The Messengers Are Sending Wrong Signals to L.A. : Violence: The media must stop injecting racial overtones into every shooting incident involving a store owner.

Once again, we are reminded of the formidable challenge Los Angeles faces in its struggle toward revitalization. The television and radio coverage of the tragic shooting of a 14-year-old boy by a storekeeper in Lynwood suggests a haunting affirmation of our worst fear: that we can never overcome the racial divide among us.

While there are innumerable stories and viewpoints that could be covered in connection with the incident, the only clear theme that consistently emerges in television and radio coverage is that of racial and ethnic tensions.

Rather than focusing on the fact that the city has been ravaged by crisis after crisis affecting all of those who live here, we are being led to believe that the real story underlying the shooting incident is racial and ethnic differences.

Rather than recognizing that all of our efforts to “rebuild” Los Angeles have been thwarted by a declining economy, insufficient resources to assist disaster victims and a strong public cynicism about our political process, we are being asked to focus on the racial and ethnic difference between a Latino teen-ager and a Korean shopkeeper.

While many of our leaders have committed themselves to the difficult task of forging multiracial and multicultural partnerships, they are rarely given the ability to affirm and reaffirm the need for that vision to be realized if we are to survive as a community. Instead, what leads the news is the “news” of strategies brewing to pit one ethnic group against another.

Rather than turning our attention to the messages in our society that lead our youth to take risks that endanger lives, we find ourselves engaged in the ludicrous position of justifying conduct that is unwanted and unacceptable to all of us. Theft--even petty theft--is wrong. Using a gun to stop a teen-ager from stealing food is wrong.

Rather than keeping abreast of the organizing among diverse communities seeking to keep dialogue open in the midst of long-standing resentment, bigotry and fear, we are fed gratuitous images of the shooting of Latasha Harlins. The tragic similarity between both incidents is clear. But for Korean American shopkeepers, the predicament in which Michael Kim found himself last Saturday is also too familiar. Unfortunately, the victimization of small-business owners like Kim rarely get reported in the media--more than 35 Korean American small-business people in Southern California shot dead or wounded in the past year.

It is very probable that neither the 14-year-old nor Kim understands the way in which he has become a pawn in this dangerous game of manipulation. It is no secret that television and radio play a powerful role in shaping public opinion. In continuing to suggest that this incident is about race, a lack of respect for other cultures or some other distortion about the conditions under which small businesses in our city operate, the “news” is simply wrong.