Rodney King and Stephen Lawrence

When we studied the Rodney King incident, it reminded me of a similar case in England which occurred in 1993. An 18 year old boy from London was stabbed to death by five while males. Just as the King case had a year earlier in LA the murder instantly caused civil disturbance in England. Although Stephen Lawrence was not murdered by policemen they were blamed for racism and incompetence which is believed to have blighted the investigation which has been given as the reason for no one ever being convicted for the crime.

Both the King and Lawrence cases are examples of institutional racism. The attacks were believed by many to be unprovoked and racially motivated. In both cases the victims were single black males and the attackers were a substantial number of white men. The problem with cases like these is how to determine which one’s are racially motivated and which are not. When I first saw the video footage of the King attack I immediately decided it had to be a racist attack. But it is much more complex as many people interpreted the video differently. In the King case the policemen involved justified their actions and even the Jury felt that they had used reasonable force. In the Lawrence case his friend who was present at the attack heard one of the attackers call Lawrence a ‘Nigger’, this was enough for most of the public to determine the attack as racist. This is similar to the reaction that the short silent video of the King attack had on the American public when it was first released. The question is if these small bits of evidence are enough? And if not, what is needed to classify an attack as racially motivated?

The biggest similarity with these two cases is the profound effect they had on society. The King case led to rioting and a retrial which led to the conviction of one of the officers involved. The Lawrence case led to changes in English Law, the Criminal Justice Act 2003 abolishing the strict prohibition against double jeopardy. It seems that more is being done to stop these sorts of attacks from occurring, in these two cases however I still feel left with a feeling of a lack of justice. I feel as if more should have been done to catch Lawrence’s killers and more of the officers involved in the King case should have received harsher punishment for their actions. I think the two examples raise the same questions about injustice, cultural identity and continuing racism which still need answering.