Daily Breeze: South Bay Black Leaders Talk Systemic Racism — and What To Do About It — with Muratsuchi

July 17, 2020

Race-related legislation, reallocating police resources and mindful leadership are what will hit systemic racism head on, Black South Bay leaders say.

Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, who is Asian American, held a virtual roundtable with Black community leaders in his district Wednesday, July 15, to discuss personal experiences with systemic racism and what can be done to end it once and for all, starting with the South Bay.

“We need a seat at this table we’re having these conversations at,” said Howard Scott Jr., founder and president of the City Lights Gateway Foundation in Harbor City.

Joining Scott at the “table” were Tonya McKenzie, owner of the Sand and Shores public relations firm and president of the North Redondo Beach Business Association; Kavon Ward, web developer and co-founder of Anti-Racist Movements Around the South Bay (ARMs); and former Torrance City Councilman Milton Herring.

‘The bag is rotten’

While the South Bay may be a safe place for some people to live, including Muratsuchi, those who participated in the discussion said that some Black residents don’t feel that same protection.

At age 10, Scott said, he was followed by police in the Harbor City/Wilmington area while walking to a community pool. They eventually took him to the police station, he said, and released him after misidentifying him as a 35-year-old man.

After he told his mother, Scott said, she responded with, “I told you, whenever you see them, to run.”

Police “didn’t come to our neighborhood bringing tickets to Dodger Stadium,” Scott said. “When the police showed up, it was either a fight, or they were arresting someone we loved and cared about. It was never anything good.”

Ward, a Manhattan Beach resident, shared how she had been treated as if she didn’t live in the city, how she had been called the “n-word” while walking in her neighborhood, and how she was called a terrorist for wearing a Black Panther shirt.

“When I was harassed, I didn’t tell anybody. I didn’t go to the cops because we don’t run to the cops,” Ward said. “We run from them because we are from the belief that there are not a couple of bad apples; there are a couple of good apples — the bag is rotten.”

After her past experience with police, Ward said, she doesn’t feel safe as a Black woman in America.

“I don’t feel safe in Manhattan Beach,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll feel safe anywhere in the South Bay, but I’m willing to do the work” so that other Black people and people of color can soon feel safe anywhere, she added.

The need for conversation

McKenzie, meanwhile, relayed her own experiences of racism in Redondo Beach.

Some of her son’s white teammates said that he and other Black teammates “look like slaves running around on the court.” Her son and the other offended teammates got in trouble, McKenzie said, but the offenders didn’t.

“We had to do too much to get resolution,” she said, and afterwards, a counselor told her that administration just didn’t know what to do or say about the situation.

McKenzie also recounted the story of when a group told the City Council that she wasn’t qualified for her positions and compared her to one of the other two African American women who work with her.

The only thing the two women had in common, she said, was their race.

“As as long as we’re waiting for things to stop happening,” she said, “they’re going to continue to happen.

“We need to call them what they are,” she added, “and attack them head on.”

Herring, for his part, said conversations like the roundtable were an important first step.

“The only way to deal with systemic and institutional racism,” Herring said, “especially in Torrance and the South Bay, is having these discussions.”

But Ward, who used to work in public policy, said there have been enough discussions.

“We need to do the real work,” she said, “that starts with changing policies.”

Finding solutions

Attendees, including Muratsuchi, said reforming the way police departments operate will be key.

“We’ve got to stop having police who look at themselves as warriors” and end militarization in police departments, Herring said.

The way to truly keep communities safe, Herring added, is to provide more resources for mental health workers and social workers.

“We cannot arrest and shoot our way out of the homeless crisis in Torrance,” said Herring, a 30-year Torrance resident.

In the same vein, Ward said it’s a problem that can’t be solved by hiring more Black cops.

“Changing the policies they’re forced to enforce,” she said, is where the focus should be.

“We’re tired of talking,” she added, “We need to see action.”

Muratsuchi, a former prosecutor, named a couple of things he’s done as part of that work.

Last year, he said, the state passed a landmark bill that strengthened the legal standard for police lethal use of force from “reasonable” to “necessary.” It’s a model, he said, for national legislation to change policy on police use of lethal force.

And this year, Muratsuchi said, he’s co-authoring a bill on how and when to hold “bad cops” accountable to be prosecuted. The bill would take prosecution power from local district attorneys and give it to the state attorney’s general office, he said, to avoid potential conflict of interest between local DAs and the police they work with daily.

But not all of the discussion of solutions focused on policing.

For Scott, he said, the youths he works with need support more than anything.

The fastest way to change these kids’ lives is by giving them jobs and opportunities, said Scott, who went to Harbor City schools all the way through college.

Showing people how to live life at their best starts with presenting them with opportunity, he said.

But beyond that, Scott said, what’s needed is legislation that explicitly calls out racism and addresses it.

“White supremacy,” he said, “can’t exist.”

https://www.dailybreeze.com/2020/07/17/south-bay-black-leaders-talk-systemic-racism-and-what-to-do-about-it-with-muratsuchi/