As dozens of mostly black and Latino students at the Maxine Waters Employment Preparation Center gathered for an open-air press conference in the school parking lot last month, Peter Ueberroth, the chairman of Rebuild L.A., lavished praise on executives of Japan's Pioneer Electronics (U.S.A.), who had just donated $600,000 to the Watts vocational school, created after the 1965 riots. "This company did this on their own," Ueberroth said, "because it should be good business for them to recognize the importance of the inner city."
Earlier the same week in another part of South Central Los Angeles, black activist and entrepreneur Danny...