Despite a history of urban riots, the United States has never learned how to invest in inner cities and stop the cyclical upheaval, according to a new study.
Last spring's riots in Los Angeles underscored the lack of a serious federal effort to erase the same type of racial and economic discrimination blamed for riots as far back as 1919, said the report. It was released Saturday by the private Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the Kerner Commission's report.In 1968, the Kerner Commission concluded that the United States was "moving toward two societies, one black, one white - separate and unequal."
"We can reflect, again, on the same moving picture - now the April 1992 riots in south-central Los Angeles," the new report said. "Congress and the White House misunderstood the problem. They then constructed a solution that flew in the face of what really did work."
After the Los Angeles riots, Congress passed a $1.3 billion package including small business loans and $500 million for summer jobs. A longer-term plan, focusing on urban enterprise zones and drug enforcement efforts, was vetoed by President Bush.
"The contents of the vetoed bill . . . raised grave doubts about whether the gridlocked American federal political process would or could ever enact informed solutions,' the report said.
Lynn A. Curtis, author of the Eisenhower report, said the federal government should focus on high-tech job training, affordable housing and community development banks that can finance inner-city projects.
"Our new policy . . . must be framed by words like investment, replication, reinvention, leadership, responsibility and sacrifice," Curtis said.
The study also urged:
-Focusing on drug treatment and prevention, rather than interdiction.
-Reorganizing the Job Training Partnership Act to orient it more toward the needs of unemployed inner-city youth.
-Turning responsibility for building low-income housing over to non-profit organizations, rather than for-profit developers.