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At a news conference after the meeting, Barry and several Asian American leaders sought to present a united front, saying that the dialogue is an important step toward defusing long-standing tension between blacks and Asians. Asked about the underlying sources of the conflict, Barry said the United States “has had racial tensions since it was founded.”

Interesting that that particular thread of racial disharmony extends from sea to shining sea. In the Los Angeles riots of 1992, after the riots erupted around Normandie and Florence, the mob realized that the LAPD was not going to intervene and immediately swarmed north into Koreatown. There was open gunfire between Korean shopkeepers and armed looters. Several Koreans lost their lives defending their businesses, and the following year only 1 in 4 burned-out business re-opened. Riot postmortems revealed an enormous gulf of acrimony between the Korean American and black communities, the latter blaming the former for taking money out of the black community and not hiring black employees.

Koreatown rebounded, and grew exponentially, fueled by the entrepreneurial drive of its citizens. Today the contrast between vibrant, bustling Koreatown and South Central couldn’t be starker. There probably still would be complaints about the vampire capitalist Koreans if any of the South Central population of the 90′s were still around. But within a decade, after some fierce turf fighting, the looters were largely displaced by the latinos. As Rodney King pleaded at the height of the riots, “Can’t we all just get along?” Ask the Koreans. Ask the Latinos.

de rigueur on May 25, 2012 at 1:09 AM