Angela Oh

Out of the chaos of the 1992 riots in Los Angeles, Angela Oh emerged as an eloquent spokeswoman for the plight of inner-city Korean American merchants, who were targets of the violence and destruction. The criminal defense attorney pointedly articulated the frustration of her fellow Korean Americans and the fears of merchants who took up arms to protect themselves when police did not respond to their calls for help. She was quoted locally, nationally and even internationally in newspaper and TV reports because she was among a small group of English-speaking, second-generation Korean Americans able to express the views of the largely Korean-speaking, first-generation business owners.

If the riots were a rude awakening to America for these merchants, they were a rite of passage for Oh, who was born and raised in Los Angeles after her parents emigrated from Korea in the 1950s. She cast off the cultural tradition of dutiful womanhood for community activism, advocacy and service all the while practicing law. Shortly after the riots, she was named special counsel to the state Assembly committee on the Los Angeles crisis. She has served as co-chair for the Asian Pacific Americans for a New L.A., past president of the Korean American Bar Assn. of Southern California, chair for Sen. Barbara Boxer’s federal judicial nominations committee and a board member of the California Women’s Law Center. The UCLA graduate, who earned her law degree at UC Davis, currently serves on the Los Angeles City Human Relations Commission and the Korean American Family Service Center.

The spotlight is back on the 41-year-old lawyer after President Bill Clinton appointed her to the advisory board of his “Initiative on Race.” The panel, which officially convenes on Monday, will examine the current state of race relations and education, criminal justice and economic opportunity. The goal, as described by the president, is to achieve “One America in the 21st Century.”

Oh is the sole Asian American on the eight-member panel. Although she is primarily known as a Korean American leader, and somewhat controversial at that, Oh must now present the views of diverse Asian American communities. She sees this as an opportunity. “Whether by design or by accident, I really think one of the most valuable things I can do is force this discussion to go much broader” beyond black and white. She believes that much of the strain in race relations has economic underpinnings. This, in turn, she observed, is complicated by politics that are “racialized,” especially in Los Angeles.

Oh is married to Jack Koulbanis, who works for the Small Business Administration. They live in the Los Angeles area.

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Question: What is the state of race relations in Los Angeles five years after the riots?

Answer: It is very poor, because we still struggle with unresolved and new issues that were exposed or surfaced during 1992. Let me start with the institutions and the community. Suddenly, institutions like the Police Department, the political structure--meaning the City Council, the mayor’s office, state Assembly and Senate people--realized we have to pay attention to demographic data.

One big lesson was that there was a tremendous shift going on in terms of the demographics of our city and our county. But no one was really paying attention to what this meant. We were very conscious that the information and data were telling us the population was shifting, but business was being conducted as usual. There was no political leadership that said we see this trend happening, what does this mean for Los Angeles? What does this mean for where we are going in terms of our industries that are based here, and our human relations and what politics is going to look like. What does this mean for our public services like law enforcement?

That didn’t happen. In politics, the people in the City Council, they didn’t have a sense that we need to start to look at . . . the way we were doing business the last 20, 30 years, given the information about how the city is looking and where we are going. After everything burned and got vandalized and looted, then people were saying. “Maybe we should start taking a look at this.”

Q: Where do we go next?

A: It’s wide open for Los Angeles, because we are truly the microcosm of things that are going to occur in large urban centers all across the country. We have the opportunity to assert real leadership out of Los Angeles. We have the opportunity to provide models that may or may not be able to be replicated in other regions of the country. We have the ability to set a tone in terms of the culture here. In other words, one of things I find very interesting about this country is that we do not seem to recognize the tremendous opportunity we have to create a culture here that is quite unique to anything else that exists on the face of this Earth. If you think about other nations that are operating at the level we are operating economically in the world, you do not have another country as diverse.

It has been our blessing and our curse. What this administration is trying to do is focus on how do we turn this blessing into something that for all Americans, those people who were born here and people who become naturalized citizens, creates mutually beneficial kinds of relationships over and over again at the local, state, national and international levels. Los Angeles has the capacity to begin brainstorming on all these levels because of who we are here.

We also have the capacity to implode again, which when you hear titles of art pieces called “The Fire Next Time,” it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that we will be able to move in a positive direction. I happen to believe that people who are active must have some hope--even the cynics.

Q: What is the common ground in the experiences of America’s diverse population that would create some bonding?

A: As a nation, we want to find an anchor for our culture. I think that is the common bond. We’re a country that is quite unique in that we tend to put things in terms of race. I know several Asian Americans who grew up in Latin America before coming to the United States. They identified culturally--as Brazilian, Panamanian, Chilean--not by race. Then, when they came here, they identified with what their cultural roots were but their face--having the almond-shaped eyes, the high cheekbones, the dark hair--put them in the category of Asian. So then they had to struggle with what does that mean in this context.

This country has always segmented, based on skin color or race. Asian Americans because of how we look . . . . Our susceptibility or vulnerability to being called foreigner is never going to go away, no matter on how many generations. I have had people ask me, how does it feel to always be viewed as a foreigner? African Americans actually have said to me, at least we know we belong here. We don’t like our position in this country, but at least we know we belong here. That is a very unsettling question when it is put to you. African Americans are never told, “Go back to your own country.”

Q: What, then, might there be beyond race?

A: It will be getting people to realize that we are moving into a new century. I think this fact alone is very significant. There are all kinds of profound questions that people are going to be asking and wanting to consider in the new millennium. We understand there is no longer a concept of local commerce or national commerce. We’re talking about global. We understand this is a nation which has a cyclical history in terms of how it treats its immigrant population . . . . We have a situation where telecommunications has brought the world much closer together.

The notion that people want to leave something positive to children grows stronger. I also think when we talk of race relations, one thing we are going to become conscious of as a nation is that we’re a very young nation. Yes, we’ve made mistakes. We’ve made some significant mistakes, but we have maintained a strength and leadership role that no one in this country wants to give up. As a nation, we have an interest in coming together, and this president is visionary in asking this diverse set of folks and communities to come to the table and seriously consider where we are. He has brought together people particularly interested in listening as well as acting.

Q: Some might say this president who you say is visionary is opportunistic. How much real commitment does he have?

A: I’m struck with the president’s desire to be involved with this every step of the way. He is committing $3 million to the administrative end of this, a staff of 20 people . . . and an executive director for a 12-month period.

Q: Do you think we still need affirmative action?

A: If we just look at the numbers in terms of affirmative action and then look at who occupies the highest level of management in major corporations, managers in government, member of Congress, our legislatures, who gets tenured at our universities--it is pretty clear that affirmative action has only been marginally effective. I find it to be intellectually dishonest to say that we don’t need affirmative action anymore because everything is taken care of. I find it factually dishonest, it’s just inaccurate.

“Affirmative action” as a phrase has taken on such terrible secondary interpretations and reactions that, at a visceral level, when you sit down and talk with people, they could, in fact, see the value in continuing to maintain some kind of tool to reach disadvantaged segments of the population. Most people would actually agree we need to continue to do that, because they recognize that there are some very real barriers. When folks get offended with affirmative-action programs is when people who don’t come from very disadvantaged backgrounds, who have equal access or privilege because of socioeconomic status, are the beneficiaries, not the high-potential folks in tough communities . . . .

The anti-affirmative action movement is really based out of a fear of competition . . . because resources are perceived to be diminishing.

No one in our system has come up with a way to say if you collaborate in this way, maybe you can expand the pie. So, instead, it’s all about accepting that the number of places at the table is going to remain stagnant. We cannot increase them; we cannot figure a different way to expand; let’s fight over this number of places at the table.

Q: How would you assess relations between African Americans and Korean Americans?

A: They are still very tense. At least I speak from the Korean American side of it. There are individuals who have done some tremendous collaborative efforts, and there are organizations that try to bring, in particular, young people, women, together. But in terms of the general sentiment out there, it is still very tense. For Korean Americans revisiting “sai ee-gu’ [4-29, for April 29, the date of the riots], every year is a hard thing.

It’s hard to come back to it and admit we’re not able to help the families who were destroyed. Admit that, here we’ve been supporting the Police Department and local divisions through contributions, making our businesses friendly to them, letting our business be used by them sometimes, and then they didn’t respond when we needed help.

Q: A lot of immigrants who came here post-1965 with the big influx from Asia and Latin America, do they relate to being a minority?

A: They don’t relate to being a minority, first of all. It’s a problem. They come from a homogenous society, where there is no racial difference. They don’t understand what that concept [of minority] means in terms of historical treatment of non-English-speaking people and people who are racially different. In fact, they come with very optimistic, rose-colored glasses in what they expect will greet them. So for them to see something unjust occur, it is shocking . . . . I had someone say to me, “No one in the world allows immigrants to come into their country. They would kick them out in a minute, or worse.” I said, “You want to behave like those countries and deny our heritage?”

We have this wonderful heritage in the instrument that provides the basis of building this nation. When our forefathers drafted the instrument, they certainly didn’t expect people like Angela Oh to be part of the picture. But the extraordinary thing about this nation is people have interpreted these rights to mean we do want to include Angela Ohs, Linda Chavez-Thompsons [advisory board member and executive vice president AFL-CIO] and John Hope Franklins [advisory board chair and historian] of our society in the vision of what our nation will be.

We’re struggling with that right now. Sometimes, I get sad when I go to a public park and I watch kids. They don’t notice people’s skin color or if you are eating a rice ball as opposed to a churro. I get sad because I think this kid will get hurt a lot earlier than this kid.

You cannot legislate attitudes and gut reactions. But the federal government has the capacity to set a tone, to get some thoughts out there for the nation to consider. This initiative comes at a time when we are poised to consider some other possibilities only because we are going into the year 2000.