Multiplicity and Collective Contestation in the 1992 Los Angeles Riots/Rebellion

Chapter 7 takes up the political unintelligibility of the 1992 Los Angeles (LA) Riot/Rebellion to understand—if not why the riots remain unintelligible to us as political contestation of political conditions—how this unintelligibility is produced and what significance it bears for us now. While riots (and race riots in particular) might be politically intelligible under certain conditions, the consolidation of anti-Black racism with riots throughout the latter twentieth century rendered “America’s first multiracial riot” particularly unintelligible as a political contestation of constitutive exclusion. I discuss the interrelation of gender, class, and sexuality in the Rodney King beating, the murder of Latasha Harlins, and the multiracial geography of the riots to articulate how the continued unintelligibility of the 1992 Los Angeles Riot/Rebellion, as well as contemporary riots, constitute political agency now.

Asian Americans and the 1992 Los Angeles Riots/Uprising

Although the 1992 Los Angeles riots have been described as a “race riot” sparked by the acquittals of a group of mostly white police officers charged with excessively beating black motorist Rodney King, the widespread targeting and destruction of Asian-owned (mainly Korean) property in and around South Central Los Angeles stands out as one of the most striking aspects of the uprising. For all the commentary generated about the state of black-white relations, African American youths, and the decline of America’s inner cities, the riots also gave many Americans their first awareness of the presence of a Korean immigrant population in Southern California, a large number of Korean shop owners, and the existence of what was commonly framed as the “black-Korean conflict.” For Korean Americans, and Asian Americans more generally, the Los Angeles riots represented a shattered “American dream” and brought focus to their tenuous hold on economic mobility and social inclusion in a society fraught by racial and ethnic tension. The riots furthermore marked a turning point that placed Asian immigrants and Asian Americans at the center of new conversations about social relations in a multiracial America, the place of new immigrants, and the responsibilities of relatively privileged minorities toward the less privileged.