L.A. riots: Good Samaritan remembers his scary truck-driver rescue

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kokonut said:
And that are for people who are black who have the choice of choosing Black, African American or Negro in the Census.

You ask anybody on the street the term "African American" and who does it represent in terms of color and they'll say black.

I've already made the distinction (before you did) that even white people born in African who become an American can call themselves as an African American. But that's silly given the context already established in America, with thanks to Jesse Jackson, race baiter and all, that blacks should use the term African American....and not that White people should use that term even if they were born out of African and became an American.
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Which means that Black people don't all think of themselves as African American. It is only white people that think of all Black people as African American. Get it?

Tell you what...why don't you go out on the street and start asking those questions in a majority Black neighborhood?
 
Waterboy said:
That is a white reporter wiriting the stuff you are quoting. Doesn't have much to do with the way Blacks call themselves or want to be called, lol. Or why it is necessary to label people with dark skin but not white people. How about we start always referring to white Americans as IrishAmerican, or German American, or Scottish America or British American, and so forth, no matter how long they have been in this country. How about every time an article is written about a white person, we are sure to mention the fact that they are white and call them white.....whatever their heritage is?
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They weren't on the ground interviewing them to determine further their ethnic background or nationality or heritage. If they want to call them White American, sure.
 
kokonut said:
They weren't on the ground interviewing them to determine further their ethnic background or nationality or heritage. If they want to call them White American, sure.
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What are you talking about. I am not talking about just the Rodney King incident. I am talking about always. Why don't we always identify a white person as white in an article? Why, when an article is written about, for instance, a white guy arrested for drunk driving, doesn't it say, So and So, White Whatever, was arrested for drunk driving. When 2 white people get in a fight, why doesn't it say, one white person, So and So Whitey, attacked so and so Other Whitey?


But it always identifies the race of the dark skinned person. Mr Black or Mr African American. Why is that?
 
Maybe I am wrong here and dredging through 6 pages is too much for me, but I thought this thread was regarding remembering the LA riots. Why has it turned into a debate regarding what to call the people involved?

This occurrence in our Nation's history should be a learning experience. We are forgetting the main topic of the OP.
 
btw - I have not seen any evidence that Rodney King is a crackhead. Nothing about him snorting a coke either. only that he had a few drinks before engaging in high-speed police chase.

Rodney King looks back without anger - CNN.com
(CNN) -- The Los Angeles riots 20 years ago this week were sparked by the acquittal of four L.A. police officers in the brutal beating of suspect Rodney King a year earlier. The turbulence that led to more than 50 deaths and $1 billion in property damage all began with a traffic violation.

A poor decision to drink and drive led to a 100-mph car chase and a chain of events that would forever change Los Angeles, its police department and the racial conversation in the United States.

King, then a 25-year-old convicted robber on parole, admittedly had a few drinks under his belt as he headed home from a friend's house.

When he spotted a police car following him, he panicked, thinking he would be sent back to prison.

So he took off.

"I had a job to go to that Monday, and I knew I was on parole, and I knew I wasn't supposed to be drinking, and I'm like, 'Oh my God,'" King told CNN last year.

Protester 'needed to vent' during riots
Realizing he couldn't outrun police but fearing what they might do to him when they caught him, King said he looked for a public place to stop.

"I saw all those apartments over there, so I said, 'I'm gonna stop right there. If it goes down, somebody will see it.'"

It did go down.

Four police officers, all of them white, struck King more than 50 times with their wooden batons and shocked him with an electric stun gun.

" 'We are going to kill you, n****r,' " King said police shouted as they beat him. The officers denied using racial slurs.

King was right in his expectation of a beating, but his hope of having a witness was fulfilled in a big way.

Not only did somebody see it, somebody videotaped it -- still a novelty in 1991, before people had cellphone cameras.

The video showed a large lump of a man floundering on the ground, surrounded by a dozen or more police officers, four of whom were beating him relentlessly with nightsticks.

One officer's swings slow down as he appears worn out by his nonstop flailing. King was beaten nearly to death. Three surgeons operated on him for five hours that morning.

The dramatic video of the episode appeared on national TV two days later. At last, blacks in L.A. -- and no doubt in other parts of the country -- had evidence to document the police brutality many Americans had known about but had denied or tolerated.

"We finally caught the Loch Ness Monster with a camcorder," King attorney Milton Grimes said.

Four LAPD officers -- Theodore Briseno, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind and Sgt. Stacey Koon -- were indicted on charges of assault with a deadly weapon and excessive use of force by a police officer.

In April 1992, after a three-month trial in the predominantly white suburb of Simi Valley, three of the officers were acquitted of all charges. But the jury, which had no black members, was deadlocked on one charge of excessive force against Powell. A mistrial was declared on that charge.

Powell's attorney, Michael Stone, said the unedited video worked against King and helped prove the officers' case.

"Most of the nation only saw a few snippets where it's the most violent. They didn't see him get up and run at Powell," Stone said.

"In a use-of-force case, if the officers do what they're trained to do, how can you find them guilty of a crime? And the jury understood that."
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KristinaB said:
Maybe I am wrong here and dredging through 6 pages is too much for me, but I thought this thread was regarding remembering the LA riots. Why has it turned into a debate regarding what to call the people involved?

This occurrence in our Nation's history should be a learning experience. We are forgetting the main topic of the OP.
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Because I used Black instead of black, and someone said only Jillio did that. So I posted a link that showed why Black with a capital was used. Post 19 and post 27. And then a bunch of people starting trying to tell me what Black people wanted to be called and why. The only problem is, I don't think a single one of them are Black.:D
 
Waterboy said:
Because I used Black instead of black, and someone said only Jillio did that. So I posted a link that showed why Black with a capital was used. Post 19 and post 27. And then a bunch of people starting trying to tell me what Black people wanted to be called and why. The only problem is, I don't think a single one of them are Black.:D
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I get that, I just don't see the reasoning to keep hashing it out over 5 pages, that's all.
 
KristinaB said:
I get that, I just don't see the reasoning to keep hashing it out over 5 pages, that's all.
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Really, me either. Except that people keep telling the Black guy he doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to Black people.:D
 
Waterboy said:
Right. I questioned the use of crackhead before. Why would someone just think he was smoking crack?
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waiting for Steinhauer to answer that question since he was the one who said he was a crackhead.
 
Bottesini said:
About whom are you speaking? What black guy is told he doesn't know what he is talking about?
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The one that everyone has been arguing with about whether to call Black people Black or African American. And all the ones that links were given to their statements of what they preferred.

As far as the question, I was asking Kokonut if he was Black.
 
Waterboy said:
The one that everyone has been arguing with about whether to call Black people Black or African American. And all the ones that links were given to their statements of what they preferred.

As far as the question, I was asking Kokonut if he was Black.
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Ok... Are you a black guy?
 
Bottesini said:
Ok... Are you a black guy?
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Like I said, I identified that a few days ago when I was asked. It was a discussion with several people. Seems like when people ask a question here, it is just because they want to start something.

How about if all the white people identify themselves as white, and then all the Black people can identify themselves as Black.
 
Waterboy said:
The one that everyone has been arguing with about whether to call Black people Black or African American. And all the ones that links were given to their statements of what they preferred.

As far as the question, I was asking Kokonut if he was Black.
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I already said they can call whatever they want themselves.
 
Waterboy said:
Which means that Black people don't all think of themselves as African American. It is only white people that think of all Black people as African American. Get it?

Tell you what...why don't you go out on the street and start asking those questions in a majority Black neighborhood?
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I already did. The consensus is that African American means black. Even asked members of the original black panther party - they all giggled at your assertions and said you were silly.
 
kokonut said:
I already said they can call whatever they want themselves.
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You sure spent a lot of time arguing about what Blacks should be called, and what the de facto label was, then. Even when you were shown what Blacks prefer in their own words.
 
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