As academic opinion has begun to register about the 1992 uprisings in Los Angeles, several different interpretations have emerged. Omi and Winant have argued that the uprisings drew attention to the continuing importance of race, and also to the limits of racialized domestic politics played by Presidents Reagan and Bush during the 1980s. Watts has argued that the 1991 beating of Rodney King, by providing “moral capital in a racial struggle,” led African-Americans to suspend disbelief and to expect a just verdict from the trial; the not-guilty verdicts, and the uprisings that followed, acted to rob them of their illusory feelings of hope. Cornel West has argued that “the astonishing disappearance of the event from public dialogue is testimony to just how painful and distressing a serious engagement with race is.” According to West, serious discussions about “race matters” – and also why race matters – tend to get short-circuited by overly-simplistic notions of race proffered by both liberals and conservatives in their attempts to win the allegiance of the suburban white voter. The events of urban upheaval in Los Angeles were not mentioned a single time in the presidential debates of 1992, testifying how difficult it was to fit the issues raised during the crisis into the standard political tropes. Although different in their emphasis, all three opinions shared a belief that the 1992 uprisings provided a “reality check” regarding the state of American race relations.