ECONOMIC-INEQUALITY, LATINO POVERTY, AND THE CIVIL UNREST IN LOS-ANGELES

This article challenges commonplace racial images of the 1992 civil un rest in Los Angeles by documenting the widespread participation of Lat inos in that social upheaval. Regression analysis of the property dama ge suggests further that, although a majority presence of African Amer icans in certain neighborhoods played an important role in determining the location of the unrest, economic factors were also important, esp ecially for Latino participants. As a result, post-unrest policy atten tion has appropriately turned to poverty alleviation in the so-called affected areas. However the poverty of Latinos-the single largest ethn ic group in the damaged neighborhoods and the one for which economic f actors were most significant-does not fit an urban underclass paradigm ; it is better described as that of the working poor, a pattern that s uggests a rather different approach to urban and antipoverty policy ef forts.