CAN'T WE ALL GET ALONG? MAYBE.

Byline: Earl Ofari Hutchinson

LAST week, I drove to the vacant lot on the corner of 91st and Main in South Central Los Angeles. Five years ago, a grocery store stood on that spot.

I parked for a moment and thought about the talk I had with the store's owner, a Korean immigrant. It was a warm day the week before the Los Angeles riots. I stopped in to buy a soft drink. The owner smiled and politely asked if he could help. For a few minutes we made small talk about sports and the weather.

I was convinced by his small gesture of friendship that he probably went out of his way to treat all of his customers - most of them African-American - with the same respect. Despite the widely reported antagonism between African-Americans and Korean merchants, I knew from my personal experiences there were many store owners like him. Their small acts of kindness were worth more than the posturing and platitudes of politicians about healing ethnic divisions.

As I left the store, the owner smiled and said, ``Stop in again.'' I assured him that I would. I never got the chance.

The next week, his store was one of the 1,100 businesses destroyed in the worst orgy of burning and looting America has seen this century. Fifty-four deaths and $550 million in property losses in the rioting sparked a deep national soul search about race relations after the acquittal of four LAPD officers charged with beating Rodney King.

I roamed the streets of my neighborhood for two days during the riots, personally saw stores looted and torched and talked with residents, store owners and many of the looters. While other residents and I condemned the violence and destruction, I understood and, to an extent, shared the rage and frustration of many African-Americans, not just for the acquittal of the officers charged in the King beating, but for the long litany of racial insults and ills that had piled up.

In revisiting 12 of those store sites last week, I found that eight businesses had been rebuilt. Four locations are still vacant lots with overgrown weeds. The four are among at least 200 stores, including the market where I stopped five years ago, that have not been rebuilt.

I don't know whether some of the owners started new businesses elsewhere or not. Many didn't or couldn't rebuild because of lack of money, concern over safety, or inability to get loans. Many of the business owners were casualties of failure by the federal government and private industry to deliver on their over-ambitious promise to provide $5 billion for small-business loans, housing construction, increased social services and recreation programs in South Central Los Angeles.

Even Rebuild L.A., which closed it doors last September, couldn't produce public and private agencies to pony up the dollars needed to erase the riot scars and remake the neighborhoods.

Five years ago, during the midst of the mass destruction, Rodney King stepped before a bank of TV cameras, junked his prepared speech and asked: ``Can't we all get along?'' King's simple question was not a desperate ploy to end the violence, but a heartfelt plea to actively work for racial tolerance and understanding.

Five years later, have we come any closer to doing that? Yes and no. There are many who claim that Los Angeles is a hopeless sinkhole of economic and social rot and decay. They point to the high unemployment of African-Americans, especially young African-American males; the gaping disparities in income between minorities and whites; the continuing gang violence and drug plague; the slashes in welfare, education and social services; the backlash to affirmative action; the escalation of hate crimes, and the ouster of the Los Angeles Police Department's first African-American police chief, Willie Williams.

But does this mean that L.A. is ripe for another riot? No. And here's why:

There is probably more residential racial mixing in Los Angeles than in almost any other major city in the country. A significant number of African-Americans, Latinos and Asians own homes, rent apartments, work and own businesses on the Westside and in the San Fernando Valley.

There are more businesses owned by women and minorities in Southern California than in any other area of the nation.

There has been a noticeable increase in the construction of housing in South Central Los Angeles for those with low and moderate incomes. New single-family homes and apartments were built on the burned-out sites I revisited. Several major banks and S&Ls have publicly committed more funds for minority-owned housing and business loans.

The City Council unanimously approved a Community Redevelopment Agency plan to renovate buildings, clean up and beautify streets, and secure funding for more small-business loans in the Crenshaw and Slauson-Vermont areas. A nonprofit community group, Operation HOPE, is seeking $50 million for home lending, and the Community Development Bank has drawn up a $400 million plan for federal funding for more small businesses.

The record surge in Latino voting during the past mayoral election ensures that Latinos will be even bigger political players in shaping municipal issues.

The ouster of Williams was not, as some African-Americans claimed, the signal that the LAPD will return to the Daryl Gates era. The rap against Williams was that he didn't move fast enough to implement the Christopher Commission's recommendations to reform the LAPD. Riordan, the City Council and the Police Commission have made it clear that the next chief must continue the effort to fully implement those reforms.

The City Council continues to sponsor periodic citywide days of dialogue among community leaders and residents on the Westside, the San Fernando Valley and South Central Los Angeles, to promote ethnic and cultural understanding.

An interracial coalition has had moderate success in its campaign to restrict the proliferation of liquor stores in South Central Los Angeles. The group has also fought against cutting funds for libraries and recreation programs.

A truce between African-American and Latino gangs has sharply reduced the number of drive-by shootings and assaults in some areas of the city.

Is this enough? Of course not. But these achievements show that many in L.A. are trying to answer ``yes'' to King's question.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1--Color) What have we learned five years after the burning, looting and violence sparked in Los Angeles

Gene Blevins/Special to the Daily News

(2) A poster at a ravaged business at Normandie and Florence avenues calls for the violence to end in 1992.

David Sprague