Civil Racism

Zusammenfassung The 1992 Los Angeles rebellion! also known as the Rodney King riots! followed the acquittal of four police officers who had been charged with assault and the use of excessive force against a Black motorist. The violence included widespread looting and destruction of stores! many of which were owned or operated by Korean Americans in neighborhoods t

Auteur

Lynn Mie Itagaki is assistant professor in the departments of English and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies and the Program Coordinator in Asian American Studies at The Ohio State University.

Texte du rabat

The 1992 Los Angeles rebellion, also known as the Rodney King riots, followed the acquittal of four police officers who had been charged with assault and the use of excessive force against a Black motorist. The violence included widespread looting and destruction of stores, many of which were owned or operated by Korean Americans in neighborhoods that were predominantly Black and Latina/o. Civil Racism examines a range of cultural reactions to the âriotsâ? anchored by calls for a racist civility, a central component of the aesthetics and politics of the postâ civil rights era. Lynn Mie Itagaki argues that the rebellion interrupted the rhetoric of âcivil racism,â? which she defines as the preservation of civility at the expense of racial equality. As an expression of structural racism, Itagaki writes, civil racism exhibits the activeâ though often unintentionalâ perpetuation of discrimination through oneâ s everyday engagement with the state and society. She is particularly interested in how civility manifests in societal institutions such as the family, the school, and the neighborhood, and she investigates dramatic, filmic, and literary texts by African American, Asian American, and Latina/o artists and writers that contest these demands for a racist civility. Itagaki specifically addresses what she sees as two âblind spotsâ? in society and in scholarship. One is the invisibility of Asians and Latinas/os in media coverage and popular culture that, she posits, importantly shapes Blackâ White racial formations in dominant mainstream discourses about race. The second is the scholarly separation of two critical traditions that should be joined in analyses of racial injustice and the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion: comparative race studies and feminist theories. Civil Racism insists that the 1992 âriotsâ? continue to matter, that the artistic responses matter, and thatâ more than twenty years laterâ debates about issues of race, ethnicity, class, and gender are more urgent than ever.

Contenu

Contents
A Note on Terminology
Preface
Introduction: The 1992 Los Angeles Crisis
Part I: Racial Civility

1. Model Family Values and Sentimentalizing the Crisis
2. In/Civility, with Colorblindness and Equal Treatment for All
3. The Territorialization of Civility, the Spatialization of Revenge
   Part II: Counterdiscourse of Civility
4. At the End of Tragedy
5. The Media Spectacle of Racial Disaster
   Epilogue: Lives That Matter
   Acknowledgments
   Notes
   Bibliography
   Index