Riot vs. Uprising

riot (n): a noisy, violent public disorder caused by a group or crowd of persons, as by a crowd protesting against another group, a governmental policy, etc., in the streets.

uprising (n): an insurrection or revolt; an act of rising up.

For years after 1992, what happened following the Rodney King police brutality verdicts was simply referred to as "the riots" or "the LA riots". People would ask, "Where were you during the riots?" or "See that burned out building over there? That happened during the riots." You did not need to qualify which riot or when, you just knew what someone was talking about.

With history and perspective behind me, I now no longer refer to them as the LA Riots, but rather the LA Uprising. While this may seem like simple semantics, there is a real intentional choice (at least for me) behind this change. To me, riots imply bedlam and chaos, with no real meaning behind their genesis. An uprising, however, gives some power back to the historical events that led up to a group of people taking to the streets and expressing an anger, fear, and/or disillusionment.

Do not get me wrong, there was certainly bedlam and chaos in the streets of Los Angeles in 1992, but does calling them "a riot" give those of us who live outside of that world some level of emotional, intellectual, or empathetic distance? Is there a difference between looting a liquor store and throwing boxes of tea off of a ship? And if so, why?

For this week's blog post, I want students to watch the video linked here and then reflect on whether they consider what happened in Los Angeles in 1992 to, in fact, be a riot or an uprising. Why do you choose one over the other? Was it hard to make a choice and, if so, why? Do semantics matter? 

LA 92

This week in Literature of California we are kicking off our work with Anna Deveare Smith's Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 by gathering a little bit of historical context. We are doing so by watching the documentary LA 92. While most of my students are likely familiar with some aspects of the 1992 uprising in Los Angeles following the Rodney King police verdicts, they hopefully are learning a lot more about the events leading up to it as well as the variety of experiences and multiple perspectives that must be understood in order to fully grasp the magnitude of this event.

For this week's blog post, I simply want students to write one to two paragraphs reflecting first on what you knew of the Los Angeles uprising of 1992 before starting to watch the film. Then, talk about what you have learned from LA 92 so far. Did watching the film change your understanding of the event? What questions do you have and what questions were answered? How do they see the events of 1992 playing out in your experiences today as California citizens?

The Greatest Minds of Our Generation?

Last week in Literature of California, we started out looking at the rise of suburbia in post-World War II California and the irony of a place traditionally seen as wild, unfettered, and non-conformist also giving birth to the ultimate symbol of conformity: the faceless suburb. We also watched an episode of "Father Knows Best" to understand how this idea of the "perfect nuclear family" permeated American culture with the advent of the "television age".

We used this understanding to help set up a world in which the Beat Generation arises as a resistant voice to the seemingly pervasive attitude of conformity of the 1950's. We watched an early episode of  "The Twilight Zone" in which Rod Sterling challenges the selling points of suburban life (family, trust, safety, etc.) with an ironic and critical eye. This then led to a quick overview of the Beat Generation, what they stood for, as well as the famous people and landmarks of the movement.

One cannot really talk about the Beat Generation without mentioning Allen Ginsberg's 1955 epic poem Howl. Inspired by a vision Ginsberg had while taking the hallucinogenic drug peyote, the poem has come to symbolize the ethics and style of Beat poetry. The poem, which features explicit references to drug use and sexuality (both heterosexual and homosexual), was deemed "obscene" and when Lawrence Ferlinghetti sold the poem at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, the store manager was arrested and all copies of the poem were seized. The charges were challenged and eventually the case reached the California Supreme Court where, in 1957, the charges were overturned and the poem was deemed to have "redeeming social importance".

It is one thing to read Howl, but another thing to hear it from Ginsberg's own mouth. For this week's blog post, I want students to watch/listen to Howl as read by Ginsberg himself back in 1959 in Chicago. It is a long poem and I think best experienced if you have the poem itself in front of you as well. You can find a copy of the poem here. After you have listened to and read the poem, write a 1-2 paragraph reflection in which you discuss your thoughts on the poem, what impressions it made on you, and specific lines that you found particularly interesting and/or memorable. Enjoy!

Implicit Bias

For this blog entry, I want you to discuss the video you watched in class about implicit bias as well as the two implicit bias texts you took. In your blog reflection, please make sure to answer the following questions:

• What did I think of the video? Did I learn anything new? Were there any windows or mirrors?
• Which bias tests did they take. What were the results? Were they surprised by the results?
• How does this understanding of implicit bias relate to our work with If He Hollers Let Him Go?

Please submit this by the start of our next class.

For your reference, a link to the video is here and the link to the implicit bias tests is here.

The "Cover" Up

Our first novel for the new year in Literature of California is Chester Himes' If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), which follows four days in the life of a black, Ohio-transplant who has come to California to work in the booming World War II shipyard industry. Whereas the cover of the edition that we are using in class is fairly subdued (Caucasian and black fingers intertwined with one another), we can see from the above images of previous covers of the novel, that the artwork was more provocative. For this week's blog post, I want students to take a hard look at these book covers and write a short reflection on what they think these covers say about the themes of the novel that they have encountered so far in their reading. Are these covers accurate? Problematic? Which one really stands out to you and why?