Los Angeles Riots (1992)

No one will soon forget the image, blazed across the airwaves, of armed Korean Americans taking to the rooftops as their businesses went up in flames during the Los Angeles riots. Why Korean Americans? What stoked the wrath the riots unleashed against them? "Blue Dreams is the first book to make sense of these questions, to show how Korean Americans, variously depicted as immigrant seekers after the American dream or as racist merchants exploiting African Americans, emerged at the crossroads of conflicting social reflections in the aftermath of the 1992 riots.

The situation of Los Angeles's Korean Americans touches on some of the most vexing issues facing American society today: ethnic conflict, urban poverty, immigration, multiculturalism, and ideological polarization. Combining interviews and deft socio-historical analysis, "Blue Dreams gives these problems a human face and at the same time clarifies the historical, political, and economic factors that render them so complex. In the lives and voices of,Korean Americans, the authors locate a profound challenge to cherished assumptions about the United States and its minorities.

Why did Koreans come to the United States? Why did they set up shop in poor inner-city neighborhoods? Are they in conflict with African Americans? These are among the many difficult questions the authors answer as they probe the transnational roots and diversity of Los Angeles's Korean Americans. Their work finally shows us in sharp relief and moving detail a community that, despite the blinding media focus brought to bear during the riots, has nonetheless remained largely silent and effectively invisible. An important corrective to the formulaic accountsthat have pitted Korean Americans against African Americans, "Blue Dreams places the Korean American story squarely at the center of national debates over race, class, culture, and community.

In the spring of 1992 five days of rioting laid waste to South Central Los Angeles, took scores of lives, cost the city more than $900 million in property damages, and captured the attention of horrified people worldwide. Lou Cannon combines extensive research with interviews from hundreds of survivors, offering the only definitive story behind what happened and why.

Official Negligence takes a hard look at the circumstances leading up to the riots. Cannon reveals how the videotape of the brutal beating of Rodney King had been sensationally edited by a local TV station, how political leaders required LAPD officers to carry metal batons despite evidence linking them to the rising toll of serious injury in the community, and how poorly prepared the city was for the violence that erupted.

Since the early nineteenth century, African-Americans have turned to Black newspapers to monitor the mainstream media and to develop alternative interpretations of public events. Ronald Jacobs tells the stories of these newspapers--in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles--for the first time, comparing African-American and "mainstream" media coverage of racial crises such as the Watts riot, the beating of Rodney King, the Los Angeles uprisings and the O. J. Simpson trial. In an engaging yet scholarly style, Jacobs shows us why a strong African-American press is still needed today.