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As if by fate, African-American Latasha Harlins walked into Soon Ja Du's store a few weeks before the Rodney King beatings. Like King, Latasha Harlins became a victim of white hegemony.
Soon Ja Du shot and killed Latasha Harlins. Like the five police officers who were acquitted for their brutalizing Rodney King, the white judge in the case also gave Soon Ja Du a unjustly lenient sentence. The situation added fuel to an already robust fire over the Rodney King trial. The two issues brought to a head the conflicts that had been brewing under the surface in South-Central Los Angeles. In South-Central Los Angeles, about 30% of the liquor stores were owned by Korean-Americans. Many of those Korean-Americans like Soon Ja Du and her family did not actually live in the communities surrounding their stores. Nor did they employ local black workers as a rule. Korean store owners found themselves in an uncomfortable position. On the one hand, the Korean-Americans were self-employed and finding viable means to support themselves. On the other hand, their presence in a predominantly black community caused racial tensions.
The Rodney King verdict and the Soon Ja Du verdict both climaxed in rioting that caused the deaths of 52 people. Most of the financial burdens of Sa-I-Gu were borne by the Korean-American store owners, who saw their livelihoods go up in flames. The Rodney King riots would go down as the "worst domestic uprising in the 20th century" (Lee 244).
Unfortunately it took a tragedy, a horrific crisis in the American consciousness itself, to clarify the Korean-American experience. Sa-I-Gu brought to light the uniqueness of the Korean immigrant experience, even if by way of violence and ethnic tension. The riots made it possible to view the Korean-American experience in a more honest...
If anything good came out of Sa-I-Gu it was that Korean-Americans were more visible than they were before 1992.
Elaine Kim claims that Korean-Americans occupy a special position in the American ethnic spectrum. Sonny in Do the Right Thing seemed to understand that Korean-Americans occupy an "interstitial position in the American discourse on race," (Kim 270). On the one hand, Korean-Americans and African-Americans could come together in a shared experience of oppression. Kim notes that "centuries of extreme suffering from invasion colonization, war, and national division had smuggled itself into the United States with our baggage," and that the Korean immigrant experience was filled with han (271).
On the other hand, Sa-I-Gu showed that class and socio-economic status issues may trump the race card in America. Korean-Americans occupied a higher position on the social ladder than African-Americans. When Judge Joyce Karlin slapped Soon Ja Du on the wrist, she was reinforcing the racial, ethnic, and class barriers that define the American minority experience. As self-employed store owners, Korean-Americans are viewed more as "model minorities" than blacks are; in fact, the phrase model minority is almost used in a way that deliberately denies African-Americans the opportunity to explain that systematic racism, institutionalized racism, has prevented the empowerment of the black community.
Works Cited
Kim, Elaine H. "Home is Where the Han Is."
Lee, Jennifer. "Striving for the American Dream." Chapter 10.
Lee, Spike. Do the Right Thing. Feature Film.
Stevenson, Brenda E. "Latasha Harlins, Soon Ja Du, and Joyce Karlin: A Case Study of Multicultural Female Violence and Justice on the Urban Frontier."
Works Cited
Kim, Elaine H. "Home is Where the Han Is."
Lee, Jennifer. "Striving for the American Dream." Chapter 10.
Lee, Spike. Do the Right Thing. Feature Film.
Stevenson, Brenda E. "Latasha Harlins, Soon Ja Du, and Joyce Karlin: A Case Study of Multicultural Female Violence and Justice on the Urban Frontier."
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