PERSPECTIVE ON HUMAN RELATIONS : Finding Ways to Salve Intergroup Sore Points : Los Angeles must resolve misunderstandings and hate revealed by the riots. We need mechanisms for interactive, multicultural synergy.

Rebuilding Los Angeles must include two interrelated strategies. One is to invest in our people and make necessary changes in the economic, education, law enforcement and family infrastructures of our inner city. The second is to build strong and dynamic interethnic and intergroup relations. Both are necessary. If we emphasize only the reconstruction of physical buildings, and do not find the keys to improving intergroup relations, we will not have to wait 27 years for another human explosion.

We should all be asking: How prepared is Los Angeles to build better community relations? Do we have the professionally trained people in government, community, schools and workplaces to guide, coordinate and train us in the development of human relations? Do we have ongoing people-to-people or intergroup dialogues at neighborhood and leadership levels to facilitate communication, find productive means of resolving disputes and encourage consensus-building on major issues?

The answers to the above questions are tragically simple. Los Angeles does not have the human-relations infrastructure to resolve the hate, misunderstandings and suspicions that surfaced before, during and after the riots.

What are the facts? Some people say that 8,000 police officers in the LAPD are not enough to protect and serve us. Yet the city of Los Angeles’ Human Relations Commission, the only city agency charged with promoting positive intergroup relations, has one field person for our entire population of 3.5 million people. At the time of the riots, the county’s Human Relations Commission had two staff professionals assigned to South Los Angeles.

Beyond sparse governmental resources, only a few community organizations or workplaces have community-relations specialists. Schools continue to struggle with multicultural curricula and programs. Some churches have congregational exchanges but do not often extend those positive avenues of interaction.

In addition to trained individuals, a vital human-relations infrastructure must have mechanisms to build an interactive multicultural community. This is particularly true in Los Angeles where we are so diverse and dispersed. While there are many solid, essential and vigorous community organizations in Los Angeles, most are ethnic- or group-specific and others tend to deal with very specific issues or services.

Some fruitful initiatives like the Black/Korean Alliance have renewed interest in community relations but have few resources to develop sustainable programs. Fledgling efforts like the Coalition of 100, the Ethnic Coalition and the New Majority, as well as existing programs like the National Conference of Christians and Jews will be tested in the rebuilding process. Without effective methods to promote positive intergroup interaction, we may get bogged down in adversarial conflicts between groups that could have been avoided.

A case in point is the recent City Council decision to exclude liquor stores and swap meets from an expedited rebuilding process available to other businesses. Hearings on whether such stores can be rebuilt are being planned. There is a fear among many Korean and other Asian-Americans that these hearings will pit their financial futures against those of African-Americans who seek to limit or exclude their businesses from the community. With both groups gearing up to prove their case and lawsuits pending, deeper ethnic fissures may be created.

So how can our human-relations infrastructure be built? First there must be a commitment from our political leaders to provide significant funding for human-relations staff. But government action will not be sufficient. Community organizations, churches, schools, unions, employers and dispute-resolution centers must identify and train volunteers and staff to make a contribution. A partnership among these diverse groups could develop a core of professionally trained volunteers and staff who can begin to hold community-based forums, examine experiences in other cities, and in cooperation with many organizations, implement a comprehensive, hands-on community-relations initiative in Los Angeles.

Leaders from all sectors of our society must make a commitment to strengthen and coordinate intergroup structures and relations. Peter Ueberroth must not only be inclusive in his committee; he must finds ways to make the community residents and merchants stake-holders in the reconstruction process.

Ethnic coalitions and community groups that are coming together to discuss rebuilding efforts should find ways to intersect their individual strivings for empowerment. A positive example is the agreement by the Martin Luther King and Asian Pacific American dispute resolution centers to develop mediation teams of African-Americans and Korean-Americans to settle community disputes.

Particularly at the grass-roots level, inclusive neighborhood councils should be established to tackle tough questions like reconstructing liquor or grocery stores--examining why there are so many such stores and the harm they can create in the community, but also how store owners can be compensated if they cannot rebuild or how to give incentives to build other kinds of businesses and joint ventures.

Human-relations improvement must be part and parcel of the rebuilding movement in Los Angeles. Rodney King had it right when he asked, “Can we all get along?” We have to do better.