Excerpt from Term Paper:

...... There are few truths that are clearer than the existence of such a situation in the United States. Race determines economics, personal daily interactions, social standing and a cascading number of other issues that individuals as well as entire cultures deal with. In a statement made by a leading expert on race and discrimination the point was well made that, "in a society structured on racial hierarchy, a 'valorization of whiteness,' as Cheryl I. Harris terms it, may inform even the most routine of social and economic exchanges." (Wald, 2000, p. 3) It is the unequal distribution of power that is being responded to in situations such as the Rodney King beating, trial and the resulting race riots in Los Angeles. The period beginning in March of 1991, with the massive media repetition of the video clips associated with the Rodney King beating and then the resulting riot behavior mark a period in US history that is dark. It reflects other periods, where race was at the forefront of the minds of individuals, such as during the reformation, following the civil war and during the socially destructive Jim Crow era were segregation was officially sanctioned in a majority of

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