Power Of The Situation Analysis
The Power of the Situation
A week of urban mayhem was ignited by the April 29, 1992 jury acquittal of four white police officers who were captured on videotape beating black motorist Rodney King. The angry response in South Central produced its own brutal footage, most dramatically the live broadcast from a hovering TV news helicopter of two black men striking unconscious with a brick, kicking, and then dancing over the body of, white truck driver Reginald Denny. The final three-day toll of what many community activists took to defiantly calling an uprising, revolt, or rebellion, was put at 53 dead, some $1 billion in property damage, nearly 2,000 arrests, and countless businesses in ashes. These two men,
Damian Williams and Henry …show more content…
In short, they believe that social and cultural forces are critical to true understanding of a person's inner self. With the
Los Angeles riots, it would truly be a mistake to attempt to interpret the actions of the participants without considering the social and cultural forces within the community. This approach is particularly useful because it looks for personal values and social conditions that develops self-limiting, aggressive, and in this case, destructive perspectives. Looking at the riots from a humanistic perspective, the issue of prejudice must be explored to understand the reasoning behind this "blind ethnic retribution" (Deviant Behavior, 1994,
Feb, 1-32). Would Reginald Denny have been pulled out of his truck and nearly beaten to death if he were black by these black men? After the verdicts, people living in south-central Los Angeles and other minority neighborhoods began chanting,
"No Justice, No Peace!" They saw the enemy as white, whether it be in the form of the white officers who beat Rodney King, or for the Denny's assailants, Denny himself. "Prejudice is the learned attitude toward a target object,
A week of urban mayhem was ignited by the April 29, 1992 jury acquittal of four white police officers who were captured on videotape beating black motorist Rodney King. The angry response in South Central produced its own brutal footage, most dramatically the live broadcast from a hovering TV news helicopter of two black men striking unconscious with a brick, kicking, and then dancing over the body of, white truck driver Reginald Denny. The final three-day toll of what many community activists took to defiantly calling an uprising, revolt, or rebellion, was put at 53 dead, some $1 billion in property damage, nearly 2,000 arrests, and countless businesses in ashes. These two men,
Damian Williams and Henry …show more content…
In short, they believe that social and cultural forces are critical to true understanding of a person's inner self. With the
Los Angeles riots, it would truly be a mistake to attempt to interpret the actions of the participants without considering the social and cultural forces within the community. This approach is particularly useful because it looks for personal values and social conditions that develops self-limiting, aggressive, and in this case, destructive perspectives. Looking at the riots from a humanistic perspective, the issue of prejudice must be explored to understand the reasoning behind this "blind ethnic retribution" (Deviant Behavior, 1994,
Feb, 1-32). Would Reginald Denny have been pulled out of his truck and nearly beaten to death if he were black by these black men? After the verdicts, people living in south-central Los Angeles and other minority neighborhoods began chanting,
"No Justice, No Peace!" They saw the enemy as white, whether it be in the form of the white officers who beat Rodney King, or for the Denny's assailants, Denny himself. "Prejudice is the learned attitude toward a target object,