This Series
Race In LA was conceived following the 2019 mass shooting in El Paso, Texas. LAist staffers gathered and shared stories about being racially profiled; about being put in a racial or ethnic box; about feeling unsafe; about never being "enough" of an American. Our newsroom realized there was more we could do to make sure diverse voices are heard in our coverage.
From June 2020 to July 2021, we published your stories each week to continue important conversations about race/ethnicity, identity and how both affect our lived experiences.
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When he tuned in to a radio interview with a top law enforcement official, and the topic of racism came up, Keith Taylor was hoping to hear some sympathy for Black people killed by police. Or perhaps, "some idea of how to work in earnest to combat this pervasive issue." What he heard instead brought back painful memories from many years back. -
Growing up in the mostly white Orange County suburbs, she felt safer staying quiet, keeping her feelings to herself whenever stung by subtle or overt racism. But over time, she found her voice. -
I'm a 32-year-old black man. Last Saturday, another 32-year-old black man breathed his last breaths miles from where I work. In the wake of his death, I reflect on all the ways he could've been me. -
"Things that violate the racial rules in L.A. -- like everywhere else -- are real. And you shouldn't fall into the trap of minimizing them because they're exceptions or simplifying them to satisfy the rules." -
Assimilation as an immigrant is hard. How do you fit in and stay rooted in the country and culture you're so proud to be a part of? For one Argentine girl, it was a new friend, tastes of home and a whole lot of Harry Potter. -
She'd been hired over the phone. All was well until she came in, and her new employer saw she was Black. Here's how having one door closed in her face put her on the path toward a lifetime of kicking other doors down. -
I began writing this illustrated letter as a way to shed my fear of the person who racially insulted my children. By the end, I remembered that racists are the ones who are truly afraid. -
She and her husband grew up in a neighborhood where they and their peers, as children of Mexican immigrants, were the ones profiled by white LAPD officers. His response was to join the force, to represent his community. Now, decades later with two grown daughters, they find themselves navigating some difficult conversations. -
Brandi Tanille Carter apprehensively left her home Los Angeles to go to a college she had never seen in a state she'd never visited. But it's here she learned to embrace her Blackness, and it's this experience which allowed her to return home to L.A. empowered. -
My interactions with race -- as is the case for my students -- are valuable, and I'm reminded that they require serious reflection and mindful application. Not only in my personal experience in Los Angeles as a Korean American and an immigrant, but in relation to other minority groups; after all, it is a shared history. -
When the voice of Black America is too loud for any newsroom to ignore, Take Two producer Austin Cross explains what it means to truly amplify Black voices. -
Earlier than expected, my wife and I had to give my 6-year-old son "the talk" about what it means to be Black in America. Except I'm neither Black nor American.
THE ORIGINS OF RACE IN LA
The conversation started around a table in summer 2019. It resumed two days after a mass shooter in El Paso went gunning for Latinos at the local Walmart. And it's more relevant now than ever.
On Aug. 5, 2019, KPCC and LAist staffers gathered around the big newsroom table where we usually talk about stories, to vent, grieve, and try to wrap our heads around what had just happened.
As we talked, and some of us cried, many of us began sharing personal stories about how our skin, face, surname, perceived national origin — any and all of these — have factored into our lived experience.
A Latina producer with dark skin talked about the time a store employee treated her like she could not afford to pay her bill; a Latina reporter with light skin talked about the anti-Latino slurs she has heard when people are unaware of her ethnicity.
It was an emotional conversation — and now, we're having it again as we once more try to wrap our heads around the senseless death of a black man at the hands of police. Another. Again.
So we are grieving again as our community, and the nation as a whole, faces a reckoning. It's a reckoning sparked not just by the shocking killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, but by an ongoing catalog of abuses suffered by people of color in this country. The protests are fueled by centuries of racism and institutional violence that is disproportionately directed at black Americans.
We know that racism is pervasive. We also know that even in L.A. — diverse on the whole, but still very segregated in reality — it happens every day, casually and overtly. And we know the media bears responsibility for failing to speak more forcefully about this injustice.
This is how Austin Cross explained it in an essay he wrote about coming to the realization that as a black man he had no way to escape racism:
"For so long, I wanted, needed, to think that there was something I could do to be safe in the world. There wasn't. There never was, really."
In hearing the raw emotion of colleagues willing to share stories about being profiled; about being put in a racial or ethnic box; about feeling unsafe, daily; about never being "enough" of an American; about privilege and discomfort, we realized there was more we could do to make sure those voices are heard. Our job is not to lose focus on this. We are asking for your help, both in joining the conversation and holding us accountable to keep it going.