[lbo-talk] crime rising in US cities

[Jim Straub]

That sounds a bit out there to me.  I'm sure if the police cordoned off
white areas first it might have heigtened the riot on korean areas, but the
idea that there was not interethnic conflict there?  Ever heard of latasha
harlins?  Mike Davis describes the riots as being one part black rebellion
aginst the pd, one part latino postmodern bread riot, and one part pogrom
against korean business owners.

I hear people argue sometimes that conflict between different groups of
people of color doesn't exist, white people just hype it up.... which seems
pretty wrong to me.  In CA its a massive aspect of the racial landscape.

--Not directly related to Doug's quote, but  there's a great book by Nancy
> Abelmann and John Lie, "Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles
> Riots", which unpacks the difference between Korean immigrant perceptions of
> the riots with white Americans' view of the riots.  The latter, informed by
> round the clock pundits harping on the the theme, saw the riots as a 'new'
> riot that was not shaped by black-white relations and more by 'interethnic'
> conflict [i.e. Korean-Black misunderstanding, tension..].  Koreans saw
> something different, namely their neighborhoods were the primary target of
> the rioters not because of 'interethnic' or 'interracial' tensions but
> because the National Guard stuck to cordening off White neighborhoods...Add
> that to the historic and racially shaped [i.e. black-white] inequality in
> LA...and the riots didn't look that much different from riots in the 60's...