Economic Inequality, Latino Poverty, and the Civil Unrest in Los Angeles

This article challenges commonplace racial images of the 1992 civil unrest in Los Angeles by documenting the widespread participation of Latinos in that social upheaval. Regression analysis of the property damage suggests further that, although a majority presence of African Americans in certain neighborhoods played an important role in determining the location of the unrest, economic factors were also important, especially for Latino participants. As a result, post-unrest policy attention has appropriately turned to poverty alleviation in the so-called affected areas. However, the poverty of Latinos—the single largest ethnic group in the damaged neighborhoods and the one for which economic factors were most significant-does not fit an urban underclass paradigm; it is better described as that of the working poor a pattern that suggests a rather different approach to urban and antipoverty policy efforts.