PERSPECTIVE ON RACE RELATIONS : Power Elite Turns Out a Bitter Brew : Cultural differences certainly exacerbate the situation, but the larger problem is the way capitalism works.

News reports, commentaries and a judge’s statements during the sentencing of Korean-American grocer Soon Ja Du for the shooting of a black teen-ager continue to confuse the public about the nature of the so-called black-Korean conflict. An honest description would say: How capitalism and white tribalism fueled black-Korean tensions.

During the sentencing, Judge Joyce A. Karlin, like a schoolmarm admonishing a potentially rowdy room of children, lectured the African-American community as to what their behavior should be in response to her choice of probation instead of jail time for Du, essentially: Be quiet, go home and stay quiet.

She counseled all the colored people involved to reject the “intolerance and bigotry” some members of both groups have shown each other.

She added that the 15-year-old Harlins’ death, triggered by a dispute over a $1.79 bottle of orange juice, should be used as a catalyst to “confront an intolerable situation by creating constructive solutions. . . .”

Tensions between Korean-immigrant merchants and some of their African-American customers stem from economic and political inequality exacerbated by cultural differences. And the white elite are not just tsk-tsk-tsking spectators. This conflict is part of a larger problem. “To put it bluntly, the larger problem is the way capitalism works,” says UC Riverside sociologist Edna Bonacich, an expert on middleman minorities around the world.

“Koreans, to a certain extent, are fronting for the larger white power structure,” she asserts. “They are both beneficiaries of the arrangement and the victims of it.” Korean-immigrant merchants are playing “the classic role of middleman” minority, says Bonacich. The sale of liquor in the black community is but one example.

Corporate-owned liquor companies sell their product through Korean-owned liquor stores in the black community, Bonacich says. Koreans, who then distribute liquor in a community plagued by substance abuse, “bear the brunt of the anger the African-American community rightfully has against the larger system of oppression. Koreans become sort of foot soldiers of internal colonialism,” she charges.

Cultural and ethnic differences are “no doubt a small factor” in these types of conflicts, Bonacich says, “but unless you deal with the structural problem, you do not solve the conflict.”

But I would argue that we have to move on all these fronts--cultural and structural--simultaneously. Actions rooted in bigotry usually turn these simmering hostilities into social conflagrations. Even when people of apparent goodwill try to cooperate, an aide to Mayor Tom Bradley says, there is this “impenetrable veil” of hostility, based on ethnic stereotyping, that undermines joint economic and cultural ventures.

Traditional mediation and bridge-building efforts are usually too superficial to penetrate that veil. They don’t get at the psychological terror, fed by bigotry, that lead the Soon Ja Dus of the world to shoot the Latasha Harlinses who inhabit the planet’s inner cities.

Part of the problem lies in a failure to address the exaggerated psychological dimension of intra -minority group tensions. Most interethnic conflicts have a psychological aspect--rigidity of thinking, low self-esteem, compensatory behavior. But these are especially significant in disputes between historically subordinate groups.

In the case of Koreans, they carry not only the historical memory of subjugation under the Japanese, but the day-to-day reality of anti-Asian prejudice in the United States and the isolation caused by language and cultural differences. African-Americans carry not only the historical memory of slavery but status as America’s most stigmatized minority.

In many respects, I believe Korean-Americans and African-Americans to be very similar. Accustomed to being targets of abuse, members of both groups are quick to defend themselves if anyone seems ready to violate their humanity. I see it especially in the often swaggering, chip-on-the-shoulder posture of African-American and Korean-immigrant men. I saw it in the quick defense of Latasha Harlins when she slugged Soon Ja Du three times in the face after Du grabbed her. I saw it when the battered Du threw a stool at Harlins . . . then took a gun . . . braced herself on the counter . . . and shot the girl in the back of the head. Over and over, I watched the infamous videotape of the March 16 incident in Du’s store and saw the consequences of what that brilliant analyst of the colonized mind, psychiatrist Franz Fanon, called “internalized oppression.”

Addressing Oppression

There are few safe places where oppressed groups can express their distress. White folks are not going to let poor people of any color riot on Rodeo Drive. Instead, much of that rage is turned inward or directed toward those equally or more oppressed.

The model I’ve seen that best addresses this phenomenon of “internalized oppression” draws on Re-evaluation Counseling Theory.

At a workshop earlier this year, I watched Barbara Love, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and an RC counselor work with a group of Latinos, African-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Arab-Americans, Iranian-Americans and American Indians.

A woman came to the front of the room. Love held her hand and asked her to tell the group about herself.

“My background is Louisiana Creole,” said the woman with a sigh. She was about 50, and light brown. “In my family, I was the darkest one,” she said with a shiver. “All my life, my grandmother, my uncle, my aunts--my everybody--would whisper ‘n-----, n-----, n-----, n-----.’ ” Then she the repeated the hated word as an aspirate hiss. She shivered again, and Love embraced her.

“When I had my first child, he was so beautiful,” she said. “A beautiful mahogany-colored boy. . . . And then I had my daughter. Ohhhhh.” She moaned. “And I freaked out.”

There was a long silence and gently, Love asked her “Why?”

“Because . . . she had red hair, blue eyes and was vanilla-colored.” And then the woman began a spiraling scream so primal it seemed to reach back 30,000 years, piercing the room’s wall, shaking the leaves and scarring the trees in the woods just feet beyond.

“And you freaked out--why?,” asked Love quietly.

Sobbing, the woman said she’s spent the last 25 years in mortal fear that her child would hate her and one day leave her because “I’m so black, Oh God . . . because I’m a n-----.”

RC communities exist worldwide, with headquarters in Seattle. Its techniques are to help individuals and groups “discharge” their distress, born of oppression that keeps them enraged and often irrational. The goal is self-healing and clear thinking. When used by organizations, that clear thinking can be wedded to a pragmatic program of social change.

But no oppressed group is always irrational, despite the pain. The civil-rights movement at its height is proof of that. Individual leaders and groups of conscious people exist everywhere.

The shooting of Harlins and the outrage over Du’s sentence has temporarily galvanized the African-American community in Los Angeles. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) rightfully encourages African-Americans to keep their eyes on the prize: power. To channel their rage by making sure they are registered to vote, and using their vote to make sure Karlin--who was appointed as a Superior Court judge three months ago--is defeated when she stands for election to the bench next June. But more important than the defeat of a single judge is the constructive use of the ballot to elect candidates of any ethnicity willing to challenge racism and the abuses of an economic and political system indifferent to the needs of average Americans.