UNDERSTANDING THE RIOTS PART 5 : THE PATH TO RECOVERY : INTERVIEW : Jack Kemp : L.A.’s ‘Homeboy’ in Washington Has Plans to Put Our House in Order

“I’m a homeboy,” says Jack F. Kemp, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, who has emerged as the Bush Administration’s point man after the Los Angeles riots. Kemp, a former pro quarterback and congressmen, explains that he grew up in West L.A. and his father owned a trucking business on South Central Avenue. But among the patrician millionaires in the Bush Cabinet, Kemp’s middle-class pedigree qualifies him as a man who came up from the streets.

For years, Kemp has been urging his fellow Republicans to appeal to black voters and to adopt innovative programs that address problems of urban poverty. The secretary’s notable lack of success on both counts does not seem to have discouraged him. He speaks regularly to black groups--like the National Conference of Black Mayors--that rarely hear from Republicans seeking higher office. His style is earnest, irrepressible and slightly old-fashioned. He is one of the few politicians in America, black or white, who appear genuinely stirred by the memory of Abraham Lincoln--his office suite features two busts and an oil painting of the Great Emancipator.

His policy proposals, while based on Republican precepts of entrepreneurship and less government intervention, were not a priority on President George Bush’s legislative agenda--at least not until the riots. Nor were they warmly received by Democratic mayors and congressmen, who believe that increased federal funding is essential for addressing urban problems. But now, when all other urban-policy proposals are blocked by the federal budget deficit and all-but-certain presidential veto, Kemp’s ideas define the limits of post-riot political possibilities in Washington.

Born in Los Angeles in 1935, Kemp graduated from Occidental College in 1957. He is the author of two books, “An American Renaissance: Strategy for the 1980s” and “The American Idea: Ending the Limits to Growth.” He and his wife, Joanne, have four children and live in Bethesda, Md. But he has well-known ambitions to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., come 1997. This moment, when his proposals are Bush’s top priority, could make the difference.

Question: Sections of Detroit and Washington that were destroyed in the riots of the 1960s are still in ruins. Why shouldn’t we expect parts of South Los Angeles to be similarly devastated 25 years from now?

Answer: Well, they will be unless we do something new and radical. I’m a conservative Republican talking about radical change. . . . The only answer to poverty in my view is to build an incentive-based, market-oriented democratically initiated entrepreneurial system in the inner city. That means overhauling the welfare system and restoring the link between effort and reward. . . . Broader ownership both of business and of housing for low-income people. Greater educational opportunity, more school choice, more magnet schools. . . . That would be the beginning--along with infrastructure development--of an urban renaissance.

Q: There’s been a lot of controversy about what worked in the past and what didn’t. Where do you come down in that debate?

A: The Great Society primarily focused on the net of safety under which people should not be allowed to fall and lose their dignity, but to a certain extent the focus in the ‘60s and ‘70s and, unfortunately, in the ‘80s, was with the net and not with the ladder. The ladder was neglected. . . . The problem with the ladder is that there are no rungs at the bottom. The welfare system, as one woman said in Nickerson Gardens, is that it punishes us for trying. . . . In America today, in our welfare system, the reward for working on the bottom five or six rungs of the ladder is lower than it is for welfare. . . . I’m going to say something that I never thought I’d say, and I’m saying it increasingly: The people in the inner cities of America that I’ve met represent great talent and potential for this country.

Q: What can people outside of riot-torn areas do to help?

A: I’m not going to give Peter Uebberoth any gratuitous advice but I think he needs to make sure that in trying to help low-income people and inner-city residents, whether they are from Korea or Central America or Mexico or if they’re African-American . . . that he include them in whatever is designed to rebuild the inner city. The frustration that President Bush heard . . . that most of the solutions of the past never included the residents, the neighbors . . . particularly the young minority youths who didn’t get access to the jobs and the job training. We are redesigning all of our HUD modernization (programs) for public housing to make sure that if you go out and spend millions of dollars in rehabbing Jordan Downs or Nickerson Gardens or La Strada Courts in East L.A., that you make sure it’s the residents that get the jobs and the job training that go along with putting money into brick and mortar.

Q: The host of a local radio talk show here said that, in the wake of the Rodney King verdict, law firms, offices, factories should organize discussions of racism, and white racism in particular. Do you think this is a useful suggestion? Do you think white racism is a significant factor in what’s gone wrong?

A: It is a good suggestion. It is important to begin in the Anglo community--as well as in the black community, and the Korean community--consciousness raising discussions about differences in culture. . . . Different needs, different attitudes, and different patterns of behavior. I am a great believer that at the bottom of all people’s behavior is the dream that Dr. King talked about, the dream that Jaime Escalante calls ganas --desire, ambition. Everybody shares a universal dream to improve their lot in life. And if you can remind Anglo people as I try to do in my speeches to audiences that might not ever get a chance to go where I have been going . . . there is a black rage over the fact that black unemployment rates are double or triple what the Anglo rate is. . . . John Jacob said in his speech on the state of black America that of the 14.1 million businesses in the United States less than 2% are black. . . . Probably 70% of white Americans own their own homes (while) somewhere between a third and 40% of blacks get a chance to own their own home. . . . One other (thing) that is important for white people to understand about the black experience: Just as you can’t understand Israel or the Jewish experience without understanding the Holocaust, you cannot understand the black experience without understanding slavery . . . and the fact that they came out of the Emancipation Declaration and the war between the states with nothing but the shirts on their back. No credit. No capital. No property. No jobs. It’s a wonder that they were able to create so many enterprises in the early 20th Century.

Q: How would you assess strengths and weaknesses of the Republican Administrations in the last 12 years, specifically on urban policy and civil-rights policy?

A: Republicans and particularly conservative Republicans were not there when blacks needed us in the 1950s and ‘60s in the first civil-rights revolution. They were nowhere to be found. . . .

When Rosa Parks sat down on a bus and refused to give up her seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala., in December, 1955, I doubt very much whether there were many conservatives expressing moral outrage at the treatment of a black woman. . . .

From then on, the Republican Party, with some notable exceptions, wrote off the black vote. Now that brings us up to today. There has been an increase in spending on cities’ urban problems almost continuously since the ‘60s--albeit for different reasons. Yes, revenue sharing went down, but CDBG is still there, the $3-billion Community Development Block Grant. Urban Development Action Grants, which went to wealthy hotel developers, were killed, and housing construction programs--which were mightily flawed in my view--were killed. But spending for housing subsidies went way up . . . from $6 billion in 1980 to probably $16 or $17 billion by 1992. . . . Public housing construction was replaced with spending to give someone a voucher so that they could go out and seek where they want to live. . . .

We’ve gone from serving 3.5 million people/families with vouchers to serving 4.6 million people/families. I’m not saying it’s the end-all and be-all of housing policy but it’s . . . not getting discussed in this debate. Aid to cities and states and to people on social welfare (programs) has gone from maybe $30 billion in 1970 to $180 billion by 1993.

Q: Let’s talk about two of your ideas, enterprise zones and home ownership. Can you bring those to Los Angeles?

A: Yes. We’re doing it to a limited degree, and we’ve asked for more money than the Congress is willing to give us. The President asked for $1 billion in the HOPE (Home Ownership for People Everywhere) proposal which would give every resident in public housing a chance to homestead. This is the 130th anniversary of Lincoln’s Homestead Act which gave poor people--particularly black families--160 acres of land if they would fulfill two obligations: (a) occupy it and (b) improve it. Now it is fundamental to human nature that you don’t have to tell people to improve that what they own. . . . And the failure to give people a chance to own undermines their respect for property of their own and for their neighbor’s property.

You cannot bring stability to the inner city without expanding ownership opportunities. . . . I met with Mayor Eddie Vincent (of Inglewood) and Mayor Walter Tucker of Compton, two very progressive young black mayors, and they’re absolutely enthusiastic about the HOPE proposal and the enterprise zone proposal. Not that it’s a solution but that it’s the beginning of finding some solutions. . . . The President asked me to look at getting some credit into some of these red-lined communities. They’ve been red-lined! . . . The only way to make up for a de facto redline is to flood Watts and East L.A. and Compton and Inglewood and Lynwood and North Long Beach with credit and capital.

Q: It seems that a lot of people have lost sympathy with the black community because of the high crime rate of young black males. What do you say to those people?

A: It isn’t enough to express rage. To understand the black experience is not to excuse or condone, but . . . when you’ve got unemployment among black males at 40% and 50% . . . you’re going to have problems.

Q: You’ve described some of Gov. Clinton’s comments on the riots as demagoguery.

A: Wait. I only said that it was demagoguery to blame the riots on Republicans and George Bush and Ronald Reagan, just as its similar demagoguery to say that the riot was caused by the War on Poverty or the Great Society.

Q: Is more racial integration a solution? You have opposed mandatory racial integration policies.

A: Everybody opposes mandatory racial integration. . . . You can’t force people to live in harmony with each other. You certainly can encourage it. When people have access to capital and credit and ownership and jobs . . . integration is the result of the dynamics of a liberal society.

Q: Your party and the business community in general has an image problem--

A: I agree.

Q: -- as not being compassionate, as not being involved. Who else is going to take leadership and say that there is an important social function for business prosperity? Who in the Congress? Who in the Republican Party? Who in the business community is going to come with you now to say, “We take these problems seriously?”

A: Irrespective of the lack of credibility or the image problem of the Republican Party, we can’t do without Republicans, and I would say to conservative Republicans, do-nothingism will lead to putting more troops in L.A. Pat Buchanan said, just put them all in jail. I don’t think there’s jails enough to house the population if we don’t find some answers to these social and economic problems that are at the heart of urban poverty. The President has to lead, as does the Congress. And both Republicans and Democrats have a lot to answer for in terms of the failure to address these problems in the past. . . . Now is the time to get something through the Congress, and if we miss this opportunity it will be a moral stain on our nation and on both political parties.