Essay On The Zoot Suit Riots

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The Zoot Suit Riots were attacks in June 1943 in LA, California. These attacks started from two latino men having a disagreement, that led to the death of one man, Jose Diaz. He was beaten and stabbed, and his body left in the cold. This was a breaking point for the Mexican AMerican community, and the police around started breaking down on the latino youth. The police started beating any young latino that looked suspicious, or simply didn’t respect them. This caused kids to be rebellious which usually ending up with a lot of the youth being badly injured or dead. THis tension started off when California was previously seen as an Mexican native place, and soon their state was gentrified and they were soon the minority. All this tension could have been undermined as a problem with their style of choice because of the zoot suits, but it was much deeper than that. …show more content…
The riots, the death, and all the problems stemmed from crime. THe original problem, a rivalry between people from the same area, become a racial driven situation when the police were involved. Because these policemen believed that latinos were the root of all problems, they specifically went after them. In class we learn about how race and crime relate, but the tale of the Zoot Suit Riots further explains this when a common situation can turn dire when race is involved. I did not know about these riots before I started this class. This can be related to so many other issues that have happened in the past simply due to race and crime. So many have heard of the more violent Newark RIots or LA Riots, but not the Zoot Suits riots possibly because of the lack of deaths. The Zoot Suit Riots only goes to show that when the police see an increase in crime in the minority community simply because of bias and not fact, their sense of superiority can lead to more than dangerous after
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