Platform : After the King Verdict: What Can Parents Do for Peace? : ELAINE TAKAHASHI / UCLA administrative assistant, director of Asian Pacific Faculty and Staff Assn.

My son and I talked quite a bit about what happened--in the riot--the cause of it and the possibility of there being another one.

We live in the Crenshaw District. Even though there was a lot of tension during the time of the riot, we still feel very comfortable here. My son, Sumiji Tamaki, is 17. He has been exposed to intercultural communication and living here has helped. He practically grew up in the Asian American Drug Abuse Program, where I worked with a very diverse staff of Latinos, African-Americans and Asian Pacific Islanders, and the Crenshaw YMCA. That exposure strengthened his understanding of others.

Some of our friends were brutalized during the riot. One of my Asian friends was beaten in her car after people smashed the automobile’s windows. Although it was such a horrible event and Asians were targeted, my son knows that those things are symptoms of a deeper problem that goes beyond ethnic lines. Not just Asians were brutalized. Latinos and African-Americans were, too. He realizes the riot was fueled more by poverty than by racism and hate. I’m a single parent and our only (source of) income, so he understands the issues of economic hardship.