![]() He was an on-camera reporter who went live from the First African Methodist Episcopal church the day the violence broke out. Peter Pak was 32 when the King verdict came down. This past week, I had lunch with two reporters from the Korea Times, and we discussed the Black-Korean conflict. “How that term that was being applied to those specific shooting incidents and how it extended to Koreans and blacks as people, as a population - it did not make sense to me,” Lee said. Black communities - frustrated by not just their treatment but by economic racism and disinvestment - organized boycotts of Korean-owned stores that would not hire Black people.īut “Black-Korean conflict” was also a term that confined the discussion of the riots’ racial conflicts to those two communities - “players in a zero-sum game,” as John H. Korean shopkeepers, terrified by violence and crime, did not treat their Black customers with the respect they deserved. The Black-Korean conflict described a very real nationwide dynamic between Korean shopkeepers and their largely Black customer base that was marked by violence, boycotts and protest. It was a palatable narrative of racial conflict in which white racism was not directly implicated. The Black-Korean conflict was an enduring storyline during the violence that erupted in 1992 after four Los Angeles police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King. With a face that many mistake for Korean, I have come to know the aftermath. I did not experience the Los Angeles riots, but I have covered race and ethnicity for this paper for a decade. He relaxed visibly when I explained that I am not Korean. Times but to the fact that I am Asian American. We kept talking, and it became clear he wasn’t referring just to the L.A. “Aren’t you scared? You people don’t usually come down here.” But what are you doing down here?” he repeated, a little more loudly this time. ![]() I’m a journalist, I responded, here to write a story for the newspaper. I was explaining to a local pastor that I was a reporter at the Los Angeles Times doing a story on a restaurant chain. The year was 2017, and I was at the intersection of Manchester and South Normandie avenues, where the Los Angeles riots had raged a quarter century before. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |