On June 7th, National Geographic had a live event called “LA 92: An Evening of Reflection, Discussion and Action.” It started with a screening of the 2017 documentary film LA 92, which is available on YouTube for free for a limited time, which uses only archival footage and news commentary from the time to tell the whole story of how it started, why it happened, and what came afterwards. The conversation that followed, moderated by National Geographic’s Executive Editor of History and Culture, Debra Adams Simmons, included a variety of voices from the media in addition to the directors of LA 92.
“LA 92 was initially conceived by the production company Lightbox and they had set it up with National Geographic because the 25th anniversary was coming up,” Co-Director TJ Martin shared, who was shown a proof-of-concept reel of footage from the LA riots and was struck by a moment when a Black man named Art Washington is screaming and crying at a crown after his business was burned down by looters. “In that little moment, it was crystal clear for us that the only way to approach this was to do it through the lens of those that experienced it, but those that experienced it in that time and not to create a didactic talking head documentary that creates a distance between those that were living in Los Angeles at the time.”
Martin’s goal was to create an immersive and visceral experience that would avoid the typical essay component of these types of documentaries. Without any dialogue, the film opens and closes with a juxtaposition of footage and news clips from the 1965 Watts Riots. “How specific the particulars were in ‘65 to ‘92, that also solidified the thesis for us that we’re in a Groundhog Day cyclical nature for us.
Dan Lindsay is the other Director of LA 92 who was asked about his hope for the future giving the recent round of protests. “I think of myself as like a hopeful cynic, if that’s even a thing,” Dan shared. “The optics are hopeful. It’s good to see the amount of people that are out in the streets and the diversity of the people. But as the film shows, there was a lot of that in ‘92. A lot of people coming out to clean South LA and a lot of the initiatives.” He mentioned that plans made by the city after the riots in 1965 and 1992 fell apart and while doing research, no records of the plans from ‘65 could be found, not even in the city archives. “I take the long view and I’m hopeful, but the cynical side of me wants to see things in action.”
Jelani Cobb is a writer for The New Yorker who added more insight into the history of the issue with police brutality towards Black people. “The idea of law and order strikes Black people’s ears differently because it was perfectly legal to Jim Crow people… There was order, but there was not justice and these police departments in the south had the ordinance and the slave patrols… This has been the nature of this relationship as long as there’s been a relationship… When you look at all of the major uprisings of the 20th century, nearly all of them are brought on by the excess use of police force.”
Filmmaker Dream Hampton (Surviving R. Kelly) shared something that she thinks offers a way forward. “I just want to lift up a wonderful set of demands that I’ve seen that I myself am in alignment with,” Dream shared. These include defunding police departments, which just happened in Minneapolis, demilitarizing communities, removing police from schools, providing safe housing, and investing in care. “We have a new generation. Martin Luther King talked about how racism’s ultimate logic is genocide. I think we’ve always understood that that’s what’s at stake. That’s why we take to the streets, because we’re fighting a genocidal culture out to destroy us.”
“This is America and race is part of the founding, the blood of the democracy that we’ve always been trying to figure out how to manage,” explained Jamal Simmons, a CBS News contributor and hos of #ThisIsFYI. “You’ve got people like my family who’ve been here longer than most people who are white in this country, and yet we get a lot less of the benefits of living here.” For too long, there’s been a north vs. south mentality of racism in the country that deflects the problem to another side. “That is the tragedy of America. You want to change it, you have to focus on the outcomes. Are we achieving outcomes where we have more fairness in society?”
Another participant was Diversity Educator Jane Elliott, who started the infamous “Blue eyes – Brown eyes” exercise in 1968 to help teach kids about how racism feels. “The first thing we have to do is educate the educators,” she explained. “It’s my job to lead my students out of the ignorance of racism… there aren’t three or four different races on the face of the earth, there is only one. We’re the human race.” She further explained how human life on earth started in Africa, where people spread out to populate the earth and they evolved into different skin tones out of necessity based on geography. “If I trace my DNA back far enough, it will connect to a country in Africa.” She hates the word white, instead preferring to say she’s faded. To prove her point, she held up a copy of National Geographic’s special issue titled “Black or White,” which features two twins on the cover, one who looks white and the other who looks Black. “There’s a way out of this and it is education. It is leading people out of ignorance… It isn’t a group of many races, it’s a group of people who descended from the Black race.”
History is full of moments where a movement gains traction and gets attention and things seem to change for a moment, but it takes dedication and commitment to make it a lasting change. “Most of these problems are not federal, they’re state and local issues,” Jelani Cobb added about how the election in November is important, but that won’t solve all the problems. He compared the changes in power of police departments to how schools evolved over time. They started by just being a place to educate kids, but later took on additional responsibilities that have included Americanizing immigrants, providing immunizations, being a source of nutrition, and being polling places for elections. “Schools have greatly expanded their roles over the centuries. The same thing has happened with police, except they have guns.”
Debra Adams Simmons closed the panel by reminding viewers that donations make a big impact. She praised National Geographic’s parent company, Disney, for their $5 million donation to organizations working to enact social reform. National Geographic recommends making donations to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Equal Justice Initiative.