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WHY DO THEY HATE US?
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| When wild and brutal terror gets unleashed, we ask, “Why?”
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Reading “Journals of Lewis and Clark for Dummies,” which includes a great deal of what the native
people—American
Indians—thought of this epic adventure, the idea hits you (if it hasn't
before), “No wonder Indians don't like us.” When you look at it from
their side, how could they not hate us? |
Another such book, although more novel than history, is a new book by Walter Mosley, called “Little
Scarlet.” I try to read everything Mosley writes. |
Mosley is a black author who writes about life that he knows well, more often than not placing his
stories in the heart of the south central district of Los Angeles. |
The reason his books attract me—and others who lived in that time and place—Is that I know the
streets and some of the people and lived some of the history, mostly
from the other side of the tracks from Watts. We lived in Huntington
Park, which is just across the Alameda from Watts where this book has
its story. |
| Mosley
is master of the novel, especially of the language of the street. He
draws you into the mystery of the murder of Little Scarlet in the
aftermath of the Watts riots. But the main current of his story—at
least from my view—is dealing with the question: “Why did this happen?”
Why did a seemingly routine traffic stop on a steamy hot summer night
erupt into a flaming riot that trashed a good deal of central Los
Angeles? Why would people burn down businesses in their own
neighborhoods? Why loot and run wild? |
| People
in my all white congregation, who were all too soon putting houses on
the market, had no clue. People came out from Washington D.C., while
others came from everywhere, to spend a few days and go home to
“explain why.” We clergy were introduced to the Civil Rights Movement. |
In his story-telling way I think Walter Mosley tells “why”. It's not pretty. You have to pay attention to
feelings that rise out of poverty and despair and decades of racist treatment by white people. |
One
of Mosley’s repeat heroes is “Easy Rawlins.” He's one of the unusual
black people who “made it.” He has learned to play the white man's game
in the black community. He even helps solve some mysteries. He's an
enjoyable, real resident of central Los Angeles. He has the confidence
of good guys, bad guys and even a few white guys. But it's not easy for
Easy. At one point he speaks these words:
“I had resisted it
all through the riots: the angry voice in my heart that urged me to go
out and fight after all the hangings I had seen, after all the times 1
had been called nigger and all the doors that had been slammed in my
face. I spent my whole life at the back of buses and in the segregated
balconies at theaters. I had been arrested for walking in the wrong
part of town and threatened for looking a man in the eye. And when I
went to war to fight for freedom, I found myself in a segregated army,
treated with less respect than they treated German POWs. I had seen
people who looked like me jeered on TV and in the movies. I had had
enough and I wasn't about to turn back...” (p. 18)
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Yes, it was a terribly hot night. People were out on the streets. Who said and did what at the moment
wasn't
really the question. Clearly the powder keg had been loaded by
experiences a century old. Mayor Yorty didn't understand. Chief Parker
didn't understand. Very few in the white communities surrounding Watts
understood that the powder keg was a spark away from ignition. If you
have nothing you have nothing to lose. |
| Why,
why, why? I could try to explain what I learned during my years working
up next to Watts, during my years on the All People's Center Board,
during my years as Chair of the 92nd Street Watts Urban Redevelopment
organization. But you wouldn't understand. This boOk would lead you
much closer to an answer. |
| I
couldn't help think of the superficial answers to the "why” of 9/11 and
the terrorist activity in Palestine for all these years and in many
places in the world. Because they resent our freedom,” our leaders say.
Only a few walk into Palestinian refugee camps of people driven out of
their homelands so long ago that children and grandchildren have lived
whole lives in those places. Poverty and poor living conditions and
hopelessness are not unlike Watts. When the powerful are not just and
when many have without care for those who have not, and when despair
becomes so intense that it turns to terror and suicide, there should be
some who suspect that the answers we so easily offer as to “why” are
dead wrong. |
You probably won’t read “Little Scarlet.” If you do you’ll be led to “why” without realizing it. A good
mystery, a great novel, saturated with history you can feel.— Art Morgan, October 2004
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