l disturbance of the 20th century.
Prior to 1965, when discriminatory barriers against Asian immigration were lifted, the Korean population in the United States was small. But from 1970 to 1990 the numbers of Koreans soared from 70,598 to 820,000. Since 1980, 33,000 Koreans have entered the
country each year, a rale of growth exceeded only by Filipinos and Hispanics. Middle class in origin and highly educated as a group, Korean immigrants have made their mark on the local Los Angeles economy. Although composing ^ly 10 percent of the Koreatown population, Koreans own 42 percent of the commercial lots, 40 percent of office buildings, and 41 percent of all shopping centers within an area ten times arger than Chinatown and Little Tokyo combined. Throughout the 1970s to the Present, the Korean American ethnic sub-economy in Los Angeles has flour-j 'n comparison to the sluggish per-Qtmance of the county at large. But such economic strides have earned the
of many Blacks and Latino, tie winning the praise of commen-who point to Korean Americans
as a shining example of entrepreneurial capitalism at work.
Nationally, Black-Korean tensions have often escalated into violent incidents. In Brooklyn, New York the Family Red Apple grocery store operated by Bong Jae Jang was boycotted for 16 months by protesters after it was claimed that store employees beat an African American customer they had accused of stealing. The city of Los Angeles was the site of the March 16, 1991 shooting death of 15-
From New York to Los Angeles, the Korean American shopkeeper has been portrayed as the principal antagonist of the ethnic underclass composed of Blacks and Hispanics.
year-old Latasha Harlins by the proprietor of a family-nm market. Soon Ja Du. The following November, when Compton Superior Court Judge Joyce A. Karlin sentenced Soon Ja Du to five years probation, the African American community was outraged.
In the popular imagination, the

, Reprinted by permission.
drama of Black-Korean conflict is played out at mom and pop food and liquor stores. In truth, Korean-owned businesses comprise a diverse range of enterprise including manufacturing, finance, insurance, retail and wholesale trade, construction, and real estate. The popular association of the retail food and liquor trade with Korean Americans no doubt stems from their over representation in this area of business activity. As of 1980, 3.5 percent of all businesses that sell liquor were owned by Koreans although they represented only 0.8 percent of the population in Los Angeles County.
Prior to the mid-1960s, the liquor store trade in South-Central Los Angeles was dominated by Jewish American merchants. The Watts Riots of 1965 precipitated the flight of Jewish American proprietors, who sold their stores cheaply to Blacks. African American proprietors in turn dominated the retail liquor store trade from the late 1960s through the 1970s. The deregulation of liquor prices in 1978 made it difficult for small store owners to maintain already marginal profits. As a consequence, many African American owners sold their stores, often at a good profit, to Korean immigrants who saw small-scale family proprietorships as a point of entry into the economy.
From New York to Los Angeles, the Korean American shopkeeper has been portrayed as the principal antagonist of the ethnic underclass composed of Blacks and Hispanics. A classic example of what sociologists refer to as a  middleman minority,  Korean American small business owners serve as an effective buffer between absentee EuroAmerican capitalist owners and non
5. ASIAN AMERICANS
white residents living in core urban areas. The Korean American business person is often held up as  proof of social mobility in a class-bound society, a living denial that race prejudice works as a barrier to economic success. Yet it is a combination of social discrimination and lack of English language competence that forces Korean immigrants into the ethnic enclave economy in the first place.
The myth-making potential of Asian immigrants in the service of U.S. capital already has been exploited by government officials. In June of last year, President Bush addressed a crowd of an estimated 40,000 Asian Americans at Mile Square Park in Fountain Valley, California. The event was billed by the White House as being the first such address delivered specifically to an Asian American audience. Over the past several years, the GOP has sensed a strengthening ideological linkage between its attacks on the welfare state and the growing Asian American immigrant community. Many recent Asian immigrants to the United States embrace such Republican verities as  free enterprise,  family-based entrepre-neurialism, self-help, and a minimalist deflnition of government. The anticommunism of Republican leaders and pro-business policies of the conservative regime are additional lures to this
I rapidly emerging constituency.
As part of the attack on the welfare   state, the forces of conservative reac-I tion point to Asian immigrant families ! as exemplars of the entrepreneurial ideal which eschews federal support in favor of a self-sufficient  localism.  It ' is not uncommon for newspaper accounts to write of  Asian newcomers  who have  provided a fresh injection of economic investment and ingenuity for their new communities.  Vietnamese and Korean merchants in particular are praised for their bringing about the  revitalization  of areas that were once in economic decline.
  But as Ivan Light and Edna Bon-acich observe in their exhaustive study Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Koreans in Los Angeles 1965-1982 (1991), large-scale U.S. capital looms in the back-ground through the sales and service of national business franchises and by subcontracting piece-work to Korean American manufacturing concerns. The highly competitive garment manufac-wring industry is but one example of unequal economic exchange between
  130
Historically, the responses to Asian immigration to the U.S. has ranged from enthusiastic acceptance to violent rejection depending on a given group s relationship to capital.
Korean small business and large U.S. corporations. More importantly, Korean American small businesses provide indirect benefits to large-scale capital by distributing national brand-name products to under served urban populations, reducing labor standards and costs, pioneering new areas of enterprise for eventual takeover by big capital, and perpetuating the myth of ethnic entrepreneurial success within class society.
The calamitous events that followed the not-guilty verdict in the Rodney King trial gives lie to the myth of Asian American entrepreneurial success currently being trumpeted by a number of journalists and academics, including Joel Kotkin, James Fallows, Peter L. Berger, Thomas Sowell, and Dinesh D Souza. Koreatown was especially hard hit by firebomb attacks and looting, two days and nights of terror which were interpreted by the news media as the almost inevitable result of ongoing conflict between Blacks and Korean Americans. The estimated loss of about 850 Korean-owned businesses at a cost of up to $300 million during the rebellion graphically illustrates the daily risks taken by merchants who do business in urban areas deemed too unprofitable by corporate chains.
In the popular culture, the tension-fraught relationship between the Korean store owner and his Black clientele in Spike Lee s Do the Right Thing was emblematic of the Black-Korean conflict, with the climactic scene prefiguring the much larger conflagration that was to later engulf large sections of Los Angeles. Rap artist Ice Cube added fuel to the fire by his 47-
second diatribe  Black Kore Death Certificate, which advis respectful  chop suey ass  merci  pay respect to the Black fist, c bum your store right down to a c
Placed in its historical cont< recent attack on L.A. s Koreal consistent with 150 years of 1 and overt acts of violence agains American communities. Suchen in Asian Americans: An Inte, History (1991) divides anti-Asi tility into several distinct but categories: prejudice, econon crimination, political disenfn ment, physical violence, imm exclusion, social segregation, ar ceration. The irony of this mos attack against the Korean A community lies in the fact that during a time when immigrati no longer discriminate against de jure discrimination has cea legislation exists to presen rights. But such formal gains past 25 years have been rend< Wally meaningless because 12 regressive social and economic under Reagan/Bush has fra: cities such as Los Angeles into ly antagonistic groups for wl vival means ongoing struggle one another with little regar abstract principles of liberal dei
The first recorded attack on community in Los Angeles to in 1871, when a mob invade town and attacked its resident: end of the melee, fifteen Chi been hanged, four shot, i wounded. As in the case   crimes committed against As perpetrators were never fully by white civil authorities. The record is filled with many i counts of violent attacks agaii communities of which the K siege is but the latest example.
Historically, the responses immigration to the U.S. ha from enthusiastic acceptance rejection depending on a give relationship to capital. For Leland Stanford, whose Centi railroad was in dire need of < ploitable labor, welcomed i migration while the Irish wor was noteworthy for its virule: tion to Chinese workers v economic competitors. Acc David R. Roediger in The Whiteness: Race and the Mal American Working Class (1
28. Black-Korean Confli
^^Chinese campaign was national aKi ^eartteaded by Irish American im-ctigrant workers for whom  whiteness"  their ticket for inclusion into a her-guttM republican order where class divisions were elided by a common Anglo-Saxon racial heritage.
In the latter 19th century when antiAsian hysteria was at a high, Asian immigrants, Mexicans, Indians, and African Americans were lumped together as equally ineligible for full participation in the economy. Yet in
1992 we are treated to the specter of non-white minorities battling each other for the few crumbs that have fallen from the well-set tables of capitalists who live in homogeneous communities patrolled by private security forces.
Fully 122 years separate the first recorded attack on an Asian community in Los Angeles and the April 1992 outbreak of violence in Koreatown. While the faces of the Koreatown attackers were predominantly Black and brown, the underlying causes of their anger.
hostility, and resentment against Asia are not so dissimilar from that of th white working class counterparts w also have been blinded to the subi mechanisms of a capitalist society th divides disenfranchised groups in waning camps. The current Blacl Korean conflict is at bottom a displaa ment of the more fundamental problen the profoundly disruptive effects c economic inequality. Ilie Black-Korea conflict is not likely to abate unless thi nation moves in the direction of greate economic democr