Paul Parker Character Analysis

Paul Parker is a chairperson for Free the LA Four Plus Defense Committee. His brother Lance was targeted by the police for being involved with Reginald Denny’s attack. Parker criticizes law enforcement’s attack on his brother, as well as the public outcry against Denny’s attack, arguing that the only time people care about crime is when white people are victims. As such, he has little sympathy for Denny and suggests that attacks like Denny’s are justified due to the years of trauma and violence America’s Black population has suffered at the hands of a corrupt, racist justice system. Parker also addresses criticism that Black protestors “burned down their own neighborhoods,” explaining that most businesses that protestors targeted belonged to Korean shop owners. Parker employs racist logic to justify this choice, arguing that “the Koreans was like the Jews in the day / and we put them in check.” Parker’s failure to recognize the Korean population as victims of America’s systemic racism (and his derogatory insinuation about Jewish people) illustrates how systems of oppression maintain power by pitting oppressed communities against each other.