"For King and Country" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (6 March 2016)

It has been twenty five years since the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles. The event continues to resonate internationally, especially given recent events in India. 

The 3^rd of March, 2016 marked the 25^th anniversary of the late Rodney King’s beating by Los Angeles police officers. Over a year later in May 1992, the tumultuous scenes of civil unrest in Los Angeles could not have felt any closer to home, even as my family and I watched them on the television in Goa. The newscaster offered a recap of the story that we had been following intently since April. Tensions had flared in the aftermath of the verdict in the King beating trial. Despite videotaped evidence by George Holliday who lived near where the beating had taken place, the jury exonerated the policemen responsible for violently assaulting the black motorist. The acquitted policemen, as well as the jury, had been all white. In a year, we would be emigrating to the United States. Los Angeles was our destination. And, like King, my first name is Rodney.

King was so much a part of my consciousness that I would often introduce myself as “Rodney… You know… like King? Rodney King?” I needed the added qualification because, as I was told on more than one occasion, it was odd that someone of my racial background would have “a name like that.” In a city as diverse as Los Angeles, multiculturalism does not equate with awareness or the lack of segregation, and the same could be said for the many places I have called home across the world, India included.

During the unrest, when King famously made his televised plea for the people of his city to “get along,” his statement became the stuff of legendary ridicule. Was it that the notion of co-existing amicably was so simplistic, or that the sentiment had come from an ordinary black man with a rap sheet who had been beaten by the police? What the incident had done was to raise questions about police brutality and whose rights the keepers of the peace were protecting. For South Asian Americans, among members of other ethnic communities, similar issues of racial profiling and civil rights violations rose to a crescendo in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks. Racial injustice may not be unique to any one minority group, but it is this very ubiquity of violence that should make us more mindful of its existence, as well as the role the state plays in using violence to undermine the rights of minorities. 

Echoes of the legacy of King’s beating can be heard 25 years later in the contemporary United States where the Black Lives Matters movement continues to draw attention to the deaths of Black people at the hands of law enforcement. Similarly, the movement incited by the January death of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula in India has underscored how state-backed educational institutions perpetuate upper caste privilege while turning a blind eye to the plight of Dalit students. It is no coincidence that in the Vemula moment, charges of anti-nationalism have been levied against those on campuses that have been allegedly involved in questioning abuses of state power. Even so, it is essential to note that current discussions of political dissent and freedom of speech cannot stand in for the struggles of Kashmiris or Dalits.    

King’s arrest still resonates internationally 25 years later as evidence of how it is often the targets of state violence who bear the brunt of having to prove their victimisation. If even after his death, there continue to be efforts to depoliticise Vemula’s suicide through ludicrous claims by the police that he was not actually Dalit, there are parallels to be drawn to the fashion in which Black victims of police violence in the United States find themselves having to prove their lack of criminality. In her article “Endangered/Endangering: Schematic Racism and White Paranoia” (1993), Judith Butler explains how King’s body was made synonymous with a threat that required policing to ensure white safety. Similarly in India, Dalit bodies become the site of recognition of upper caste privilege; in effect, saying Vemula may not have been Dalit attempts to reduce upper caste culpability in his death. 

While King’s beating highlighted the racialised nature of state-sponsored violence, it was never his intention to be a cause célèbre. “Long after your case is closed, you are going to have to be Rodney King for the rest of your life. Do you think you can handle that?” attorney Steven Lerman had asked his client, the Los Angeles Times reported in a story following King’s death in 2012. “Steve, I just don’t know,” King replied. The article also quotes an earlier interview in which King mused, “People look at me like I should have been like Malcolm X or Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks … But it's hard to live up to some people's expectations...” King was an ordinary man upon whom national attention had been thrust. Yet, 25 years later, his story still bears relevance. The same will be true of Rohith Vemula, an ordinary man whose mind was “a glorious thing made up of stardust”, a young person who could not live long enough to see things change, but one who hoped his death would not be in vain.

From The Goan.

    

"The Man Who Wouldn't be King" - INDIA CURRENTS (California - August 2013)

It was May 1992. Los Angeles was still on fire. Although the tumultuous scene was on our television set in India, it could not have felt any closer to home. The newscaster offered a recap of the story that my family had been following intently since April. Tensions had flared in the aftermath of the verdict in the Rodney King beating trial. Despite videotaped evidence, the jury had exonerated the policemen responsible for violently assaulting the black motorist. The acquitted policemen, as well as the jury, had been all white. In a year, we would be emigrating to the United States. Los Angeles was our destination. And, like King, my first name is Rodney.

King was so much a part of my consciousness that I would often introduce myself as “Rodney… You know… like King? Rodney King?” I often needed the added qualification because, as I was told on more than one occasion, it was odd that someone of my racial background would have “a name like that.” As a teenager, newly immigrated to the States, my job at a fast food restaurant was my firsthand introduction to my new city’s racialization. In many ways, my workplace was a representative microcosm of Los Angeles – they were both equally diverse. Yet, what was plain to see was that while the staff at the restaurant were generally first generation immigrants, it was largely upper management and the clientele that were white.

During the unrest, when King famously made his televised plea for the people of his city to “get along,” his statement became the stuff of legendary ridicule. Was it that the notion of co-existing amicably was so simplistic, or that the sentiment had come from an ordinary black man with a rap sheet who had been beaten by the police? What the incident had done was to raise questions about police brutality and whose rights the keepers of the peace were protecting. For South Asians, among members of other ethnic communities, similar issues of racial profiling and civil rights violations rose to a crescendo in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks. Racial injustice may not be unique to any one minority group, but it is this very ubiquity of violence that should make us more mindful. Events in the current moment prove the need for us to voice our outrage, especially when it comes to those as defenseless as an ordinary, unarmed, young black boy whose life and rights seem to not matter at all.

Itself a legacy of the civil rights era, the Hart-Celler Act of 1965 aimed to disprivilege national origin in changing how immigrants would be allowed entry to the United States. Even in so doing, the express purpose of this change was to draw in highly skilled immigrant labor. The contemporary visibility of an upwardly mobile South Asian, and more specifically Indian, presence in America can be attributed to the 1965 measure. While 9/11 proved that class privilege was no deterrent to racial victimization, clearly, not all South Asians who immigrate to America do so from the technocratic ranks. Provisions made through family reunification clauses have diversified the community’s class demographics. In my family’s case, our petition for immigrant entry was made on the basis of my mother’s East African roots. As Goans of Kenyan heritage, despite the lack of quotas, it is evident that our case was helped because we were not only South Asian but also African – we ticked the diversity boxes for two developing regions. 

It is within these slippages of race and nationality that my personal experiences of being a dark-skinned resident of the United States have taken shape. The arrest occurred in January 2009. It had been a few short months after I had become an American citizen; short months after I participated in an election that brought to office America’s first black president – a man who, like me, had an East African history. Just off the bus from work, I was on foot, a few blocks away from my apartment in West Hollywood when a siren blared behind me. In broad daylight, I was handcuffed in my own neighborhood and shoved into the back seat of a deputy sheriff’s car. Citing a violation of the fourth amendment – which protects people from search and seizure without justifiable cause – I took my case to the ACLU, stating that I had been a victim of racial profiling. “What makes you think this

was about race?” the lawyer had asked. “What would make me think it wasn’t?” I wanted to say, but was stopped from doing so because the case just was not high profile enough for the organization. Technically, I had not been arrested because I had not been brought to the station; never mind that one never forgets what a pair of cuffs feels like.

“Rodney, huh?” The officer was looking at my California ID while the cold steel continued to bite into my wrists. Upon finding my UCLA identity card, establishing that I was an instructor there, the officer’s tone changed dramatically. “The reason I stopped you,” he said while uncuffing me, “is because you resemble a man who committed a burglary in this area earlier today.” Leaving aside the ludicrousness of why someone would be traipsing about on a brightly lit sunny day just after they had perpetrated a crime, I got straight to the point and said, “You stopped me because you made an assumption about my race.” Inadvertently confirming my suspicion, the officer responded, “It doesn’t matter if you’re a black. All that matters is that you matched the description I have.”

Was it because “a black” was in the wrong neighborhood? The irony should be apparent that in an area thought of as being liberal because of a large gay and lesbian presence, my complaint to the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Department was met with the party line that, after an internal investigation, it was ascertained the officer had acted in accordance with policies and no evidence of racial profiling could be found. I am sure it was also not racial profiling when a San Mateo policeman stopped me for questioning in September 2011 claiming that I resembled a criminal. “I’ll show you what I mean,” the officer said, producing an image. “You have the same eyebrows,” he explained helpfully. It was probably also not racial profiling when I was questioned extensively at airport immigration in September 2001. 

In spite of my name, my dark skin, and my African history, unlike Rodney King, I have the “privilege” of proving that I am not African American. “Long after your case is closed, you are going to have to be Rodney

King for the rest of your life. Do you think you can handle that?” attorney Steven Lerman had asked his client, the Los Angeles Times reported in a story following King’s death last year. “Steve, I just don’t know,” King replied. The same article quotes an earlier interview in which King had mused, “People look at me like I should have been like Malcolm X or Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks. I should have seen life like that and stay out of trouble … But it's hard to live up to some people's expectations, which [I] wasn't cut out to be.” King was an ordinary man upon whom national attention had been thrust without him having asked for it. As I mourn the miscarriage of justice in the Trayvon Martin case, I am reminded of an ordinary King. These are the legacies that remind us that injustice is all the greater because of its ordinariness, and all the more ordinary when one is black. 

The print version of this India Currents article appears online here, and also on The Aerogram. My thanks to the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club for recognizing this piece with an award for analysis at the 37th Annual Greater Bay Area Journalism Awards on May 31, 2014.