Violence Looms in Heat of Summer"

Violence Looms in Heat of Summer"

This is the first of several inflammatory columns by Steven Crisp that compares black radicalism to white power movements like the Aryan Brotherhood, the Ku Klux Klan, and Nazism. Crisp is writing in response to the 1992 Rodney King L.A. riots. He blames the riots on a fringe faction of African Americans who supposedly use violence to achieve radical ends and calls on all people, black and white, to stand against these supposed radicals. He calls their violence as dangerous as those of white racist groups and warns that if riots like the L.A. riots are allowed to continue, the violence that would sweep the nation would be as bad as the Watts riots of the 1960s during the Long Hot Summer. By placing the blame solely on black radicals, Crisp denies any legitimacy to the riots and concerns over police brutality. While he acknowledges that continued structural inequalities continue to play a part in perpetuating racism, he argues that African Americans need to learn to work within the system to effect change, not try and rebel against the system. This column begins a trend of insensitive language, name-calling, and even race-baiting that led up to the newspaper burning in the Brickyard on September 25, 1992.

Steven Crisp

Steven Crisp, "Violence Looms in Heat of Summer," The Technician vol. LXXIII no. 87 (May 20, 1992): 4.

1992-05-20

Cheryl Dong

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There exists, however, a hard-core group of radical blacks who are of substantial numbers and are very vocal. They don’t want equality but supremacy. They are of the same mold as the Aryan Brotherhood except that their aim is the extermination of non-blacks.

It is this group who intends to perpetuate the violence when the weather gets hot and the tempers flare this summer. Under the cry of “No justice, no peace” heard in the aftermath of the L.A. riots, they will make an attempt to destabilize the society in which we live as law-abiding citizens. Their slick but seemingly grass-roots campaign will rouse the passions of those who are already discontented but have been working successfully within the system to effect change. The riots will start

Violence has never solved anything. Tensions are rising. The violence this summer will be unlike anything this country has seen. We saw a glimmer of the reaction expressed by those whose livelihoods and lives were in jeopardy in Los Angeles. They shot back.

Those who oppress are wrong. Those who are oppressed are justified in their indignation. This time, however, if the oppressed fight outside the system for the changes thare needed, there will be bloodshed and it won’t be the blood of their intended victims

People are sick of being violently violated and they won’t stand for it anymore. They are fighting back against these hard-cord, fascist radicals. The system, for good or bad, exists. Work within it and be patient. Don’t allow your actions to exhibit the behavior that people of any color consider stereotypical. It just hurts your cause. Whether it be right or wrong, the adage that one has to go along to get along still holds true. Any gains that blacks have made towards justice have been erased or muddied by the actions of their own radical fringe. Stop.

Let the heat this summer be from the sun and not the warm blood of littered bodies on the streets of our nation.

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