Ethnic Peace in the American City: Building Community in Los Angeles and Beyond (review)

Abstract

Journal of Asian American Studies 4.1 (2001) 77-80
Ethnic Peace in the American City: Building Community in Los Angeles and Beyond. By Edward T. Chang and Jeannette Diaz-Veizades. New York: New York University Press, 1999.
With urban populations in the U.S. shifting from a majority white to a combined majority of Asian Americans, Latinos, African Americans, and Native Americans, Edward T. Chang and Jeannette Diaz-Veizades offer a timely and useful examination of relations among Korean Americans, African Americans, and Latinos in Los Angeles. Well-organized, concise, and clearly written, the book uses a range of sources -- such as important original data gathered through surveys and interviews, case studies of the Black-Korean Alliance and the Latino-Black Roundtable, and content analysis of the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times--to provide a useful overview of interracial relations, local attempts to address conflict, and suggestions for improving relations.
International migration from Latin America and Korea and the domestic migration of African Americans from the city center to the suburbs have combined to dramatically alter the racial mix in the once predominantly African American region of south central Los Angeles and the adjacent city center neighborhoods of Koreatown and Pico Union. The 1992 civil unrest vividly and tragically demonstrated existing class, racial, and immigrant verses non-immigrant tensions, with these groups as the immediate and active participants, and racial hierarchy and privilege in the form of government and corporate exclusion, discrimination, and disinvestment, framing the events.
The book provides an "empirical description of ethnic relations and dynamics" between "African Americans and Korean Americans in south central Los Angeles, and Korean Americans and Latino Americans in the Pico-Union" area, with the goal of using "this description and understanding of racial relations between these groups to build communities in multicultural metropolitan areas." (6) Although Koreatown -- with its large concentration of Korean-owned businesses and community organizations -- has a large number of Korean American residents, as the authors point out, most of the residents are Latin American immigrants. To the east of Koreatown and north of south central, is Pico Union. Over 80 percent of Pico Union's residents are Latino, about 35.7 percent of the areas population is below the poverty level, and as one of most densely populated areas in Los Angeles, it suffers from a lack adequate housing, employment opportunities, education, and public transportation. (85)
One of the intriguing questions posed by the book is: Why are relations between Koreans and Latinos seemingly more positive than those between Koreans and African Americans? The authors suggest both differences in structural relations and immigrant status as explanatory factors, stating that "Whereas Korean-African American relations are primarily those between merchants and customers, Korean-Latino relations are multidimensional, between merchants and customers, employers and employees, worker and worker, and neighbor and neighbor." (7) The authors employ the "immigrant hypothesis" proposed by Lucie Cheng and Yen Le Espiritu, that is, "that Koreans and Latinos share [a] similar immigrant ideology of hard work, frugality, and the myth of America as a land of opportunity.... Accordingly, African Americans may feel hostile toward Korean merchants, whereas Latinos may try to emulate the 'success' of Korean merchants." (83) Chang and Diaz-Veizades suggest that Koreans and Latinos "may sympathize with each other, as they both are aware of the difficulty of immigrant life in America." (83)
As a way to evaluate the immigrant hypothesis and the importance of community attitudes, one of the most useful parts of the book is the original data generated through one-on-one interviews conducted with 114 Koreans and 83 Latinos. The authors find that "The Latino immigrants in Pico-Union that we surveyed generally admired the Koreans' work ethic and wanted to emulate them...these perceptions may explain the lack of ethnic conflict between Latinos and Korean Americans. In addition, many Latinos believe that Korean Americans have a 'positive' impact on their neighborhoods because Korean-owned businesses provide employment opportunities for Latino immigrants." (102)
Evaluating the authors' conclusions reveals both one of the strengths of the book -- its brevity while...