Where’s the Leadership on Race Relations? : L.A.: Grass-roots efforts are commendable, but a city this size needs an organized approach to preventing conflict.

After each of Los Angeles’ major civil catastrophes, in 1965 and again in 1992, cosmetic rebuilding covered over most of the damage caused by the burning and looting. But there has not been a similar attempt to deal with the issues that lie under the surface of civil discord: racial disparity, poverty, neglect, police misconduct and a failing public education system.

Although there have been repeated warnings about the deteriorating nature of human and race relations, both locally and nationally--from the McCone commission of 1965 to the Christopher commission in 1992--none was taken seriously enough. Now there is a new report, not a government-sponsored effort, but one done by a privately funded organization. This time, the alarm is being sounded by the Los Angeles MultiCultural Collaborative after an 18-month study titled “Race, Power and Promise in Los Angeles: An Assessment of Responses to Human Relations Conflict.”

The study found that little exists in the way of a human relations infrastructure for the Los Angeles area. As a result, no comprehensive or sustained responses to human relations problems are in place. Dispute resolution strategies tend to focus on one-on-one conflicts and not on the more difficult intergroup tensions and conflicts. There is an alarming lack of funding and support for government-sponsored human relations commissions, as well as for community groups and grass-roots leaders who do cross-race organizing. And nearly all discussions of race and political power in L.A. still are framed in the black/white paradigm; this has to be expanded to include all racial and ethnic groups.

But there is little value to another study of L.A.’s poor race relations unless it serves a larger purpose of focusing us on solutions. The study must call us to action and begin a process of coordinating our approaches to race and human relations. The question is, what can government do, and what can each of us do to improve the situation?

Specifically, we can insist on higher levels of accountability and interest in human relations from our elected and appointed representatives. Our elected officials on the City Council or at the county Board of Supervisors must respond by convening special sessions or hearings to analyze existing programs of racial cooperation and to find ways to expand or replicate such efforts. To improve racial dynamics within law enforcement agencies and in the diverse communities they serve, we can demand that the human relations work begun by the Los Angeles Police Commission be expanded and blue ribbon panels convened by the LAPD and the county Sheriff to examine issues of police-community dynamics. Because dialogue can be a powerful vehicle for breaking down the mythologies surrounding race and culture, we can ask that leadership continue to expand efforts like the recent Day of Dialogue discussions initiated by L.A. City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas. And leadership should join together at a Greater L.A. summit meeting to ordain a more coordinated approach to improving our human relations.

Schools can be fundamental in giving young people the skills to deal with the growing racial, ethnic and religious diversity of the city, their neighborhoods and schools. While many innovative curricula have been designed to deal with the growing racial and ethnic diversification of L.A.’s student population, most of these programs have stalled short of the implementation stage. Parents must insist that these programs be implemented with all due speed.

The MultiCultural Collaborative study sounds an alarm about the wide and deep chasm of L.A.’s racial dilemma. But the assessment also found a real basis for hope in salient examples of racial cooperation, such as the Community Coalition and Leadership Development in Interethnic Relations, groups that organize neighborhood residents, without regard to race or ethnicity, to work together on neighborhood issues. The study contains a directory of agencies and organizations that are now in place and working to make relationships better among L.A.’s diverse populations. It must be our individual responsibility to ask that these agencies and organizations be built upon and supported, and to insist that human relations and race relations programs be offered in our workplaces and schools.

The imperatives posed by the racial dilemmas of Los Angeles are extremely difficult challenges. But improving human relations must be the job that is collectively shared by us all. No one has the option of sitting on the sidelines in the struggle to improve race relations. Any call to action must mean a commitment to work in partnership with all community and civic leaders to address the urgent concerns of racial dynamics and continuing disparity. If we don’t make changes in the racial and cultural dynamics of our city, the kind of racialized violence that recently erupted among L.A.’s high school youth could become the norm. Because this is a possibility that no one finds acceptable, we can no longer afford to run away from the problems of race and human relations.