Healing the Wounds

People rarely use phrases like brotherly love and racial harmony anymore. These terms once represented the loftiest ideals, but they have since decayed into cliche and self-parody. And one rarely finds the occasion to use them anyway. Los Angeles’ black and Korean communities, however, are taking encouraging steps toward these goals. Through continuing dialogue, blacks and Koreans are slowly reconciling the tensions that have plagued their relationship in South-Central Los Angeles. Where stereotypes and distrust were once the rule, understanding and cooperation have successfully taken root. Their work is extremely difficult, and it is not nearly complete. But their diligence testifies quietly and eloquently that the most disparate groups can reach common ground.

Religious exchanges, intercultural education sessions and joint community outreach projects began the task of first identifying and discussing common problems, and then working jointly toward their solution. The Black-Korean Community Relations Committee is now confronting and defusing the problems that face blacks and Koreans as they live and work together. From there, black and Korean community leaders, Los Angeles City Councilmen Nate Holden and Robert Farrell and the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations are working to expand black-Korean cooperation into economic and political spheres as well.

Los Angeles’ black community has the political representation that most of the newly arrived Koreans lack, and the Korean community has rapidly built an economic base from which to launch political interests. Together, these two groups may finally reconcile their differences and promote their causes in Los Angeles’ political forum. Politics calls this a marriage of convenience--a union that will initially thrive only to collapse over a lack of communication or a deep-seated difference of opinion. This community effort has lasted more than two years, however, and perhaps there is a good deal more to it than just a marriage of convenience.