One Incident Reverberates in Two Worlds : ‘I Should Have Apologized’

About 30 black community activists, mobilized by the Brotherhood Crusade, gather outside a South-Central wig shop to condemn the Korean American owners for allegedly refusing to wait on a black man. What really happened after the Rev. Lee May walked into the Accessory House on Vermont Avenue near Slauson Avenue? The story of what led to Tuesday’s protest comes in two distinct versions: one claiming racism, the other blaming miscommunication. These accounts offered Wednesday provide another sobering lesson about the competing cultures of Los Angeles and the difficulties that sometimes occur when they rub up against each other.

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The Korean American hat shop owner never thought an incident that took place at her business two weeks ago would lead to a boycott threat.

As Mrs. Lee tells it--she wants only her last name used--she was in the store with an elderly woman customer and a friend of Lee’s husband who had dropped in to talk about family troubles.

Lee’s husband, who she said became partially deaf from emotional stress after his business was burned during the 1992 riots, was in the store too, doing paperwork nearby; he cannot engage in conversation any longer because of his hearing, she said.

In walked a customer she did not recognize, Lee said. Having operated Accessory House, a woman’s hat and accessory store, at the same location for 13 years, she knew her regular customers, most of whom are women.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

The customer, an African American man, said he was looking for a hat for his wife.

“Instead of allowing me to help him pick out a hat, as most male customers do,” he kept walking around the store picking up different hats and putting them down, she said.

“That made the elderly customer in the store [who was also African American] uneasy,” she said, adding that the shop is in an area of high crime and drug dealing.

As the man made his rounds, the woman customer appeared more nervous, and hesitated to open her purse to pay for her purchase even though she was standing at the cash register, Lee said.

“Almost all my customers are women, so when they have a man in the store they don’t know, they feel uneasy,” she said.

Sensing the situation, her husband’s friend, whose last name is Kim, told the male customer, “This is a women’s store,” Lee said.

“Mr. Kim has a loud voice and he was feeling down that day because of his troubles at home. So what he said probably sounded curt.”

Presently, the black male customer asked for Kim’s name, Lee said.

Kim, in turn, asked for the man’s name.

Voices rose and an argument ensued, though Lee said she could not remember all that the two men said. Then, Lee said, the black man left a business card and walked out of the store.

“I wanted to go after him and apologize,” Lee said. “But I hesitated. For me to go after the customer to apologize for my husband’s friend’s behavior would have been so rude. How could I make my husband’s high school classmate lose . . . face? So I didn’t say anything.”

She now feels she made a mistake by subscribing to her culture.

“I should have apologized no matter how Mr. Kim might take it,” she said. “I reacted too late.”

Shaken by Tuesday’s boycott threat, led by the Brotherhood Crusade, she stayed home and sought the counsel of her pastor, Sang-Won Shin of the Church at Philippi in North Hollywood.

Lee, whose health has been deteriorating since the riots, said her heart has been pounding so much since Tuesday that she can barely think of what to do next.

“They mistakenly think it was my husband who had the exchange with the customer,” Lee said.

No matter who offended the man, identified on his business card as the Rev. Lee May, she wants to publicly apologize to him, she said.

“Mr. Kim wants to apologize also,” she added. She can’t understand why an incident between two individuals cannot be resolved between them.

“Why does this have to become a big racial issue?” she said. “Why is the Brotherhood Crusade getting involved? If something like this had happened among Koreans, this wouldn’t be a problem at all. We might exchange a few harsh words, but that would be the end of it.”

She said that because her store is in one of the city’s roughest areas, she is always cautious.

“Will the apology be the end of it?” she said. “Or will they keep coming back?”

Shin, who spent much of Wednesday with Lee’s family, said it was unfortunate that miscommunication and cultural miscues added to the misunderstanding.

“We don’t want this incident to get out of hand,” said Shin, a Presbyterian minister. “Since we are all Christians, let us work it out. Let us leave the rest in God’s hands.”