Post-Riot Series: ‘Separate Lives’

Congratulations on your “Understanding the Riots” series (Nov. 16-19). It was excellent but it only told half the story. What it left out was the attitudes of suburbanites, primarily white, who are sickened by the decay of a city they once loved and once had so much promise that has now turned dark, sinister and ugly.

What also was not addressed was the failure of public policy that led to the riots. Indigenous poor people, primarily in South-Central Los Angeles, were first economically eviscerated by the decline of basic manufacturing in the Los Angeles Basin. Then they were drowned by successive waves of immigration taking away what few jobs remained, leaving them hopeless and in utter despair.

Only when the true tragedy of the Los Angeles riots can be addressed both as a human failure and as a failure of public policy will the solution begin to emerge.

JOHN G. MORGAN

Camarillo