A Divided Los Angeles Rages Across the Abyss : City: To rebuild, we must find the will to narrow the gap between haves and have-nots.

Images. Scenes that flicker like tongues of flame: of reasoned indignation and unthinking rage; of wanton destruction and numbing fear.

And among them all--culled from the streets and the television and the newspaper--one picture that deserves to be remembered: the Rev. Cecil P. Murray, pastor of Los Angeles’ First AME Church, his chin up and his cheeks bright with tears.

As a columnist for The Times, I have spent some of my most instructive hours in “Chip” Murray’s quiet study at First AME. It wasn’t hard to imagine his thoughts--anger over the injustice that most African-Americans see in the acquittal of Rodney King’s accused assailants; frustration that his pleas for a nonviolent response have been so widely ignored.

But it is on precisely that response--one which recognizes both dimensions of our current civic crisis--that we can begin to rebuild this city’s future.

It is a melancholy fact that Los Angeles has been for many years the most segregated of America’s big cities. But over the past 12 years, economic and political forces have pushed Angelenos further and further apart.

Today, more than ever before, we are two cities. One is overwhelmingly white and relatively well educated. Its residents have benefited disproportionately from federal tax and spending policies and from their ability to find jobs in the so-called sunrise industries. The other Los Angeles is populated by poor--and poorly educated--blacks, Latinos and recent Asian immigrants. They have suffered disproportionately from federal policies and economic restructuring.

When they can find a job, it usually is in Los Angeles’ fastest-growing occupational category: “salesperson.” Its average entry wage is $4.75 an hour. In this “other” Los Angeles, even a high-school diploma is no guarantee of a decent standard of living. Between 1973 and 1986, the average yearly income of African-American high school graduates declined 44%; Latino earnings fell 35% during that period. During that same period, many of the city’s poorest neighborhoods have been ravaged by unprecedented increases in drug addiction and violent crime. While the vast majority of poor Angelenos, like all poor Americans, are law-abiding, 80% of all criminal defendants in the city’s urban courts now are indigent.

The distance between these two Los Angeles’ was never more clear than in the angry questions posed about the conduct of the city’s leaders when the violence began Wednesday night.

On the one hand were those--many of them opponents of Charter Amendment F--who alleged that Mayor Tom Bradley’s denunciation of the verdict in the King case virtually invited urban disorder. On the other hand there were those--particularly in the black community--who angrily attacked what they consider the mayor’s passivity.

On the one hand were people--mainly white--who charged that the Los Angeles Police Department’s tentative response to Wednesday’s first incidents of violence was caused by months of political interference from City Hall. On the other hand there were people--many of them black--who speculated that LAPD Chief Daryl F. Gates deliberately slowed his officers’ deployment in areas where criticism of his stewardship has been most intense.

Finally, you could see the gap between our two cities in what might be called the battle of dehumanizing epithets. One year ago, the officers accused of assaulting King were routinely referred to as “savages” and “thugs.” By Wednesday, those same nouns were being used to describe the young people running riot through the streets.

Two cities being pushed further and further apart. Two peoples shouting two sets of angry, anxious questions into the empty abyss that divides them.

Can a city divided not only by the facts of life, but also by the very questions people ask about them find a common ground? The answer, as the response of thoughtful leaders like Chip Murray suggests, is yes, if people are willing to see each other whole. And, perhaps more important, if they are willing to refrain from using these tragic events as the excuse for further division.

The last time we spoke about the divided city in which we live, Murray had this to say:

“Ours is not a failure of resources; ours is a failure of will. American know-how is fabled. We can do anything we have the will to do. If we have visionary leadership, we can muster the will to solve these problems. There are not enough police in America, there are not enough dollars in America to do that if the will is lacking. Americans right now are almost equally divided in their feelings about race.

There is much to be done, but justice is within our grasp. Now, if our leaders will stop feeding us to each other, and show us that we can work with each other, we’ll be all right.”