Still Digging Out the Lessons : U.S. Civil Rights Commission holds hearings on the Los Angeles riots

The U.S. Civil Rights Commission is holding hearings in Los Angeles this week to look into the causes, effects and aftermath of last year’s riots. There are still many lessons to be learned.

LAPD Chief Willie L. Williams and Sheriff Sherman Block testified Tuesday. Law enforcement is a logical starting point because not-guilty verdicts in the police beating of Rodney G. King sparked the 1992 unrest. Nearly 30 years after the Watts riots, the civil rights panel should ask whether African-American and Latino men still suffer disproportionately at the hands of the police today despite the Christopher Commission’s investigation and recommendations for reform.

The commission chair, Arthur Fletcher, also plans to focus on economic development. That subject is a natural for Fletcher, a longtime entrepreneur. The panel should ask how this region can narrow the huge economic divide between an affluent middle-class population and a larger working-class and poor population. That discussion must address racial barriers to investment capital, insurance and other financial services.

Like other post-riot investigations, most notably the Kerner Commission in the 1960s, the Civil Rights Commission will also explore the role of the media in urban unrest. In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s U.S Commission on Civil Disorders quantified a near-invisibility of black Americans in newspapers and television broadcasts then.

The Los Angeles explosion should prompt similar questions about alleged biases in local news broadcasts during riot coverage, including the wholesale indictment of minorities as no more than looters. In another part of the inquiry that is extremely relevant to Los Angeles, the panel will look into the scarcity of minorities in key power positions in the entertainment media, which can be another breeding ground for racial and ethnic stereotypes.

The Civil Rights Commission’s focus on Los Angeles is important because this city can either become a multicultural model for the nation’s cities or a harbinger of urban nightmares to come.