We Can’t All Get Along Yet

The progress in black-Korean relations since the 1992 riots is measured by the friendship that Kapson Lee and Arlene Whitfield are cultivating. It’s measured by the fact that the Rev. Antony Beckham, a black man, pastors a church of Koreans. It’s measured by the way young Koreans and blacks hobnob at a Chinatown hip-hop nightclub.

The progress--or lack of it--is also measured by the way some young black residents near a Korean-owned grocery store in South-Central Los Angeles refuse to shop there: They are convinced the owner disrespects them. He is scared, afraid one misspoken word will create an incident.

The gulf between these two cultures was made all too evident by the riots, when 2,200 Korean-owned businesses suffered about $400 million in damage. As the rest of Los Angeles would learn during the aftermath, the tension had been building.

Two weeks after the Rodney King beating, a Korean American grocer, whose store had been the target of gangs for months, fatally shot a black girl after an altercation. The grocer was convicted of voluntary manslaughter but was sentenced only to probation. Five months later, when the riots broke out, Korean-owned businesses came under siege. One of the riots’ most indelible images was a picture of Korean men, armed with rifles, standing on the roofs of their businesses, substituting for the police who had retreated.

Low-income blacks, as they had for years, complained that Korean merchants in their neighborhoods treated them with contempt and suspicion. The merchants complained that crime had hardened them. The truth was, and remains, more complex. Language, culture and mutual ignorance conspire against both sides.

Ever since the riots, blacks and Koreans have organized countless sensitivity sessions, prayer meetings and trips to Korea. The differences from 1992, along with examples of a frustrating inertia, are subtle but telling.

Start with a market on South Main Street in a black-Latino neighborhood.

All day long, the customers come, children clutching coins for candy, young mothers with toddlers in tow, middle-aged men buying a six-pack of beer and cigarettes.

“Papa, I owe you $26. I’ll pay on Friday,” a middle-aged African American customer with slightly graying hair tells the Korean owner.

“You always pay,” the owner responds with a smile, as he puts his customer’s purchases inside a black plastic bag, handing it through an opening in a bullet-proof partition.

The owner, who asked that his name not be used, conducts most of his business standing behind the transparent shield, topped by an iron grill.

“I try to be joyful,” he says, “to have a thankful heart.” But like many of the two dozen Korean American store owners in South-Central a Times reporter visited, he is drained. Most customers are easy to serve, he says, but a few “troublemakers” haunt him. Two days ago, a 12- or 13-year-old boy wanted to buy cigarettes with food stamps, he says. “When I wouldn’t, he toppled the shelves. . . . When I went after him, he hit me.” He shows bruises on his lips and inside his mouth.

Outside the market on another day, a black girl, 15-year-old Latasha Johnson, is about to buy ice cream but says that on principle she will not shop at this store. “Everybody here doesn’t like that man and now we leave him alone,” she said of the owner. The problem, she says, is that his fear of black customers leads him to behave insultingly.

“That’s why people threaten him, because of the way he treats them,” Johnson says.

In the four blocks north of the store, not one of the dozen or so young people stopped at random--all but one black, the other Latino--had a nice word to say about the owner. They complained of rudeness and unfair suspicion.

There is little tension here because those who feel uncomfortable simply shop at another market run by a Latino couple a few blocks away. And few of the owner’s critics seemed to know he is Korean; they frequently referred to him as everything but.

“You mean that Chinese man? He is not nice,” said another teenager. “I haven’t gone in there since I was in middle school.”

Many Korean Shop Owners More Sensitive

Many of the estimated 1,100 Korean American market owners in Los Angeles County, staggered by the passion of the riots, have become more sensitive about dealing with their customers, especially African Americans. A Times reporter who has informally tracked this dynamic for years found more outward gestures of respect and friendship. Some give gifts to their customers at Christmas, attend funerals, contribute to scholarships for black students or join block clubs.

In addition, the influx of Latinos to South-Central and the departure of tens of thousands of blacks to the Inland Empire and other outlying suburbs has changed the demographic mix. South-Central was only 36.6% black in 2000 compared to 48% in 1990.

But deep down, the fundamental differences between Korean shopkeepers and black customers make their encounters a precarious equation of mutual necessity.

The two cultures rarely live together. For example, in the 10 Los Angeles County census tracts with the heaviest black populations, largely in South-Central, Koreans make up an average of 6%. In the 10 tracts with the heaviest Korean populations, largely in several Mid-City neighborhoods, blacks make up an average of less than half a percent.

While many of the Korean American shopkeepers’ customers are poor and have marginal education, 80% of the merchants are college graduates, their economic advancement stymied by the language barrier. They come from a hierarchal Confucian culture, in which sizing up people by their age, education and social standing is second nature; egalitarianism is an alien concept. From the African American point of view, the idea of a neighborhood business that has no community commitment is just as alien.

In Korean-owned store after store in South-Central, stress is written on the faces of merchants. They’re fearful of unintentionally insulting a black customer. Koreans generally don’t engage in small talk with people they don’t know well, while many blacks were raised in a gregarious tradition in which full-blown conversations break out among strangers.

“I do business here believing that all of our days are in God’s hands,” said Sunae Lee, who with her husband owns Century Liquors at Western Avenue and 39th Street.

Lee, an artist by training, says that after 17 years in the business, her Korean sensibilities have dulled. The other day she shocked herself when a smart-alecky customer asked for “an extra, extra wide condom.” She told him with a smile: “Use your sandwich bag.” She could hardly believe those words tumbled out of her Korean mouth, trained not to discuss sex outside the home.

She says she feels sympathy for the despair and violence some of her customers live with. “Lately, I’ve been thinking,” she says. “If I win the Lotto, I’d like to send all those kids to college.”

Leveling Class Barriers Two Friends at a Time

The story of Kapson Lee and Arlene Whitfield, which is taking place in the more comfortable setting of Park La Brea near the Fairfax district, is an example of what happens when some class barriers are leveled.

Lee, who came to Los Angeles from Seoul three decades ago and has spent most of that time working as an editor in Koreatown, yearned to break out of her immigrant subculture. A moment during the second day of the riots made her want to know an African American.

She and her co-workers stood outside the old Korea Times building on Vermont Avenue near 1st Street as thick black and red smoke belched out of Korean-owned businesses. A young black man in a red sports car approached them. Lee said he slowed, rolled down the passenger-side window, clenched his fist and yelled toward the Koreans: “We’re going to kill you! We’re going to kill you all!”

Whitfield, a refined African American teacher from New York, had taught music and English as a second language to many Korean students during her 20 years on the East and West coasts.

She had her own unpleasant encounters tucked away: In New York, a Korean green grocer accused her of not paying for her purchases, when in fact she had. The first time it happened, Whitfield explained to the female proprietor that she was mistaken. The owner apologized. But when the grocer accused her of not paying a second time, Whitfield stopped patronizing the store.

Last September, Whitfield moved to Los Angeles and settled at Park La Brea, which has a substantial Korean population. She kept running into Lee, a woman with a soft voice and shy smile, inside the women’s dressing room at the pool where she swam almost every day.

One morning, when Lee dropped the cap to her lotion, Whitfield quickly picked it up and handed it to her.

“That made an impression on me,” recalled Lee. Salutations led to swimming in the same lane to small talk afterward while dressing, and the two women are becoming fast friends.

Along the way, they’re learning about each others’ roots.

On one recent morning, as they lingered over oatmeal with raisins at Dupars Restaurant in Farmers Market, Whitfield asked Lee about the division of the Korean peninsula. She listened sympathetically as Lee explained the role of the United States and Soviet Union in the partition that has kept 11 million Koreans separated from their relatives for more than half a century.

Whitfield told Lee why African Americans sometimes resent new immigrants, and Lee listened with compassion.

“We [African Americans] have a wonderful history. We have helped build this country,” she said. Yet “any ethnic group can come into the country and think of us as underdog.”

It is unacceptable that people who don’t know history and the black contribution to the building of America come here and start looking down on African Americans, Whitfield said. “What we’re saying is, ‘Have more compassion, and don’t judge.’ ” Lee nodded in agreement.

Sometimes, when Lee mispronounces such words as Jacuzzi--a tongue-twister for many Koreans--Whitfield gently corrects her. She listens patiently when Lee speaks slowly to gather her thoughts into English, all the while maintaining eye contact.

“I so appreciate that,” Lee says.

Sometimes, when they’re swimming in the same lane, they stop to give one another a hug.

Lee says her outgoing African American friend, much to her delight, is helping her overcome some of her Korean inhibitions.

The friendship “was completely spontaneous,” Whitfield said. Adds Lee: “I can’t think of anywhere else in the world where this could happen.”

An Oasis of Diversity in a Nondescript Church

Nor, most likely, could the Bethesda Church on the edge of South-Central have evolved anywhere else in the world.

The nondenominational church is housed in a two-story garment warehouse building on Washington Boulevard near Central Avenue. It looks like just another graffiti-scrawled structure in a desolate stretch.

But on Sundays, the Rev. Antony Beckham--an African American who came back to Los Angeles from the Midwest after the riots, determined to mend the tensions in minority communities--ministers to his flock of 40, virtually all of them Korean.

Beckham, 45, is an integrationist--his wife, Wendy, is fourth-generation Japanese American. He prefers to look for commonalities between blacks and Koreans: high proportions of Christians, a heritage of oppression and a tradition of matriarchy. “These are connecting points,” he says.

Beckham grew up in a black neighborhood in Ohio and attended an African American church. He was the only African American kid at his Jewish elementary day school and then attended a Catholic high school. After graduating, he attended Morehouse College, a historically black college in Atlanta that is also the alma mater of Martin Luther King and other notable black men.

He came west and was a youth pastor in Pasadena from 1982 to 1988. He moved back to Ohio and was living in Cincinnati, working in marketing at United Parcel Service and teaching, when he watched Los Angeles burn in 1992--and decided he could be a healing force.

He first worked at a Latino church in East L.A. Then in 1995 he was invited to speak on spiritual formation to a Korean American gathering. That led to an invitation to visit South Korea, where he met Korean pastors and Christian publishing company executives who were interested in establishing a multiethnic congregation at All Nations Church in Los Angeles’ Koreatown. The idea was to have one church with three languages: Korean, English and Spanish.

By early 1996, Beckham was hired to handle the English language ministry at All Nations. In 1999 he started Bethesda with a handful of first-generation Korean American families.

So far, no blacks or Latinos have joined the congregation, but Beckham is hopeful. “It’s a matter of learning how to work the energy that is there.”

Ken Kang, 42, who got acquainted with Beckham at All Nations, recently began attending Bethesda even though he’d moved to Irvine. He said he sought Beckham out early this year when he felt “heavy-hearted” with burdens.

“I see Pastor Tony as a doctor and we as nurses helping him heal” hurting people, said another member of the congregation, Kasey Choi, a social worker in her early 30s who used to be an atheist. “I feel such joy when I’m here. I can hardly contain myself.”

Because of Beckham’s rhythmical and vivid style, Bethseda feels like a black church attended by Koreans as much as a Korean church pastored by a black man. Beckham pantomimes Elijah lying down upon a dead child, praying the boy back to life, and tells his listeners that in order to resurrect dead parts of their lives--relationships with other people, their relationship with God--they must grasp them with equal vigor and faith.

By black church standards, where services are highly interactive, it is a tough crowd. No cries of “Amen!” punctuate the service to let the minister know if his preaching is hitting home. Koreans consider such interruptions disrespectful, so Beckham’s voice rings alone from start to finish.

Yet they know each other well, pastor and flock. Beckham was leading the congregation in Easter Sunday spirituals when he realized that members were clapping with joy and abandon--but not to the beat.

He shook his head and gently pointed out that there was an unacceptable “diversity” of rhythms.

“OK, I need everybody to do this with me,” he said, and started to clap slowly. The congregation clapped too, and when everyone was marking time correctly, he smiled: “See? It’s really not that hard.”

Experts Would Prefer to Look Beyond Race

Experts from both groups are weary of the emphasis on race. They plead for a more sophisticated analysis.

“We haven’t developed a manner to actually talk about and work through problems of race, class and gender,” says Brenda Stevenson, a black UCLA history professor who has written an upcoming book on the case of Latasha Harlins, the South-Central teenager fatally shot by a Korean grocer in 1991.

Like the King beating, the Harlins killing was caught on videotape. It shows the girl, 15, and the grocer, Soon Ja Du, arguing over a bottle of orange juice that Du thinks the girl has stolen.

Harlins, much taller and heftier than Du, hits her first, knocking the Korean woman to the ground. Du struggles to get up. She fumbles for a gun, aims at Harlins as she leaves and shoots her in the back.

The pair became symbols of two peoples in conflict, symbols far more crude than the nuanced differences that should have governed the ensuing debate, Stevenson said.

Edward T. Chang, a professor at UC Riverside who specializes in African American and Korean relations, says the lack of more government attention to improving the inner city’s economy makes progress in race relations impossible.

“We’ve put race relations on the back burner and buried it. Underlying socioeconomic factors that ignited the riots haven’t changed at all,” said Chang, the author of two books on the riots and ethnicity. Korean merchants “lost their faith in the American system.”

Ultimately, the children of the riots may have an easier time.

Los Angeles High School is three-quarters Latino, 14% black, 8% Asian. Like high schools everywhere, students mostly hang out with their own kind at lunch.

But a contrasting dynamic operates in smaller group settings when students work on shared projects.

On the school’s prize-winning academic decathlon team, two Koreans and a black have become such close friends that they hope they will be able to attend Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, together come September.

On or off campus, Saladin Thomas, who is black, William Kim and Paul Jung, both American-born Koreans, have some memory of the riots. Jung, who was 8, went along with his mother to join the historic march of 30,000 Korean Americans to Ardmore Park. Kim was shaken by the looting of his friend’s parents’ shop in Koreatown.

They were too young to understand the meaning of the disturbances or much-publicized frictions, and they say it has not colored them.

Thomas and Kim said they don’t have to talk to understand what the other is thinking.

Sometimes they could be sitting far away from each other in the classroom, but with the roll of their eyes or other facial expression, they communicate.

“Sometimes we walk around mouthing things--just like stupid teenage humor--we both know what it means,” said Thomas.

“I don’t look at Paul or Will as Korean Americans,” he added. “I see them as Will and Paul.”

Similarly, Kim and Jung view Thomas as a gifted musician and teammate whose company they enjoy.

“What might have happened in the past is past; you work with what you have now,” said Kim.

Pop Culture’s Fusion Dissolves Differences

Hip-hop is purely a black invention, but young Korean Americans, who must navigate the challenges of living on the margins of two cultures, are claiming it too.

Two Fridays a month, the usually staid Grand Star restaurant on Broadway in Chinatown transforms into the Firecracker, a popular underground hangout for the hip-hop crowd.

Pop culture seems to exert no racial or ethnic boundaries. Hair coloring, makeup and attire enhance this fusion of visual-aural culture that blurs racial distinctions.

“It’s an expression I associate with growing up in a low-income household in Koreatown,” says Robin Lee, UC Berkeley music major, and a popular deejay for hip-hop groups.

“Hip-hop and spoken word [performance] go across cultures,” says Eddie Kim, an aspiring “spoken word” artist who recently performed in Beverly Hills with five blacks to an all-black audience.

Asians, blacks, white and Latinos in their 20s and early 30s, in all manner of attire, pack into the dark and cramped old two-story building, where the atmosphere is lively, the music deafening and the drinks expensive.

The Firecracker doesn’t advertise, but word of mouth is enough to lure people there.

There is already a line when the doors open at 10 p.m.

A young Asian male checks IDs at the front door and collects a $10 entrance fee, while a young black man at the side door inspects stamped hands of those who use that door to go in and out.

With three musical venues, operating simultaneously, the Firecracker gets cracking closer to midnight.

In the courtyard, it’s a mix of rap, punk, spoken word and other art forms that deejays create by mixing--playing two identical songs backward or in different beats, in effect creating a new music.

Downstairs, it’s jazz, provided by a three-man band of two blacks and an Asian, playing even an old tune like “Pennies from Heaven”--seemingly out of place here. It evokes another time, when Chinatown attracted a different crowd, when young Asians had black hair, when restaurants and shops remained open until midnight.

Upstairs, it’s hip-hop, pulsating beats, raunchy lyrics and all.

Ask Robin Lee, whose family’s liquor store was next door to the epicenter of the 1992 riots, about hip-hop’s appeal for Korean Americans and he tells you that in this world, hyphenated Americans do not exist.

“Hip-hop,” he says, “is an American thing.”