Korean-African American relations
Korean-African American relations are characterized by a complex interplay of cultural and economic dynamics, particularly in urban areas where Korean immigrants often establish small businesses. Many Korean Americans own and operate stores like bodegas and beauty supply shops, primarily in cities such as Los Angeles and New York, where they frequently cater to African American customers. This has led to cultural clashes and perceptions of exploitation, as some African Americans view Korean shop owners as outsiders profiting from their communities, while Koreans may harbor suspicions about the local population due to high crime rates and a lack of understanding of the historical context of racial dynamics in the U.S.
Tensions have occasionally escalated into conflicts, notably during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, which severely impacted Korean businesses and heightened distrust. In response to these challenges, efforts have been made to foster dialogue and improve relations between the two communities, including initiatives like the Black-Korean Alliance and various scholarship programs. Despite these efforts, underlying issues such as economic disparities and concentrated poverty in urban areas continue to challenge the relationship. Building mutual trust and cooperation may require investment in the communities where these businesses operate, promoting economic opportunities for local residents.
Korean-African American relations
SIGNIFICANCE: Korean immigrants to the United States have tended to open small businesses, such as groceries, in central areas of American cities, where many of their customers have been African Americans. Consequently, culture clashes and conflicts sometimes occur between members of these minority groups.
Ownership of a small business is the most common job for people of Korean ancestry in the United States. Assisted by rotating credit associations (organizations that Koreans form to grant each other interest-free business loans requiring little collateral), Korean Americans have specialized in self-employment in small stores. The majority of Korean businesses in the United States are located in California and New York. Within these states, they are concentrated in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area and in New York City, primarily Queens.
Korean businesses, often bodegas, swap meets, and beauty supply stores, are often located in central areas of cities. During the 1970s and 1980s, owners of inner-city businesses began to leave, and Koreans, having access to business loans from their rotating loan associations but few job opportunities in established American businesses, began buying small urban shops. Although their businesses were in the city, Koreans often settled in the suburbs. Most people living in central urban areas who patronized Korean businesses were African Americans. Some Korean shop owners were viewed by their inner-city customers as exploiters who came to the city to make a profit on the people and then took the money elsewhere. Customers complained about high prices, poor merchandise, and discourteous treatment. As new arrivals to the United States, some Korean merchants did not speak English or communicate well with their customers.
Korean businesspeople typically employ other Koreans, usually other family members, to work in their shops. As a result, Koreans not only live outside the communities where their stores are located but also hire few community inhabitants. This led to complaints that Korean merchants did not hire Black employees, did not buy from Black suppliers of goods, and did not invest in the Black neighborhoods where they opened their businesses.
Although African American shoppers have frequently viewed Koreans as outsiders and exploiters, Koreans have viewed those living in the neighborhoods near their businesses with suspicion. Having little understanding of the history of US racial inequality, Korean business owners may see low-income urban residents as irresponsible and untrustworthy. The high crime rates in these neighborhoods can lead them to see all members of the communities, even the most honest, as potential shoplifters or robbers.
Mistrust and Culture Clash
The cultural gap between Black and Korean Americans who often own stores in Black neighborhoods has resulted in a number of well-publicized clashes. In the spring of 1990, African Americans in Brooklyn began a nine-month boycott of Korean stores after a Korean greengrocer allegedly harassed an African American shopper. In 1992, tensions escalated in the same neighborhood when an African American customer in a Korean grocery was allegedly harassed and struck by the owner and an employee. In 1995, an African American man was arrested while attempting to burn down a Korean-owned store, and both White and Korean store owners in Harlem received racial threats.
California, home to the nation’s greatest number of Korean businesses, has seen some of the most serious conflicts between Koreans and African Americans. In April of 1992, a judge gave a sentence of probation to a Korean shopkeeper convicted in the shooting death of a fifteen-year-old African American girl, Latasha Harlins. Two weeks after that, on April 29, riots broke out in South Central Los Angeles after the acquittal of police officers who had been videotaped beating an African American motorist, Rodney King. Although none of the police officers was Korean, Korean groceries and liquor stores in South Central Los Angeles became targets of the riots. The riots destroyed more than one thousand Korean businesses, and an estimated twenty-three hundred Korean-owned businesses were looted.
Korean shop owners began leaving South Central Los Angeles in the years after the riots. Those who remained became even more wary of the local population. However, the population of Korean shop owners in California and New York remained significant through the first decades of the twenty-first century.
Efforts at Improving Relations
Following the riots in Los Angeles, some African American and Korean leaders formed the Black-Korean Alliance to improve communication and find common ground between Black and Korean Americans. In New York, the Korean-American Grocer’s Association and the International Korean Grocers Association have also attempted to reduce group conflict. These have included sending African American community leaders on tours of South Korea and providing African American students with scholarships to Korean universities.
However, the historical tension between Korean merchants and their African American customers will persist as long as American central cities continue to be places of concentrated unemployment and poverty. Investment in low-income communities and creating economic opportunities for their residents are probably necessary to overcome the suspicion and resentment between members of these two minority groups.
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