The Los Angeles Riots Revisited: The Changing Face of the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Challenge for Educators

Abstract

This article provides a brief history of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), including an analysis of the demographic shifts and the tensions between the African American and Korean American communities at the time of the Los Angeles riots in 1992. The article includes my own experiences teaching high school English during the uprising, and relies on some of the ideas of Critical Race Theory to stress the need for educators to hold uncomfortable discussions about race and racism in educational settings. The article further includes an examination of issues and concerns that faced the district in the years leading up to the King verdict (racial isolation, poor academic achievement in some schools, teacher frustration, and, an ultimate strike in 1989, gang violence), and provides a snapshot of current achievement levels for children in LAUSD.

Notes

1. In the opening hours of the unrest on April 29, 1992, Reginald O. Denny was driving his truck through South Los Angeles and was dragged from his cab by an angry mob and beaten nearly to death. His beating was captured on videotape by news helicopters and, like the King beating, it would be shown over and over on television for weeks, shocking the nation and the world.

2. This article does not provide a complete definition or analysis of CRT. For a better understanding of this theory and its implications, see Delgado and Stefancic (2002), Villenas and Deyhle (1999), Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995), and Tate (1997).

3. With the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, approximately 80,000 Mexicans decided to remain in the United States and receive American citizenship (PBS 2007). Further, the treaty promised that these new citizens would have “the enjoyment of all the rights of citizens of the United States according to the principles of the Constitution, and that “they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty and property” (Tate 1969; Treaties and conventions 1871).