PERSPECTIVE ON AMERICA : No More U.S. Lectures : The L.A. riots should silence the tone of moral superiority that Washington aimed at the rest of the world.

Los Angeles could have been any Third World city caught in the chasm of tribal warfare. Ancient rage of one ethnic group boiled over after years of frustration with politicians who have shown an amazing ability to deny the obvious: that racism exists in America and that it thrives beyond the managed news conferences and the sound-bites from cynical officials. The dirty little secret was out for the whole world to see. Only the most innocent would have asked the looters--as some television reporters did--why they were destroying their own community. Mob anger erupts only in ways it knows how--against the perceived prosperity of another group, another class.

For decades, the American leadership has delivered moral lectures to the world about human rights and democracy. But today America looks naked to the rest of us, its superior credentials blurred by the burning fires of Los Angeles, its sermons sounding hollow. The unrepentant Los Angeles police chief, Daryl F. Gates, personifies the worst of American arrogance. In any other democratic country, he would have been forced to resign after his officers were captured on videotape brutalizing an unarmed man. Politicians in many other nations would have found the police chief’s presence too burdensome to bear. But not here. Two hours after the arson started, Gates went to a cocktail party in a fancy part of town.

Blacks are angry, as they should be, with the incredible verdict delivered by the mostly white jury. They have played by the rules for so long, believing in the American dream. But the dream exists for the upper-class elite. And America is a society divided along class lines. President Bush and his friends are the Brahmins and nonwhites are the outcasts of the system. The outward affluence of America hides the deepest wounds of cities segregated along racial lines, like villages in India where the low caste must draw their water from another well. Even when the races do mix, they go back to their separate worlds at night.

America is still a developing country in a social sense, and no amount of industrial dominance and computer-generated graphics can obscure the many tiny Third Worlds that exist here. American police forces need as much training in treating minorities humanely as do the troops of Latin oligarchies. If the infamous video of Rodney King’s beating had featured the security forces of Peru rather than Los Angeles, human-rights groups here would have lobbied Congress to cut aid. No American jury would have any doubts as the brutality of the situation. But 12 jurors in Simi Valley exonerated the police of the most obvious crime. They ignored the racist computer messages of police officers, they bickered about which of the 56 blows would be considered “excessive force” and decided that none could; they side-stepped the testimony of some of the other officers on the scene who felt enough was enough. And they never even considered the race question. It is Kafkaesque.

The great society failed in the most revered of its institutions--law. American politicians have long taken refuge in their judicial system, leaving some of the most pressing social problems to the courts. They refuse to admit that an overly legalistic system can find ways to prove anything--as in Rodney King’s case. If a videotape is not clinching evidence, what is? The law alone cannot solve the moral and social problems of society. Otherwise, why is it that black men serve longer jail sentences for killing white men than one of their own? They are more likely to receive the death penalty than whites for committing the same crime. They receive fewer paroles and longer probation. Why did it take so long for the Milwaukee police to put Jeffrey Dahmer behind bars? Had his victims been white, affluent and heterosexual, police would have zoomed in faster.

No amount of carefully scripted rationalization can explain away the facts. American leaders, who are so eloquent in citing problems of other nations, are mute when it comes to their back yard. President Bush, Democratic candidate Bill Clinton and the members of Congress all have to seize the moment and begin talking seriously about racism. And, sorry, the market forces cannot solve this malaise. This is a war, and government intervention is needed to heal the wounds.