201d also consisted of pulling drivers from their cars and mutilating them. Even if there were some legitimate \u201cyou\u201d that is responsible for the social chaos of the ghetto, it is certainly not a Korean convenience store owner or a construction worker returning from work.
\nThe familiar \u201cnothing has changed\u201d complaint embodies the entitlement mentality. Its logic is the following: \u201cWe destroy the businesses that have served us for decades; we unleash savage violence against every ethnic group other than our own. So why aren\u2019t things better now in our neighborhoods? Government and society owe us reparations in response to our feral rage against other people\u2019s livelihoods and lives.\u201d But a riot is inevitably going to make the local situation worse. Mainstream businesses will be even less willing to move into a riot zone; property values, already depressed by high crime, will plummet further. Though governments usually do respond to riots with cash and programs, such intervention is not going to make any difference unless individuals in the community make better personal choices: paying attention in class, doing homework, not committing crime, staying in a job, and not having children out-of-wedlock.
\nThe University of California\u2019s massive diversity bureaucracy also got into the game of riot whitewash. UCLA\u2019s Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, Jerry Kang, is sponsoring a student art competition to commemorate the \u201csocial rebellion.\u201d Students can submit performance art, poetry, or visual art to \u201ccritically examine the root causes of this historic event . . . and its relevance to contemporary issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion.\u201d Do not expect any installations featuring the charred remains of torched business. To gain \u201cinspiration\u201d for their art works, the competitors had to attend at least one panel in an April 28 conference on the \u201cLos Angeles uprisings,\u201d also organized by the Vice Chancellor of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. That conference assembled ethnic studies professors and racial activists; no first responders were included.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heather Mac Donald writes: Another five-year anniversary of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, another opportunity for media glorification of racial mayhem. The New York Times outdoes itself this year with a fawning profile of one of the sadists who stomped … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-los-angeles"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t