Zoot me up!

So, waiting for inspiration for a blog entry, I was listening to my Pandora station patterned after the Cherry Poppin' Daddies, "Zoot Suit Riot." I really love modern swing music like this! Royal Crown Review, Brian Setzer, Swing Cats, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy...the list goes on and on. The music, even the subculture, is sassy, fun-loving, fast-moving, and all-around, a good time. If I had money to burn, I'd be going to swing lessons, hanging out with the local swing dancers (not those kind of swingers) and even wearing the wardrobe, from a jauntily tipped, wide brimmed fedora to spats, the zoot suit.

On a whim, I thought I'd explore exactly what "zoot" meant. In a couple minutes of research, I learned that it was likely nothing more than a play on words to create a name for a particular style of suit that was evolving in the 1930's and migrating to the west coast by about 1940. I was well aware of the style, but I was absolutely floored to learn of the race riots associated with the zoot suit. What I thought was just a silly song actually commemorated true Zoot Suit Riots of 1943 in Los Angeles. Originating in a dubious death of a Latino, possibly a racial hate crime, it quickly escalated to include thousands of US navy and marines marching through the streets--not in an act of Marshall Law, bringing peace or controlling looting or something like the national guard might do...but systematically dragging out at cudgeling every Latino they could find, most particularly targeting the pachuco, that is, the zoot-suit-wearing sassy street kids (we'd now consider very well dressed gang members) of Latino ethnicity.

That was well-within my dad's lifetime. It was not something that happened before telephones and cars. Instead, like the civil rights brawls of the 1960's (well-within MY lifetime), these altercations were in the news, and people were well aware of them. I am continuously surprised to realize how young our civilized nation really is. As I get older, I find myself compressing the timeline I once telescoped. 20, 40, 100 years don't seem to take too long to me now. I am shocked at how brutal our culture once was, and I cannot fathom what it may be like in another 50 years.