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Racial language that appears among the most frequent is negro and white. Based on lectures and previous knowledge of the political climate at the time this does not surprise me. Negro is used significantly more than whites in both newspapers, I believe because the riot was in a predominately African American neighborhoods and they were the offenders for most of the violence and damage. The frequent and most distinctive words are what I expected them to be. A frequent word I expected to be included in my collection of documents is ‘fire,’ and “violence.”
| Most Frequent Words | Most Distinctive Words |
| Los Angeles | Know |
| Police | Citizen |
| Riot | Councilman |
| Area | Hospital |
| City | Minikus |
One of the most frequently appearing word in the corpus is police being used 110 times. It is one of the most frequent words in my documents because they are the first responders. More specifically in riots, they are usually the first to be called in to deescalate the situation. If they are unsuccessful, then they are used as a tool to gain control and compliance, which means from the beginning to the end of a riot police are involved.
One of the most distinctive words in the corpus is citizens. The context of this word is used to describe the residents of Los Angeles.
The use of police is used the same in context of law enforcement capacitates
Both the Los. Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Sentinel use police the most frequency. However, the white newspaper uses it significantly more than the black newspaper. The use of negro and whites are used more by the respective race.
The link tool highlights the use of police (110) and references connected it. Most notable the Police Chief and all the statements made and orders authorized by him. In addition to police, area (57) was another frequently used word in refence to the different locations being affected by the riot. Night (34) was also used frequently being that the majority or violence, disruptions and damaged occurred in the evenings and late night.
I previously said my racial disorder is a riot defined by as “…involves at least one group publicly, and with little or no attempt at concealment, illegally assaulting at least one other group or illegally attacking or invading property.” (Halle & Rafter 2003). Now I believe the racial disorder is an uprising. As stated in the class PowerPoint “a spontaneous upsurge of protest or violent expression of discontent, something with political content, but short of a full- fledged revolutionary act.” After this text analysis my labeling of Watts has changed, knowing the details of the language used in account of the riot does change the key feature and label of my riot. There were no use of words such as “planned, strategize, organized” in the context of a premeditated events. Therefore, it does not fit the definition of a rebellion, which I previously said it could also be. It was a spontaneous upsurge of violent expression of discontent in the way blacks were being treated. With the perception of the crowd being that Mrs. Frye along with her sons were being beaten by the police.
