Goodwill Alone Can’t Rebuild L.A. : Minorities: Resolve ethnic conflicts but also address economic underdevelopment and common needs like jobs.

The 1992 civil disturbance in Los Angeles was truly a response by various segments of the city to the deep disparities in power that divide us. The rebuilding of Los Angeles will succeed only if deep and sustaining links of cooperation are forged among the area’s ethnic communities. But goodwill alone won’t do the job.

The promise of coalition-building is in the possibility of strengthening the political and economic power of our communities by pooling financial, political and cultural resources.

We would like to share some insights on building cross-cultural coalitions gained through our analysis of the Black-Korean Alliance and the Latino-Black Roundtable. Both of these groups had as their goal improving relations between their communities. Although both disbanded without achieving this ambitious task, the knowledge that the coalition members acquired is invaluable to the future of this city.

Perhaps the most important lesson was that conflict between communities is rarely, if ever, only about differences in culture or language. Not that such differences are inconsequential. However, economics are most often at the heart of intercommunity tension. In the case of certain segments of the African American and Latino communities, it is unemployment and underemployment. Between certain segments of the Korean American and African American communities, it is lack of access to resources and the question of community ownership.

Human-relations approaches that are focused solely on improving cross-cultural understanding cannot address the crises of economic underdevelopment that plague many neighborhoods and cannot make clear the common needs that unite communities--adequate and affordable housing, safe schools, accessible public transportation, well-paying and safe jobs, clean and safe neighborhoods.

Instead of talking about black/Latino tension, we must talk about the problems of job loss and capital flight from certain neighborhoods or about insufficient resources to meet the educational needs of students from different cultural backgrounds. The focus of “resolving conflict” would then move away from the communities themselves to the need to change the sociopolitical and socioeconomic infrastructure in which the communities reside.

Coalition members also learned that there is really no such thing as the “African American community,” the “Latino community” or the “Korean American community.” Each is composed of a wide range of class backgrounds, political ideologies, religious affiliations and, in the case of Latinos in particular, differences in culture and history.

The diversity of communities makes it impossible to talk about black/Korean relations or Latino/African American relations. In fact, when we generalize problems to entire communities, we limit the potential for finding common ground between different segments of the communities. We might instead address a specific segment and be clear about where tensions are occurring. Are they in the streets between youth, are they in the schools between parents, are they in the work force, are they over access to jobs?

Where tension is situated will influence how we build coalitions. Such an approach would mean that we would focus on creating not a Latino-Black Roundtable but rather an alliance of parents united to improve educational access. We would focus not on a Black-Korean Alliance, but on developing an inclusive alliance of individuals concerned about economic development in troubled neighborhoods.

A common theme discussed by several former alliance and roundtable members is that coalitions must ultimately be neighborhood-based. Several such efforts are under way. In order to function and grow, these efforts require substantial political and financial support.

A common concern of both the alliance and roundtable members was the absence of political and economic support from the city of Los Angeles. The coalitions were understaffed and underfunded and the members stretched too thin.

A central component of one roundtable member’s vision for a multicultural Los Angeles was the creation of human-relations centers in every neighborhood. These centers would be public spaces where we could gather to learn about one another, to organize our communities, to learn what it means to “get along,” since many of us want to reach out but don’t know how. These centers could also help develop responsible sources for learning one another’s histories.

We must be as focused and as committed to building a human-relations infrastructure as we are to building a political/economic infrastructure. In a county of 9 million people, it is absolutely unacceptable that we have only one person staffing the city Human Relations Commission and only 13 people staffing the county Human Relations Commission.

Some may consider this broad-based vision to be unrealistic. We believe it is even more unrealistic to assume that this city can spontaneously become a mecca of cultural diversity and cooperation. We need to consciously work together to create new and daring visions for our city and continually challenge ourselves and our officials to commit to the long-term process of building a multicultural city.