Asian Newcomers Who ‘Get Ahead So Fast’ May Be Far Behind Where They Started

In Spike Lee’s film “Do the Right Thing,” three unemployed black men are sitting on the sidewalk in a New York City black community, and one of them points to the Korean greengrocery across the street. Those Koreans, the Lees, own that store, he says. And they got off the boat only a year ago. Why we can’t do the same thing?

But the question is left unanswered. We leave the theater with little understanding of why the three men are out of work and why the Lees are operating a store.

Had Spike Lee allowed his viewers to enter the back room of the greengrocery we might have seen a college degree from a Korean university hanging on the wall and learned that grocer Lee may have been a professional worker--an engineer, school teacher or administrator--in Korea. About 78% of Korean greengrocers, a New York survey found, had college degrees. In the mid-1970s, only 6% of Korean householders in New York City had been small-business owners in the old country. Yet, 34% of them were in the retail and wholesale businesses. They became shopkeepers after their arrival in America.

“What else can I do?” explained greengrocer Ill Chung, who holds a master’s degree in engineering. “I need money but there are not good jobs for Koreans.” Korean professionals such as Chung face discrimination, and, even if they are hired, many hit the “glass ceiling”--a barrier that allows them to see high-level management positions but not reach them.

Most Korean immigrants also encounter another difficulty. “The English-language barrier,” observed one of them, “virtually makes the (Korean) newcomers deaf and dumb.” According to a 1975 study of Korean immigrants over 23 years of age, only 10% were fluent in English. As greengrocers, Korean immigrants need only a minimal knowledge of English to operate their business.

The main reason why they are able to “own” stores is the fact that they often bring capital with them. “They sell their homes, everything they own in Korea and bring their cash with them,” explained Christopher Kim, who has worked as a lawyer in Los Angeles’ Koreatown for over a decade. “Many then open liquor stores in the black community.”

But most do not become shopkeepers. Instead they find themselves trapped as stockers and clerks in grocery stores, service workers in restaurants, operatives in garment factories or as janitors at airports and in hotels. “We came for a better life,” complained garment-factory worker Jung Sook Kim, “but we have not found it better yet. It is work, work, work.”

The highlighting of Korean shopkeeping success by Spike Lee and also by the news media has overlooked the plight of these Korean laborers. This has helped create the myth of Koreans and other Asian Americans as a “model minority.” Although many achievements in education and employment by Asian Americans have indeed been impressive, they should not be allowed to shroud other realities that exist.

Twenty-five percent of the New York Chinatown population lived below the poverty level in 1980, compared to 17% for the city. From 50% to 70% of the workers in Chinatowns in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York are crowded into low-paying jobs in garment factories and restaurants. “Most immigrants coming into Chinatown with a language barrier cannot go outside this confined area into the mainstream of American industry,” said Danny Lowe describing what happened to him. “Before, I was a painter in Hong Kong, but I can’t do it here. I got no license, no education. I want a living, so it’s dishwasher, janitor or cook.”

Hmong and Mien refugees have an unemployment rate that reaches 90%. A 1987 California study showed that 3 in 10 Southeast Asian refugee families have been on welfare for 4 to 10 years. “We have no other skills but farming--except that we are not even farmers anymore,” said a Hmong refugee. Referring to the enlistment of the Hmong by the CIA in the “secret war” in Laos, he added: “We are just unemployed soldiers.” While thousands of Vietnamese young people are entering universities as “whiz kids,” others are on the streets. They live in motels and hang out in places like the Midnight Cafe and the Saigon Center pool hall in the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles.

College-educated Asian Indians can be seen working in luncheonettes featuring Indian “fast food” and operating newsstands in Manhattan subways. Filipino immigrants can be found in food and health services: In San Francisco, their employment rate in these occupations is 21% percent, compared to 6% for whites.

Finally, even Korean immigrant “success” has been exaggerated. In San Francisco, for example, Korean-immigrant men in 1980 earned only 60% of what their white counterparts earned. The figure for black men was 68%.

To do the right thing we also need to see the world from the other side of greengrocer Lee’s counter.