Reading Rodney King/Reading Urban Uprising

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 19 APR 1993

In 17 often insightful essays, academics and social critics explore the connections between the Rodney King incidents--the beating, the trial and what the editor terms the subsequent ``uprising''--and conditions in America's cities. Though some essays suffer from redundancy and overly academic language, others offer provocative observations. Houston A. Baker finds King's silence during his trial emblematic of the enforced silence of African Americans during the age of slavery. Arguing that the King verdict was not a unique failure of justice, Kimberle Crenshaw and Gary Peller suggest that lawyers for the Los Angeles police officers used the same tactic of decontextualizing evidence that the U.S. Supreme Court used in a decision weakening the claim of minority-owned businesses for ``set-aside'' government contracts. Describing the failure of police to protect Korean merchants, Sumi K. Cho observes how the Korean community, though stereotyped as a ``a model minority,'' was sacrificed in the interests of white dominance. Gooding-Williams teaches philosophy and black studies at Amherst College.