Rodney King Riots 9/22/14

Today in large groups we finished the documentary outlining the Rodney King beating and the subsequent LA Riots.  As the documentary continued, we learned that much of the racial tension in Los Angeles was already pre-existing and that the Rodney King incident was only a minor part of the issues that many people were rioting about.  For example, the rapper Ice Cube insisted that many of his song lyrics were about racial injustices in the Los Angeles area.  He also stated that the riots should be no surprise as many rappers were singing about the tensions long before the Rodney incident.  We also learned that there were extremely strong tensions between the Koreans and Blacks. Essentially, the blacks felt violated due to the fact that many Korean businessmen were buying shops and stores in South Central.  So, many Koreans shops were the first to be looted during the riots.  The documentary also interviewed a Korean man who talked about how he became part of a gunfight just to protect his store from becoming looted.  Lastly, near the end of the documentary, we learned the changes that the L.A. Riot brought, such as dramatic LAPD improvements.