The darker side

摘要

On august 11th 1965, a white motor-cycle cop in south Los Angeles stopped a black driver he suspected of being drunk. His action sparked a sequence of events that led to six days of race-inflamed rioting, resulting in 34 deaths, more than a thousand injuries and some 4,000 arrests. Forty years on, have the racial inequalities that fed those infamous Watts riots been smoothed away? Not nearly enough. According to a study released last week by United Way of Greater Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Urban League, blacks in the LA area fall behind whites, Asians and Latinos on virtually every measure, from homelessness and poverty to graduation levels and life expectancy. They are three times more likely than other racial groups to die from homicide or HIV/AIDS, twice as likely to be victims of violent crime and are the targets of 56% of racial-hate crimes. An astounding 32% of black males born in LA County in 2001 are likely, the study claims, to spend part of their lives in prison, compared with just 6% of whites and 17% of Latinos. "That statistic is horrifying, frightening," says William Bratton, the (white) police chief of America's second-biggest city. "We cannot accept that. That should not be the future."