Riots Changed Few Attitudes, Poll Finds : Human relations: In comparing surveys taken before and after the violence, UCLA researchers found perceptions about economic, ethnic, political and social life in Los Angeles County were much the same.

Sharply contradicting the popular assumption that the 1992 riots were a “wake-up call” for Los Angeles, a UCLA survey has found that the cataclysmic events of this spring did very little to alter residents’ attitudes about economic, ethnic, political and social life.

In a wide-ranging telephone poll conducted before the verdicts in the Rodney G. King beating case, then repeated immediately afterward, researchers found that the riots did not measurably change residents’ perceptions about the quality of life in Los Angeles County. Confidence in local government remained tepid. Fear of crime--already high--got no higher.

Even before the civil unrest, residents felt such despair that “there was little room,” said the survey, “to further shift opinion in a negative direction.”

Moreover, the survey found little evidence of the positive change that some analysts had predicted would occur in the riots’ wake. In the aftermath of the most destructive civil disturbance in the United States in this century, the survey found county residents had no renewed commitment to addressing poverty, racial inequality or prejudice. And negative ethnic stereotypes, though they did not increase appreciably after the riots, appeared firmly held.

“We often tend to assume that people’s basic assumptions are affected by events this dramatic and costly,” said Larry Bobo, a UCLA sociology professor and the principal author of the annual study, called the Los Angeles County Social Survey. “But unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that a lot of basic assumptions were moved very far.”

That bodes ill, Bobo said, for the future of Los Angeles. He said that although the survey stops short of predicting another riot, its findings support no other conclusion.

“If one had to make a prediction,” he said, “sadly, that would be the prediction that we aren’t really likely to see fundamental change of the sort that addresses the basic problems--in part, because people are really not thinking in greatly different ways about (those) problems. . . . That’s one of the reasons why history repeats itself.”

The poll consisted of interviews with 1,869 Los Angeles County residents selected at random. About half were interviewed before the riots and half afterward. The survey results, while overwhelmingly stable, noted a few significant shifts in opinion after April 29, when the verdicts were announced. Among them:

* More Anglos said they were open to residential integration. Asked if they would favor living in a neighborhood where half their neighbors were of a different ethnic group, many more Anglos said yes after the riots than had before. Among Asians, blacks and Latinos, there was no significant change.

* Blacks became more alienated. Several questions sought to measure how ethnic groups feel about the social and economic opportunities available to them. While the responses of Asians, Latinos and Anglos were unchanged by the verdicts, the responses of blacks--and particularly of upper-income blacks--indicated a “strong and uniform rise in black alienation from American social institutions,” the survey found.

* Asian-Americans became slightly but significantly more hostile toward blacks. Before the riots, 20.8% said blacks were more likely than Asians to be easy to get along with, but that fell to 9.5% after the riots. Similarly, 11.3% of Asians interviewed before April 29 said blacks were more intelligent than Asians. Afterward, just 2.9% said blacks were smarter.

* Confidence in the police declined among Anglos. Thirteen percent of white respondents expressed “not much” confidence in the police before the riots, as compared to 20.5% afterward. In contrast, the views of Asians, blacks and Latinos remained the same. Before and after the riots, 56% of blacks expressed “not much” confidence in the police, as compared to 31.1% of Latinos and 26.3% of Asians.

In releasing the survey for publication today, UCLA researchers touted it as a historic document that provides the first opportunity to compare public opinion on race and ethnic relations before and after an explosive event. In its conclusion, the survey suggests that its findings “may help explain why these problems arise again and again.”

“As many riots and rebellions as this country has had,” Bobo said, “we’ve never had a before-and-after sampling that deals specifically with intergroup relations. Now we have a record of the fact that, contrary to a lot of anecdotal thinking and commentary, (most) things didn’t change. . . . And I strongly suspect that (the same lack of public reaction) went on after each previous round of these type of events.”

Bobo said that before-and-after samplings have been attempted on four other occasions--among them, the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. But he said no previous study combined extensive questioning on racial attitudes with a large number of respondents from several major ethnic groups. Thanks to fortunate timing and more than a little bit of luck, Bobo said, this survey did both.

Months before the riots, Bobo had chosen to focus the university’s annual survey on ethnic antagonism in Los Angeles. When the verdicts were announced, his team of researchers had already completed 963 interviews over a period of 12 weeks. In the 12 weeks that followed the verdicts the team interviewed another 906 people.

The interviews, which averaged 38 minutes, covered a broad range of issues, from the economy to the death penalty, from causes of poverty to explanations for inequality. Interviews were conducted in English or Spanish, depending on the respondent’s preference.

Researchers intentionally sought out more blacks and Asians than the random sampling had provided--an attempt to more accurately reflect the views of those groups. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Overall, Bobo said he was surprised by how unaffected those views were by the events of April 29.

Before the riots and after, 70% or more of respondents in each ethnic group felt that Los Angeles had become a worse place to live in the last five years. The riots created no surge in uncertainty about the economy. Personal fear of crime did not change and neither did levels of support for anti-crime spending or capital punishment.

Similarly, the survey offered little solace for those who hoped that the riots would prompt new ways of thinking about poverty--and about solutions to poverty.

All respondents were asked to agree or disagree with four statements about “why there are poor people.” Two of the reasons blamed societal barriers to opportunity: “failure of society to provide good schools” and “failure of industry to provide enough jobs.” The other reasons blamed individuals’ “loose morals and drunkenness” and “lack of effort.”

Most respondents said poverty resulted from societal and individual shortcomings, and those feelings did not change significantly after the riots.

Nor were there changes in most residents’ explanations for the large gaps in socioeconomic status between blacks and whites. A majority of all groups agreed that racial discrimination is one cause of the economic divide, with lesser numbers citing lack of education, lack of motivation and lack of inborn ability among blacks.

After the riots, the proportion of blacks who agreed that discrimination was a reason for black-white inequality rose from 75.2% to 83.6%. But the views of other ethnic groups stayed constant--a powerful indication, Bobo said, that public support for social policies that address the gap between blacks and whites also remained unchanged.

A series of questions aimed at measuring racial stereotyping found that, except for the slight surge in Asians’ hostility toward blacks, there was little evidence of change after the verdicts and the riots. Respondents were asked to rank ethnic groups as to how intelligent a group is, how likely that group is to prefer living on welfare and how hard that group is to get along with.

The survey found that negative stereotyping is fairly common, especially with regard to perceptions of blacks and, to a lesser degree, Latinos. On the average, 45.1% of non-blacks rated blacks as lower in intelligence, 63.4% rated blacks as more likely to prefer living on welfare and 48.5% rated blacks as being more likely to be hard to get along with.

In the data gathered after the verdicts, 64.9% of Asians rated blacks as less intelligent--a pattern that the survey said “may shed considerable light on the level of tension and conflict found between blacks and some segments in the Asian-American community.” In addition, Latinos were the most likely to say blacks are difficult to get along with.

On the average, 44.6% of non-Latinos rated Latinos as less intelligent, 52.2% rated them as more likely to prefer being welfare-dependent and 34.5% rated them as more likely to be difficult to get along with.

Such broadly shared negative perceptions did not hold true where Anglos and Asians were concerned. The percentage of non-Anglos who rate Anglos negatively never exceeded 25% in any category, with considerably lower negative ratings for traits of intelligence and welfare dependency. The only trait for which an appreciable fraction rated Asians negatively was for being hard to get along with--45.5% of non-Asians believed that to be true.

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Views After the Riots To measure opinion on a range of social issues, UCLA researchers conducted telephone interviews with 1,869 Los Angeles County residents over 24 weeks. Slightly more than half were interviewed before April 29, when the verdicts in the Rodney G. King beating case sparked violence. The rest were interviewed later.

To the researchers surprise, they found that the verdicts and their aftermath caused few significant changes in the way people of all ethnic groups felt about living in Los Angeles and about each other. But there were exceptions. Several questions attempted to measure how ethnic groups felt about the the social and economic opportunities available to them. The responses of blacks in particular indicated a “strong and uniform rise in black alienation from American social institutions” after the verdicts, the survey found. Sample questions: Does American society owe your ethnic group a better chance in life? Asians who said yes: Pre-Verdict: 36.9% Post-Verdict: 44.0% Blacks who said yes: Pre-Verdict: 54.7% Post-Verdict: 75.4% Latinos who said yes: Pre-Verdict: 64.3% Post-Verdict: 64.1% Anglos who said yes: Pre-Verdict: 17.3% Post-Verdict: 14.8% Respondents were asked whether they would favor or oppose living in a neighborhood where half their neights were of a different ethnic group. Among Asians, blacks and Latinos, pre-verdict and post-verdict responses did not differ. But among Anglos, there was a significant change. Anglos who said they would favor living in a neighborhood where half their neighbors were: Asian: Pre-Verdict: 22.0% Post-Verdict: 40.1% Black: Pre-Verdict: 15.3% Post-Verdict: 28.4% Latino: Pre-Verdict: 20.9% Post-Verdict: 39.0% Notes: Survey respondents were interviewed in English or Spanish, according to their preference. ZIP code areas with high concentration of blacks and Asians were intentionally oversampled in order to generate larger numbers of respondents in those ethnic groups. Source: The 1992 Los Angeles County Social Survey: “Ethnic Antagonism in Los Angeles”