Aren’t <i> They </i> Really <i> Us?</i> : Responsibility: L.A’s tragedy is a product of the American political economy and culture.

On April 25, my wife, 6-month-old baby and I left for a two-week vacation in Tennessee and New York. We carried with us gifts for family and friends: T-shirts and baseball caps proudly displaying the words, “South Central--N Proud of It.” A few days later, we were glued to the television, watching our neighborhood as it was consumed in an angry and terrifying conflagration.

Still, nothing could have adequately prepared us for the horror we experienced on our return to Los Angeles. The drive from LAX was a haunting nightmare, a Dante’s “Inferno.”

We found ourselves adopting the language of the media: “Look what they did. Why would they torch edifices that brought pride and commerce to South-Central? Why would they burn the Aquarian Bookstore and Broadway Federal Savings, two of the most valuable African-American businesses in our community?”

But who are they? Are they really hooligans, criminals and thugs who capitalized on an “opportunity” to go on a rampage of murder, larceny and arson? Are they a disaffected minority who expressed their outrage at the LAPD brutality verdict? Are they an army of malcontents, fed up with a complex of injustices that are routinely heaped on their community? Or are they an expression of something gone awry in the very structure of our society? Are they a symbol of the worst in America? Are they really us?

A more valid perspective emerges when we use the first-person pronoun to describe last week’s terrible violence. “Look what we did,” is much more effective in helping us recognize our personal responsibility for the quality of life in our neighborhood and throughout the nation. Every American citizen must take responsibility for the good and bad in America. L.A.’s tragedy is a product of our political economy and social culture. We all have a role in the destruction and its repair.

Rebuilding ravaged physical structures is comparatively easy. Rebuilding the human spirit is a much more difficult and essential task. Only when each of us acknowledges the reality of racism and discrimination; only when we cast off our complacency about the chronically poor; only when we take responsibility for ensuring the well-being of the least of those among us; only then can we begin to take the steps toward restoring pride in our neighborhoods, city and country.

As a nation, we must recognize that the conditions for anarchy are built into the fabric of our society. Only long-term solutions that correct schooling inadequacies and that improve housing, health and employment opportunities can hope to quench the fires that smolder within the soul of America.