The L.A. Riots and U.S. Population NonPolicy (NPG Footnote)
- Lindsey Grant
- May 1, 1992
- Forum Papers
- Forum Paper
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An NPG Forum Paper
(NPG Footnote)
by Lindsey Grant
May 1992
The riots in Los Angeles have generated a new wave of self-examination in the White establishment. It should perhaps be tempered with realism as to the underlying forces involved, if not the triggering incident itself. The effort to bring minorities (and particularly Blacks) into unfettered participation in U.S. society takes goodwill on all sides and a sustained effort by the minority poor to master the economic skills of modem society. It cannot simply be done for them.
However, even if the country’s leadership cannot undertake to guarantee everybody the job of their choice, it should try to create an environment in which those who are willing and able to work can find work to do. In this respect, over the past three decades, the nation could not have botched the job more thoroughly if it had deliberately set out to start riots. Unemployment, the sense of frustration and hopelessness, and the competition for jobs from people coming from desperate lives in other countries — these were the tinder on which the LA riots fed.
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Lindsey Grant is a retired Foreign Service Officer; he was a China specialist and served as Director of the Office of Asian Communist Affairs, National Security Council staff member, and Department of State policy Planning staff member. As Deputy Secretary of State for Environmental and Population Affairs, he was Department of State coordinator for the Global 2000 Report to the President, Chairman of the interagency committee on Int’l Environmental Committee and US member of the UN ECE Committee of Experts on the Environment. His books include: Too Many People, Juggernaut, The Horseman and the Bureaucrat, Elephants in Volkswagen, How Many Americans?