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An Analysis of Latino-Korean Relations in the Workplace: Latino Perspectives in the Aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles Civil Unrest
Abstract
Mainstream interpretations of 1992 Los Angeles unrest had little to sat about Mexicans or Central Americans. Instead of, TV commemorators honed in on the black-Korean tensions while neglecting Latino-Korean relations. As Jinah Kim points out, overemphasis on the subjugation of black subjectivity “overshadows other systematic diagnoses of the civil unrest and places the focus on blackness as the object of, and solution to, social discord; African Americans remain America's (race) victims and America's (race) solution. “ Through largely portrayed in the national media as a black uprising were a near majority (approximately 49 percent) in the neighborhoods most affected by the unrest: South Central, Koreatown, and Pico Union. From a total of 5,633 arrests, “51 percent of those arrested were Latino; 30 percent of those who died were Latino”, more than 12 percent of the damaged businesses were Latino owned. A third of the Latinos arrested were turned over to the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) an...
... Those for other Asian American groups range from 5.2% to 12.1% (Le, 2013). The majority of Korean American-owned small businesses serve other low-income minority groups (Kim, 2000;Lee, 2002;Min, 1996;Park, 2012). According to the 2010 census, the median family income ($50,000) of Korean Americans fell between European Americans ($54,600) and other minority groups ($32,000 for African Americans and $37,800 for Latino/as) (DeNavas-Walt et al., 2011); the median family income of Asian Americans overall ($66,000) is higher than European Americans (Pew Research Center, 2013). ...
... As a middleman minority that regularly comes into direct contact with other marginalized groups through their small businesses, Korean Americans often deal with racial frustrations from members of marginalized groups (Han, 2005;Kim, 2000;Park, 2012;Ryoo, 2005) while facing discriminatory attitudes in interactions with dominant group members (McGowan & Lindgren, 2006;Min, 1996;Park, 2012). In these interactions, Korean Americans are likely to respond to the discrimination of the majority group and rejections of minority groups differently. ...
... As a middleman minority that regularly comes into direct contact with other marginalized groups through their small businesses, Korean Americans often deal with racial frustrations from members of marginalized groups (Han, 2005;Kim, 2000;Park, 2012;Ryoo, 2005) while facing discriminatory attitudes in interactions with dominant group members (McGowan & Lindgren, 2006;Min, 1996;Park, 2012). In these interactions, Korean Americans are likely to respond to the discrimination of the majority group and rejections of minority groups differently. ...
After conducting a survey study with cross-sectional data involving 377 Korean Americans, this study finds that (1) Korean Americans mainly interacting with European Americans report a lower level of depressive symptoms than those in frequent contact with African Americans or Latino/as; (2) a model involving the relationships between Korean Americans’ perceived ethnic distance, personal-relational and personal-enacted identity gaps, and level of depressive symptoms is tenable; and (3) comparisons of the model applied to three groups of Korean Americans who interact with different ethnic groups reveal that relationships between the perceived ethnic distance and the identity gaps are accentuated for Korean Americans who predominantly interact with African Americans and attenuated with those in frequent contact with European Americans. Possible explanations for the different levels of depressive symptoms according to the ethnicities of the Korean Americans’ major interaction partners are discussed.
Background/Context
As dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs expand nationwide, parental feedback becomes crucial in evaluating their effectiveness and ensuring equitable access. Understanding the perspectives of diverse parental groups, including marginalized and privileged communities, is essential for developing inclusive and equitable language programs that serve all students. Furthermore, the changing demographics of students and their families with transnational experiences, along with the growing diversity in non-Spanish DLBE languages, highlight the need for research that documents diverse DLBE programs and contexts. Considering this context, acknowledging parental views on Korean programs is meaningful in valuing the opinions of parents with rich transnational experiences in one of the less-commonly taught language programs in the country. Korean dual language programs are also under-researched in the DLBE literature, despite their unique spaces where different power dynamics emerge compared to Spanish or Chinese DLBE programs.
Objective and Research Question
This study aims to investigate parents’ evaluations of DLBE programs, their plans to enroll their child until the secondary level, and potential reasons for leaving DLBE programs. First, the researcher explores parents’ evaluations of Korean dual language programs (KDLPs) and examines how parental evaluation is associated with other aspects of parents’ views and characteristics, such as their demographic features, parental satisfaction with their child’s language development, integration experiences among both children and parents, and parental involvement in the program. Next, the researcher investigates whether parents plan to enroll their child in KDLPs until the secondary level (grade 8 or 12) and examines the relationship between their plan and program evaluation. The study also probes the association between parental commitment plans and other variables related to parents’ views and characteristics. Finally, the study explores potential reasons that could spur parents to leave KDLPs.
Research Design
This quantitative study used survey data collected from a sample of over 450 parents of students in seven KDLPs at the elementary level in Southern California. This study employed multilevel modeling, accounting for the nested data structure of respondents within schools. The parental evaluation variable was explored by multilevel ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with a cubed form of program evaluation value as the dependent variable to explore parents’ evaluation. For examining parents’ program commitment plans, multilevel logistic regression analysis was employed. To examine the difference between Korean and non-Korean parents in potential reasons for leaving the program, this study used the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test.
Conclusions/Recommendations
The results show that parental evaluation of KDLPs is positively linked with satisfaction in bilingualism, biliteracy, academic rigor, and sociocultural competence variables, with satisfaction in the target language (Korean) and academic rigor having the most significant impact. The study also reveals that parents’ likelihood of enrolling their child in a secondary KDLP is influenced by the length of their child’s enrollment, satisfaction with academic rigor, and integration among children. Interestingly, program evaluation does not significantly affect enrollment decisions. The integration issue that children did not get along with students of different races and cultures was the most influential reason for leaving the KDLPs for both Korean and non-Korean parents. Non-Korean parents also cited challenges with target language instruction as a potential reason for leaving the program. In summary, the results reveal the complex nature of parental perceptions and highlight the values that parents prioritize when assessing the programs. These insights have important implications for future research on KDLPs and DLBE programs more broadly, in terms of both advancing theoretical discussions and informing empirical investigations. By shedding light on the complexities of parental evaluations, this study also proposes the need for a distinct ideological framework in Asian language programs to better understand individual experiences and promote equity and justice in those programs.
This chapter surveys and analyzes a decade's worth of work on social-science-oriented studies of Korean America and race (2007-17).
This paper is an analysis of the complex and contradictory experiences of Korean immigrants in South America. It critically analyzes the political economy of development and neoliberalism in South Korea, Brazil, and Argentina, while highlighting Korean immigrants in the apparel industry and analyzing their interactions with Jewish clothing manufacturers. The different position of Jews and Koreans in relation to the state apparatus, national belonging, global capitalism, and transnational networks and resources tends to create sociopolitical barriers which contribute to ethnic contestation and obstruct an otherwise meaningful social relationship. This paper will present and examine how these differences were formed and affected by global capitalism and neoliberalism.
The article examines changing beliefs and practices among Korean American small business proprietors in Los Angeles around the time of the 1992 Crisis. It documents and analyzes changing racial and ethnic tensions. Following the Crisis, Korean immigrant small businesses shifted from a strategy of hiring largely Latino/Mexicans to hiring African Americans. This paper analyzes whether Korean immigrants' notions of race and ethnicity have also changed as a result of the shift in hiring patterns. I report on the complexity, heterogeneity, contradiction, and dynamics of racial meanings during times of historical transition and crisis. -Author
This article is concerned with a group of approximately 200 Yucatecan migrants in Dallas, Texas who maintain transnational ties to their hometown of "Kaal" in Northern Yucatán. Extensive ethnographic research among this migrant community reveals how traditional patterns of patron-clientism found in Yucatán and throughout Mesoamerica are adapted to fit transnational circumstances. Through a descriptive analysis of several cases, it will be shown how migrants establish and use patron-client relationships to achieve their goals and pursue their life projects. Those who take the role of ethnic entrepreneur or patron help other migrants negotiate transnational space and therefore facilitate transnationalism. This paper contributes to a body of current anthropological literature that identifies and documents how local political and economic circumstances are affected by transnational migration.
How the Other Half Works solves the riddle of America's contemporary immigration puzzle: why an increasingly high-tech society has use for so many immigrants who lack the basic skills that today's economy seems to demand. In clear and engaging style, Waldinger and Lichter isolate the key factors that explain the presence of unskilled immigrants in our midst. Focusing on Los Angeles, the capital of today's immigrant America, this hard-hitting book elucidates the other side of the new economy, showing that hiring is finding not so much "one's own kind" but rather the "right kind" to fit the demeaning, but indispensable, jobs many American workers disdain.
This article explores why Korean merchants in Los Angeles County have not encountered the same hostility from Hispanic communities as they have from black neighborhoods. We reviewed the racial, social-psychological, and materialist explanations for intergroup antagonism. While these theories do help to predict Korean-black tension, they do not explain why such hostility has not occurred in similarly deprived but Hispanic-dominated communities. To explain this anomaly, we propose the "immigrant hypothesis" which calls attention to the high percentage of foreign-born among Korean and Hispanic populations. We argue that racial antagonism is strongest between Korean merchants and black merchants and customers, and mildest between Korean merchants and Hispanic groups.
Immigrants have relied on ethnic ties to promote cooperation and mutual support. Middleman minorities and ethnic enclaves have been the most prominent in stressing the role of ethnic solidarity in immigrant entrepreneurship. The ethnic enclave thesis, in particular, posits the mutually beneficial relations between co-ethnic employers and co-ethnic employees. On the one hand, ethnic employers can make use of a large pool of cheap coethnic workers, while co-ethnic employees, on the other hand, can capitalize on reciprocity, on-the-job training, managerial and supervisory positions, and future self-employment (Portes and Bach 1985; Portes and Manning 1991). The increasingly visible employment of Latinos, and particularly Mexicans in Korean-owned small businesses in New York City, often displacing and now replacing Korean employees, questions the prevailing patterns of coethnic employment and future promotion. This article examines when, how and why Korean employers have turned away from the 'benefits' of employing Koreans and instead opted for the recruitment and employment of nonKoreans, predominantly Mexicans and Latinos in New York City.
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...
Shows how the US economy has witnessed both a massive influx of immigrant workers and a sharp decline in organized labour. Examines the struggles of Latino workers in Los Angeles, USA and shows just how immigrant workers and labour unions have a complicated relationship there. Explains how the problems were eventually eased.
This paper examines Korean-Latino relations based on the results of my own research in New York City and review of other empirical studies conducted in New York and Los Angeles. Korean-Latino relations have been established mainly through the employment of Latino immigrants in Korean-owned stores. Since Korean immigrants' heavy dependence on very disadvantaged Latino workers involves labor exploitation, it has been a source of Korean-Latino conflicts. There have been many cases of picketing against Korean stores by Latino employees in both New York City and Los Angeles. But Korean-Latino business-related conflicts have been much less serious than Korean-Black business-related conflicts. Moreover, the relationships between Koreans and Latinos have some positive aspects. First, due to cultural similarities and mutual benefits derived from the employer-employee relationship, many Korean merchants maintain strong personal ties with Latino employees, informally helping them and often sponsoring their applications for green cards. Second, Korean ethnic organizations staffed by 1.5- and second-generation Koreans in Korean enclaves in Los Angeles and New York City have recently expanded their services to Latino immigrant workers and Latino children. In particular, the efforts of the Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates in Los Angeles to protect Latino workers from exploitation by Korean merchants have greatly contributed to establishing cultural, social, and organizational linkages between the two communities.
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ABSTRACTS
Tensions between African American residents and Korean immigrant merchants in inner‐city neighborhoods have occurred in several cities, culminating in the 1992 Los Angeles riots and uprising. The media sees this conflict as racial, while black and Korean community leaders explain it in terms of cultural differences. Meanwhile, scholars emphasize economic factors. Each of these explanations fails to uncover the central role of white racism in this conflict and the underlying racial hierarchy in America (white‐Asian‐black).
Restriction-oriented immigration policies and polarizing political debates have intensified the vulnerability of undocumented people in the United States, promoting their "willingness" to do low-wage, low-status work. In this article, I draw on ethnographic research with undocumented immigrants in Chicago to examine the everyday strategies that undocumented workers develop to mediate constraints and enhance their well-being. In particular, I explore how a cohort of undocumented Mexican immigrants cultivates a social identity as "hard workers" to promote their labor and bolster dignity and self-esteem. Much of the existing literature on unauthorized labor migration has focused on the structural conditions that encumber immigrants and constrain their opportunities. By shifting the focus to workers' agency, I seek to complement these analyses and show how undocumented immigrants actively navigate the terrain of work and society in the United States.
Their interviewees listed the following qualities: respect, family unity or closeness, family values, and to a lesser extent, culture or customs, language, religion, music, food, or fiestas. These traits are said to distinguish Mexican Americans from other groups
- Edward Telles
- Vilma Ortiz
Latinos and the Los Angeles Uprising: The Economic Context” (Claremont: Tomas Rivera Center
- Manuel Pastor
The Re-Invention of Affirmative Action
- Kyeyoung Park
Between 1940 and 1992, only 1.2 million Mexicans entered the U.S. as legal immigrants, while 4.6 million came as temporary contract workers, and approximately 4 million entered without documents.” See her article, “What If Latinos Really Mattered in the Public Policy Debate?
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- Rachel Moran
Racial Citizens, and the (Multi)Cultural Politics of Neoliberal Los Angeles
- Jinah Kim
- Immigrants
Salvadoran Migration to Southern California
- Beth Baker-Cristales
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KIWA since 1995, may be the best example. He is deeply grateful to the government of El Salvador for providing him a full scholarship in the 1960s. His wife is also Salvadoran. He commands respect among Salvadoran workers
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Their interviewees listed the following qualities: respect, family unity or closeness, family values, and to a lesser extent, culture or customs, language, religion, music, food, or fiestas
- Edward Telles
- Vilma Ortiz
- Telles Edward
Kwang Choi a case manager at KIWA since 1995 may be the best example. He is deeply grateful to the government of El Salvador for providing him a full scholarship in the 1960s
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Immigrants, Racial Citizens, and the (Multi)Cultural Politics of Neoliberal Los Angeles
- Jinah Kim
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