Riots Could Happen Here, S.D. Business Leaders Say

Tanya Brown was pumped up this past Wednesday after meeting with San Diego State University administrators, faculty and staff members who are trying to forge stronger ties with San Diego’s growing ethnic population.

“I felt so good when I left there because people were finally listening, we were having a nice dialogue . . . on how to make things more equitable for all ethnic groups,” said Brown, publisher of the San Diego County Ethnic Business Directory.

But Brown’s good mood later evaporated with word of the Rodney King verdict and subsequent rioting that has left more than 50 people dead and more than $700 million in property damages in its wake.

For Brown, the unprecedented wave of violence underscored what many of San Diego’s minority businessmen and women already knew: There is a tremendous potential locally for the kind of violence that reduced parts of Los Angeles to rubble.

The King verdict “was the straw that broke the camel’s back . . . but the real issue is an economic one,” Brown said Monday. “The reason that the whole thing blew up is an issue of equity. . . . Things are not equitable for African-Americans.”

Members of San Diego’s black business community interviewed by The Times on Monday blamed the violence in Los Angeles on racism and and economic system that keeps too many minority citizens from enjoying the fruits of the economic system.

Similarly, Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce Chairman Mel Katz on Monday linked the civil disturbance to “massive feelings of frustration that have been pent up in people who don’t have jobs and who have jobs that are entry-level with no growth potential.

“There’s so much that can and should be done for these (depressed) areas, including our own Southeast San Diego,” Katz said. “I think it’s important that we break this cycle of ‘no ownership’ in heavily Hispanic and heavily black areas. . . . It just can’t continue.”

Several local business observers expressed empathy with Los Angeles residents who, initially, were reacting to the King verdict. But none condoned the violence that followed the initial protests.

“What happened in L.A. is inexcusable,” said Glenn Estell, an IBM manager who recently chaired a Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce task force that studied black economic progress in San Diego. “A lot of it was simply plundering and criminal activity.”

But all warned that the root causes of the disturbances must be addressed. Katz described the Los Angeles rioting as “a wake-up call . . . . Now people are starting to focus on the inner city . . . where (just days before) they weren’t even talking about it.”

Unfortunately, the nation’s renewed focus on inner-city poverty appeared at the worst possible time of the economic cycle, said Mike McCraw, president of California Southern Small Business Development Corp. a state-supported organization that guarantees loans to small businesses.

“But this is also the time when we’ve just had the most serious civil unrest, the most costly civil unrest . . . since the Civil War,” McCraw said. “We have no choice but to begin to correct the situation.”

Estell predicted more violence elsewhere in the nation unless civic and business leaders at the local, state and federal level take meaningful steps to “make inner-city and economically deprived areas (economically) self-sustaining. That would relieve a lot of frustration among those who are caught by misfortune of birth in those environments.”

None of those contacted suggested that the federal government revive the Great Society programs that President Lyndon Johnson initiated in the wake of widespread rioting in the mid-1960s.

“I don’t think the old programs did what (the programs) should have done given the amount of money spent and the time they had to do it,” McCraw said. “We need to touch the heart and soul of these (disenfranchised) people to convince them that they’re part of this system.”

Estell suggested federal and state tax breaks that would make economically depressed areas attractive to business. The tax breaks could be structured “in much the same way (as) tax law that encourages investment in new equipment,” Estell said.

And, Katz contended, employee ownership should play a key role in government programs that give tax breaks to firms that locate in economically distressed areas. Katz said companies that use tax breaks to build in the inner city should be required to turn over partial ownership to employees.

Once capital is in place, “we have to do things to help people run their businesses better,” Katz said. Right now, he said, the total revenue for the average black-owned business in San Diego is $33,000. That’s atrocious.”

Brown said that “President Bush was very, very wrong when he said (the violence) wasn’t an economic issue. Pure and simple, it was an economic issue.”

“We have to mainstream these disenfranchised people,” McCraw said. “We can’t allow these areas to fester until we have more riots. We have to bring not only the hope but the reality of a decent life to those who have been historically excluded.”

“It can’t be business as usual anymore,” Estell cautioned. “If it is business as usual, it will be 1965 all over again. That kind of feeling could spill over (into other cities) and you could have a running gunfight . . . between the haves and the have-nots.”

Harold K. Brown, president and co-founder of the San Diego Black Economic Development Task Force, said anyone could have predicted the violence in Los Angeles. “And, when the fires go out, there will be more fires. When? I don’t know. But all I can guarantee is that there will be more fires and more disturbances like the ones we had there.”

Although Brown, no relation to Tanya Brown, blamed the violence in Los Angeles on economic causes, he said the nation also has to address the whole issue of racism in the country. “This is a system of racism that I don’t think whites in this country understand,” Brown said.

That said, Brown placed equal responsibility on minorities. “We have to do a lot of things . . . ourselves, things we don’t need to depend on others to do,” Brown said.

Although it will be difficult to address ingrained racism and tough economic issues, Brown said improving the economic lot of minorities will pay dividends for society.

“It’s going to be very difficult to burn up the stores and things that you feel a close association with if you own them,” Brown said. “That’s the whole problem . . . you’ve got whole groups of people who have never felt that they’re a part of this system . . . so it’s easy to feel ‘why not burn it up?’ ”

Opinions in San Diego are divided on the appointment of Peter V. Ueberroth, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley’s choice to help rebuild the city’s riot-torn neighborhoods.

Although Katz and Estell praised Bradley’s selection, McCraw expressed some reservations.

“There’s the good and bad. . . . The good being he’s connected in the corporate arena,” McCraw said. “On the downside, once again we see someone coming in to save the ethnic minorities.” The question is, he said, isn’t there someone in the ethnic community who could do this?