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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