Revolution Televised.pdf

Was the Revolution Televised? 37
for the American family in an age of successful untraditional families.
As African American feminist Paula Giddings sums up,
The thinking seemed to be: Just make Black men the lords of their
own castles and everything will be all right. To reach this utopia, of
course, Black women would somehow have to slow down, become
less achievement oriented, give up much of their independence. By
remaining assertive, they were running the family and so ruining
the race. 29
It is important to note that the controversy over the report did
not receive any attention in the documentary and that Moynihan’s
findings were presented as undisputed facts. At no point does
the journalist intercede with an alternate hypothesis or question
Moynihan’s argument. Therefore, while the statistics of the
McCone Commission report, which are read on screen, may provide
some idea of the institutional racism that led to the riot, the
more personalized interview with Moynihan is centrally positioned
within the text and structures the narrative. This suggests that the
riots were a result of the problems inherent in the black family. A
segment of Moynihan’s interview also concludes the documentary,
so his theories are further heightened in their level of authority.
Other contradictory elements include the opposing interviews of
African American leaders and Chief Parker. There are several clips
of an interview with Chief Parker, and he is described as “a man
known for his integrity and bluntness of opinion.” Yet, the documetary
does not indicate that historically Parker had an abrasive
relationship with the black community, and countless complaints
of police brutality were registered under his growing militaristic
regime. In order to justify his accrual of power and relentless policing
of minority communities, Parker nurtured an image of black
Los Angeles as criminal and barely under the control of the LAPD.
An examination of police brutality in Los Angeles during this time
describes Parker’s appearance in front of the U.S. Commission on
Civil Rights in 1960.
A belligerent Parker characterized the LAPD as the real “embattled
minority” and argued that the tensions between LA’s minority communities
and the cops had simply to do with the fact that Blacks
and Latinos were statistically many times more likely than Whites
to commit crimes. Indeed Parker assured the Commission that