On March 3, 1991, Rodney King, a twenty-five-year-old Altadena, California resident was speeding down a freeway in San Fernando Valley at 117 mph, when he was spotted by four Los Angeles (LA) police officers. Following an eight-mile chase, King was stopped, shot with a stun gun, and beaten multiple times. However, a videotape by George Holliday, a nearby resident, captured King’s beating, setting the incident of police brutality apart from others. To the shock of millions, a multiracial Simi Valley jury acquitted all officers standing trial. In response, angry demonstrations, rioting, and civil disobedience spread across America. In San Francisco, for the first time since the 1906 earthquake, a curfew was declared; in Las Vegas, uprisings occurred for four weekends in a row; in Seattle and Atlanta, disturbances shook city centers. Out of the many cities affected by violence, South Central Los Angeles, a neighborhood southwest of the city center downtown, felt the damage the hardest. After three days, later known as the 1992 LA riots, the worst urban upheaval since the 1965 Watts riots and perhaps since the New York City Draft Riots, LA saw an estimated “58 dead, 2,400 injured, 11,700 arrested, [and] $717 million in damages.”[1] At first, the cause of the riots seemed obvious: police brutality, accompanied by centuries of racism and tense relations between white and Black Angelenos. However, the prevalence of Korean signs in downtown Los Angeles and armed Korean Americans on rooftops suggested that unlike the 1965 Watts riot, Black-white relations were not the only factor at play. Approximately 2,000 Korean businesses had been affected, resulting in an estimated 400 million in damages. [2] Examining the background of the riots revealed a larger picture. A year before the 1992 LA riots, Korean grocer Soon Ja Du shot Black teenager Latasha Harlins after a shoplifting accusation and was sentenced to merely probation, leading to backlash in LA’s Black communities. Taking in the context of the riots, many believed that “Latasha Harlins...was the key to the catastrophic collapse of relations between LA’s Korean and Black communities.”[3] America no longer wanted to “settle for black and white conclusions when one of the most important conflicts was the tension between Koreans and African- Americans.” [4]

In the aftermath of the protests, the tension became known as the Black-Korean conflict. Emerging as a politically convenient and oversimplified explanation for the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the narrative of Black-Korean conflict was driven by the flawed frameworks of the model minority myth and urban underclass theory, ultimately serving to legitimize mainstream conservative policy agendas.

In the aftermath of the 1992 riots, the model minority myth and urban underclass theory justified the Black-Korean conflict. While to an extent, animosity between the two communities did play a role in the riots, the conflict overwhelmingly dominated social and media discourse as a primary factor behind the uprising. The reported source of the tension was due to the prevalence of Korean small business ownership in South Central. Over 16.5% of Korean Americans were self-employed— over double the rate of European Americans— and in 1989, 40% of Korean men owned their own businesses.[5] Correspondingly, the LA Times, the largest US metropolitan paper in 1992, reported the perspective of a white merchant in southern Los Angeles: “I'm so goddamn mad. Let these people burn their own stuff down. If you don't like the Koreans, why don't you go get your own grocery store, mis-ter?”[6] The merchant cited tension between the Korean and Black communities over economic dominance as the driving force behind the riots. Three years later, Black activist and shopkeeper Johnnie Tillsman-Blackston told the LA Times that “the Koreans run the liquor store and don't let no black people work in there, and they treat black people like they're dogs.” [7] Both LA Times interviewees referenced Korean economic control in South Central, at the expense of Black merchants, as the primary instigator of the riots. These claims were founded in grains of truth. Republican commentator Heterodoxy summarized the reasoning that drove the narrative’s popularity:

[It] was permissible to explain black antagonism toward Koreans in Los Angeles in terms of "anger" over Soon Ja Du, the Korean shopkeeper who, having shot and killed a 15- year-old black girl named Latasha Harlins who had assaulted her, was then released by a judge. But it was impermissible to note that 25 Korean merchants had been murdered in the ghetto in the last two years. It was permissible to mention that blacks were "frustrated" by Korean economic success. It was impermissible to specify that this rise was based on 14-hour work days, personal sacrifice often approaching indenture, and family solidarity.[8]

The success of first-generation Korean immigrants drove a historical feud that culminated in the death of Latasha Harlins. These achievements, a product of cultural values like hard work and family solidarity, were better known as the model minority myth. According to a 1975 Newsweek article, “Koreatown is abound with Horatio-Alger success stories.”[9] The article alluded to the success of Korean immigrants in business without government assistance. A decade later, Time Magazine reinforced the model minority myth: “Like previous generations of immigrants many Asians seek to realize their personal American dream not just by finding a good job but by starting their own business, the ultimate statement of independence.”[10] William Doerner, the article’s author, believed that Koreans were inherently predisposed to small business ownership, as the “the entrepreneurial impulse runs strongest among Koreans.”[11] This perspective of “natural talent” was amplified by the testimony of Korean shop owners like Peter Kim, who informed the LA Times that “most Koreans would rather be self-employed than work for someone else. They're hard-working people, [with] high goals, and very competitive on the average.”[12] While the perceived success of Korean shopkeepers was often attributed to cultural values like hard work and business acumen, as Kim suggested, this “inherent” success fostered tensions with African American communities. At the same time, the rise of the model minority myth coincided with the emergence of urban underclass theory in the 1980s, framing these dynamics within a broader narrative of racial and economic divides. The theory argued that poverty culture was pervasive in low income urban areas regardless of government support.[13] Emerging in a time when poverty was on the rise, the theory defined an underclass as more than just low income:

When Americans talk about an "underclass" in their cities, they do not simply mean the poor; they mean poor but healthy young people who cannot or will not, but anyway do not, get a job. The images are vivid: an unmarried mother who lives off welfare cheques; a young man who drifts from girlfriend to girlfriend, selling drugs to get by. Estimates of the size of this underclass vary hugely from about 5% to 50% of all the poor-2m-15m people, of whom some two-thirds are black, a tenth Hispanic...Conservatives tend to stress the "will not": jobs exist, but people do not take them; jobs do not pay enough, or people do not try hard enough to find them.[14]

Instead of being defined merely by their income, cultural differences also dictated what it meant to be part of the American urban underclass. As a result of the growing urban underclass living side by side with the entrepreneurial model minorities, “the feelings of many in the black community toward Koreans had become comparable to that of a vanquished populace to the occupying army.”[15] According to the model minority myth and the urban underclass concept, Black communities like South Central Los Angeles resented the economic control of Korean immigrants, who obtained success without outside aid. California-based rapper Ice Cube’s highly anticipated song “Black Korea,” released in 1991 with over one million advanced orders, confirmed that resentment, alluding to Korean shops in South Central: “So pay respect to the Black fist, Or we'll burn your store right down to a crisp, And then we'll see ya, 'Cause you can't turn the ghetto into Black Korea.”[16] Ultimately, as believed by the two theories, the tension between the two communities came to a standstill during the 1992 LA riots.

However, rather than stemming from isolated racial tensions, racist sentiments by white Angelenos that prevented minorities from accessing housing and public businesses drove the uprisings while disproving the idea of an “urban underclass.” In 1968, the Open Housing Act eliminated legal housing barriers, stating that it was the “policy of the United States to provide, within constitutional limitations, for fair housing throughout the United States”[17] for minorities in Los Angeles, but informal racism by civilians persisted. In 1993, over one hundred fifty neighborhoods attempted to physically gate their communities from encroaching Black residents.[18] Whitley Heights, an influential neighborhood directly northwest of Los Angeles, was among those leading the effort: “Whitley Heights is a lush, sunny mound of the best of the old glamour and charm of Hollywood in the 1920s, rising above the worst of the trash and transience of Hollywood in the 1990s...a judge ruled last week that the city of Los Angeles could not allow the neighborhood up the hill to close its gates to the rest of the world.”[19] Inequitable access to housing severely limited social mobility, with the educational disparity in LA deepening as a result: in 1990, two-thirds of minority students attended schools funded below neighboring suburban districts like Whitley Heights.[20] While gating practices were eventually banned in the mid-1990s, the attitude toward minorities remained. Mary Paik Lee, a Korean immigrant in Southern California, recalled that “in the 1950s, most of the 'For Whites Only' signs on public restrooms, swimming pools, and so forth, were removed. But although there were no signs on barber shops, theaters, and churches, Orientals were told at the door that they were not welcome.”[21] Though the city government no longer enforced racist policing, Los Angeles residents took on the role, suggesting cultural differences hadn’t sentenced the urban underclass to economic stagnation. Instead, racist sentiments affected social mobility, from gating practices to limited public resources.

Beyond general racist sentiments in LA, deindustrialization in South Central Los Angeles affected Black Americans disproportionately, leading to economic stagnation. Lack of social mobility was not a result of “laziness,” but rather circumstance, undermining the urban underclass theory. In the 1970s, the US economy experienced deindustrialization, as large corporations moved overseas for lower operating costs. From 1970 to 1985, US manufacturing declined by 1.5%, but Southern California’s manufacturing increased exponentially, with a 24.2% gain that established Los Angeles as a national manufacturing powerhouse.[22] However, the data hid discrepancies. In reality, while areas like Orange County thrived as high-tech industries grew, the auto industry and rubber plants in South Central, which had been the second largest in the 1970s, had essentially vanished by the mid-1980s. Ten of the twelve aerospace factories closed down, displacing over 50,000 workers.[23] As a result, low-wage, nonunionized labor industries emerged in southeast LA in order to compete with overseas manufacturing, such as the garment sector, which saw its workforce double from 1972 to 1992.[24] African American communities in South Central felt the effects of deindustrialization the hardest, with the annual median family income falling 5,900−2,500 below the city median in the 1970s.[25] In addition, the new preference for nonunionized laborers in low-wage industries, due to lower wages and likelihood of striking, affected African Americans at a higher rate than other ethnic groups. Throughout Los Angeles in the 1980s, unionization rates of manufacturing workers fell from 30 percent to 23 percent in Los Angeles County and from 26.4 percent to 10.5 percent in Orange County.[26] However, 10 percent of African Americans were union members, despite composing only 6 percent of the LA workforce. On the other hand, “preferred” workers like Hispanic and Asian laborers were severely underrepresented in unions. Hispanic workers made up 16 percent of employees in L.A., but only 9 percent of union members; similarly, foreign-born Asians were 11 percent of the workforce, but only 5 percent of union members (Figure 1). Due to language barriers and employment in non-unionized industries, Asian and Hispanic workers were less likely to join unions, whereas African Americans had a longer history of labor organizing in the US and stronger union networks in industrial sectors.[27] The effect of deindustrialization on South Central’s Black communities and its corresponding preference for non-unionized workers suggested that economic slowdowns were an impact of circumstance, rather than the “poverty culture” cited by the urban underclass theory.

By the 1960s, as large corporations left South Central for overseas opportunities, low-wage industries entered Southeast LA, drawing immigrant laborers to the area. In response, urban renewal and redevelopment projects aimed to transform the majority-immigrant neighborhoods into thriving urban business centers, as the communities didn’t fit a Eurocentric image of modern, urban Los Angeles.[28] Driven by the development of the Los Angeles freeway system, urban renewal often had the unintended consequence of displacing and segregating minority populations, leading to static growth. Rather than inherent stagnation as a result of culture, city redevelopment programs condemned urban populations to underdevelopment with little hope of social mobility or job opportunities. One such neighborhood was Bunker Hill, a district north of South Central, which received federal grant funding Fig 1. Ruth Milkman, “Immigrant Organizing and The New Labor Movement in Los Angeles” (2020). for urban renewal in 1955. The 133-acre residential neighborhood, lined with stately Victorian homes, had originated in the 1860s. However, a wave of immigration in the 1920s and 30s prompted a “white flight” from the area—residents moved east of Alameda Avenue and into the westside suburbs of Brentwood and the Pacific Palisades. The Pacific Electric Company enabled the “flight” by establishing trolley and railway lines: “H. E. Huntington [owner of Pacific Electric] yesterday asked the city council for a street railway franchise for the Pacific Electric...The plan is to lay direct tracks down Sixth street to Figueroa and cut off three Bides of the square, reducing the running time several minutes.”[29] The Pacific Electric trolleys and railways increasingly lured wealthy, white residents into the new “street car suburbs” like Angelino Heights, Highland Park, and West Hollywood. With the development of trolleys, Angelenos could live in residential areas further away from city centers than ever before. In addition, the creation of the LA freeway system, such as the Pasadena Freeway, accelerated the white “flight” started by trolley companies like Pacific Electric. The Victorian houses left behind were subdivided into housing for workers arriving from the Midwest, Europe, and Mexico, quickly making Bunker Hill a target for the Los Angeles Community Reinvestment Agency. A public agency dedicated to revitalizing economically struggling areas, the CRA became determined to rid Bunker Hill of its reputation as the setting of crime novels and film noir movies, or American crime dramas. Between 1959 and 1968, the CRA demolished Bunker Hill’s dilapidated buildings, displacing 9,000 residents without relocation assistance (Figure 2).[30] The displacement helped cement what became known as the “Cotton Curtain” along Alameda Avenue, a physical and racial barrier that divided Black and white working classes in South Central. Testimony before the state Congress explained the effects of the divide:

When you look at the conditions and needs, the planning process in Watts has been some of the most negative planning I have ever seen in my life. The high school in Watts sits at the most negative end of the community. Jordan High sits next to the junkyards, General Motors, and the Cotton Curtain where a black couldn't even cross Alameda Street before 1965 to live. Where the elementary school is down there, junk is piled up in front of it as tall as this building. This environment itself would build a negative kid. There is not one of you sitting in this room who would want your daughter to go to Jordan High School and walk that corridor down there.[31]

The Cotton Curtain took a psychological and educational toll on the students attending Jordan High School. With underfunded maintenance, lack of access to basic services, and environmental hazards like industry waste from the junkyards or General Motors, by 1981, at the time of the testimony, Jordan High School had a 60% graduation rate, significantly Fig 2. Olive Street block being leveled south of 1st Street, (1963). lower than the state average of 72.2%.[32] While funding for high schools in predominantly Black communities was significantly reduced, the CRA directed investments toward white neighborhoods instead, at the expense of Black-owned businesses. For example, a small shopping complex near Charcoal Alley in Watts languished after fifteen years of “planning.” Similarly, the Crenshaw Shopping Center— the leading retail district in Watts— suffered after the CRA prioritized redevelopment subsidies for the wealthy promoters of Fox Hills Plaza in Culver City.[33] Rather than a cultural predisposition to poverty, it was urban renewal initiatives, redevelopment projects, and corresponding segregating boundaries such as the Cotton Curtain that condemned low-income neighborhoods to long-term economic stagnation.

As deindustrialization and urban renewal reshaped the city’s landscape, Korean immigrants increasingly filled the retail spaces in neighborhoods once dominated by Black-owned businesses. Since Los Angeles licensing policy prevented Korean professionals from entering the American workforce, small business ownership was a last resort for first- generation Korean Americans, contradicting the model minority myth’s insistence on the natural predisposition of Koreans to business. Though 40% of South-Central businesses in 1990 were Korean- owned,[34] small business ownership had been a choice made out of necessity, not desire. When Korean immigrants from academic backgrounds entered the US, the California Commission on Civil Rights noted in 1975 that “these [Korean] professionals are encouraged to immigrate-given preference by our immigration laws...Yet ... these same men and women are often told that their educational credentials are inadequate, their experience inapplicable, and their certification not recognized.”[35] Due to state licensing practices, foreign-educated professionals’ degrees and credits were not recognized by Californian employers. When Korean professionals, such as pharmacists, attempted to enter licensing exams, they were often met with rejection:

Kong Mook Lee, a Korean-educated pharmacist and vice president of the Korean Pharmacist Association of California, estimates that there are at least 300 experienced pharmacists in Southern California born and educated in Korea, who cannot practice their profession. He noted that the Immigration and Naturalization Service gives high priority preferences to Koreans with pharmaceutical training, with the implication that persons of their educational training and experience would be welcome additions to the United States. Yet when these practicing pharmacists come to California, they are denied the opportunity even to take the examinations. The majority of the Korean- educated pharmacists have neither the time nor the money to go back to school. To survive and support families, these professionals must take unskilled jobs often paying low wages, he said.[36]

Korean pharmacists, like many other professionals, were denied even the opportunity to enter licensing examinations. In the rare cases when foreign-educated professionals were allowed to take the examinations, lack of proficiency in English and inadequate financial assistance for review courses meant passing the exam would be difficult. Employed in low-wage sectors such as the service industry, Korean immigrants found self-employment as small business owners, where language barriers were not as consequential, more appealing than wage labor. To Kooin Choi, a Korean grocer originally trained as a nurse in Seoul, owning a supermarket was the only option due to her lack of proficiency in English: ‘I don't know the language,’ said Kooin Choi, who has owned the West End Superette, at West End Avenue and 72d Street, with her husband, Jai Sung Choi, for four years. ''That is why so many from my country own grocery stores and fruit shops. It doesn't need too much English. It needs the thinking, the acting, the working hard.[37]

Self-employment was an adaptive response to language and credential barriers Korean immigrants faced, leading highly educated individuals like Choi to own shops and stores. In fact, many Korean immigrants abandoned business ownership in Koreatown once they accumulated enough capital:

The geographic mobility of the Koreans in the Korea Town area and its vicinity is extremely high. According to a survey based on the telephone directory listings of Korean residents in 6 zip code areas of Korea Town including 90004, 90005, 90006, 90010, 90019, and 90020, only 11% of the residents in 1972 remained in the same area in 1977, implying that 89% of the Korean residents moved out of this area during the five years. On the other hand, about 38% of the 1972 telephone listings of the Korean residents in Monterey Park, a middle-class residential area, were still found in the 1977 listings. The difference is indicative of the relatively high mobility of the Koreans in the Korea Town area.[38]

Poverty trapped Korean immigrants in Koreatown as shop owners. When Korean shop owners accumulated enough capital, many relocated to middle-class neighborhoods like Monterey Park to pursue professional careers—highlighting that small business ownership was often a stepping stone rather than the ultimate goal. Between 1980-1990, the affluent South Bay community saw its Korean population double,[39] with South Bay Korean residents like Ik Soo Kim believing there was “no reason to go to Koreatown these days”[40] as there wasn’t a small business tying Kim to Koreatown. Facing high barriers to enter the American professional workforce, Korean immigrants increasingly chose to pursue small business ownership.

When former professionals entered careers as small business owners out of necessity, advantages like network, capital, labor, and timing ensured their success, rather than cultural values of the minority myth stereotype. The businesses of early Korean immigrants in the early to mid-1900s struggled, as they lacked capital and communal support. However, strong connections to East Asian markets separated later Korean immigrants from other groups of newcomers. When capital export laws loosened in the 1980s, Koreans could come to the US with increasingly more capital, and family members or relatives could support around 60% to 80% of initial startup costs.[41] By 1986, Korean-owned enterprises in southern California became the largest import concerns for South Korean products.[42] South Korea also experienced a per capita GNP increase from below 1,000 to 5,040 between 1980 and 1990, further increasing the invaluable advantages of flexible export policy.[43] Once in the United States, immediate family members reduced labor costs, as unpaid relatives would become unofficial employees for Korean small businesses. In the 1980s, 30% of Korean businesses had no official employees.[44] Besides startup costs and staff recruitment, location was another pressing question for potential business owners. South Central Los Angeles, a low-income inner-city area, appeared to be an answer. In the aftermath of the Watts rebellion, large chain and retail companies had left South Central for wealthier suburbs in search of higher profits, disposable income rates, and lower operating costs due to less petty crime. At the same time, the area experienced an exodus of German and Italian merchants as a result of acquired capital and the post- Watts instability, which opened up space for Korean immigrants.[45] The difficulty of early Korean immigrants in opening Los Angeles businesses emphasized the significance of network, capital, labor, and timing. In the early 1900s, “many Koreans took the first opportunity to go into business, no matter how small ... Many Korean small businesses exacted long hours of work from the owners and their families and yet yielded little income.”[46] Early Korean immigrants didn’t benefit from favorable capital export laws and higher value currency, cutting off support from overseas relatives, so their businesses failed. Even Syngman Rhee, who later became president of South Korea, experienced dire setbacks and failure in his 1924 attempt at entrepreneurship in Los Angeles.[47] Circumstantial advantages ultimately aided later Korean immigrants in small business ownership, rather than cultural values brought to the US from South Korea.

The reality of South-Central Los Angeles in the aftermath of the 1992 riots was much more complex than the reports of mainstream media and social discourse. The urban underclass theory and model minority myth justifying a Black-Korean conflict as one of the primary factors of the 1992 riots were just that — myths. The urban underclass theory, predicated on the idea that poverty was a cultural phenomenon, was undermined by structural racism, deindustrialization, and urban redevelopment programs, while the model minority myth was disproved by the circumstantial advantages as well as professional goals of Korean immigrants. Correspondingly, public perception of the riots was equally distorted—often sensationalized by media coverage or challenged by optimistic reports that created a more nuanced image of Los Angeles after the riots. For Angela Oh, a 32-year-old Korean American trial lawyer who found herself as the spokesperson for the Korean community after the riots, the media often controlled her TV appearances. In reference to an NBC “Sunday Today” show, Oh explained in a speech that her words were often twisted:

What’s happened is that the producer will call you up and say, we are going to talk about where we go from here, and they interview you and do this whole little prep, and when you go to the station–and this literally happened to me on a national network station–the issue becomes ‘Black-Korean conflict, the reason for the riots in LA.’ Then I sat on the panel with people who are 3,000 miles away whom I couldn’t even see, who are saying these really inflammatory things, leaving me in a position to do nothing more than respond...you’ve [NBC] just fucked the whole city of Los Angeles as far as I’m concerned, and all the hard work we’ve put into building coalitions...[48]

NBC, like many other news companies, manipulated Oh’s perspective, who was one of the few Korean American voices during the riots. The livestream severely damaged the coalition-building progress made by Los Angeles community leaders. While tension did exist, as NBC claimed, so did a sense of community solidarity. In Santa Cruz, a group of “Korean shopkeepers took a step toward easing tense relations with blacks by agreeing last week to hire a few gang members to work in their South-Central Korean shops which were especially hard hit by rioters.”[49] The gang truce was one of many community coalition programs initiated between Korean and Black Americans. More casual day-to-day interactions confirmed that relations between the communities were more nuanced than at first glance. For example, while accounts like Tillsman-Blackston’s dominated discourse, stories like those of Korean shopkeeper Chung Jin Moo existed as well. Upon Chung’s return, he was welcomed home by former patrons:

‘You made it! You made it! Thank you, Jesus’ yelled Lashon Henry, a customer of Chung’s 47th Broadway Food Market...Her eyes full of tears and disbelief, she wrapped her arms around him for a long embrace...‘How ya feelin’, man?’ asked Carlester Hall, 17, slapping Chung with a handshake. ‘OK,’ Chung said. Several other youths got out of a car to greet Chung. ‘What’s up, man’ one asked. ‘You comin’ back?’ ‘Yes,’ Chung said. ‘All right!’ the youth said.[50]

While tense relations between Korean shopkeepers and their largely Black customers certainly existed, so did positive interactions. Ultimately, the public’s perception of the riots, undermined by optimistic journalism and supported by media sensationalization, reflected the same oversimplifications that obscured the deeper structural forces at play.

Yet, the persistence of the Black-Korean conflict narrative in mass media and social discourse was no minor accident. Instead, it served as a politically convenient explanation that aligned with mainstream conservative efforts to undermine social welfare programs and defend conservative policy agendas, shifting the blame onto marginalized groups. The Bush administration was among the most prominent of conservative politicians who took advantage of the riots to advance criticism of social welfare. Marlin Fitzwater, a spokesperson for the administration, claimed that welfare contributed to the uprisings: “Many of the root problems that have resulted in inner-city difficulties were started in the '60s and '70s and that they have failed.”[51] Since welfare in the 1960s and 1970s had caused the riots, “a conservative agenda that creates jobs and housing and home ownership and involvement in the community”[52] was required to solve the social problems in LA. The Bush administration had capitalized on the opportunity to attack welfare programs and propagate conservative policy. While the White House “refused to say publicly whether President Bush would offer any detailed alternative”[53] to welfare programs, in the weeks following the riots, the Bush administration “on March 20 [sought] to eliminate from the budget for the 1993 fiscal year $547.7 million to build new public housing.”[54] The housing proposal was one of many reductions part of the 3.6 billion in federal programs Bush hoped to eliminate in an effort to paint the Democratic-majority Congress as irresponsibly free-spending. For Bush and other conservative politicians, the riots couldn’t have happened at a better time. Conservative platforms like that of the Bush administration were recently facing heavy criticism from the left for significant welfare reductions. Welfare relied on the inherent government duty to provide aid, as the people needed support in order to succeed, whereas conservative rhetoric operated on the understanding that success was an individual burden. Therefore, direct government aid was unnecessary and better utilized elsewhere. Ronald Reagan first introduced this concept in 1987, noting before Congress that “this is the time to reform this outmoded social dinosaur and finally break the poverty trap.”[55] To Reagan, Bush, and conservatives, the “...thrust of European-American identity is to defend the individualistic view of the American system, because it portrays the system as open to those who are willing to work hard and pull themselves over barriers of poverty and discrimination.”[56] However, in 1992, conservative politicians were still grappling with the lasting impact of the 1960s civil rights movement and the 1965 Watts Rebellion in LA, which directly challenged the ideals of American individualism. The frustration voiced by one LA resident captured a broader national sentiment: “I’ve had it with equality and all these lies about opportunities.”[57] The disillusionment was not unfounded. Americans suffered from high rates of discrimination and poverty, fueling the demands of social movements for meaningful change. Between 1979 and 1989, 4.3 million Americans joined the ranks of those living below the poverty level, undermining the claim that hard work can overcome systemic challenges. [58] If barriers like discrimination and poverty required government support, then reducing welfare spending and the national budget would harm minorities, undermining mainstream conservative policy. Frustrated by seemingly blind Republican executives, critics began to make their presence known. In reply to Marlin Fitzwater’s attack on social welfare in LA, Democratic nominee Bill Clinton stated, “Republicans have had the White House for 20 of the last 24 years, and they have to go all the way back to the 60's to find somebody to blame. I don't care who's to blame. I want to do something about the problems.”[59] Ordinary citizens shared Clinton’s accusation that reducing welfare would fail to solve the tension in LA: “You don’t have to look any further than the White House’s barbed claim that 60s liberal social programs were responsible for the riots.”[60] In response to Clinton and other critics, Bush used the Black-Korean conflict narrative to defend the conservative platform. The conflict verified that it was possible for minorities to succeed in America without aid, just like Korean immigrants. The resentment of African Americans toward Koreans was concrete, undeniable evidence of their success. In fact, the Bush administration reasoned, welfare had actively harmed the main recipients of welfare in Los Angeles, Black residents.[61] Given Bush’s defense of conservative policy, the president’s address to the nation after to the riots was predictable:

What we saw last night and the night before in Los Angeles is not about civil rights. It's not about the great cause of equality that all Americans must uphold. It's not a message of protest. It's been the brutality of a mob, pure and simple. And let me assure you: I will use whatever force is necessary to restore order.[62]

Rather than recognizing and addressing the underlying issues that had fueled the riots, like poverty and discrimination, Bush opted for a show of force— a superficial response to a problem deeply rooted in decades of injustice. Accepting the social issues in Los Angeles would force Bush to admit that systemic barriers could not be overcome without government aid, upending decades of conservative rhetoric.

In the early morning of April 17, 1993, a federal jury convicted two of the four LAPD officers involved in the Rodney King beating, avoiding the riots that followed the previous year’s acquittals. Though many, including Attorney General Janet Reno, felt “justice was done,”[63] the country turned to speculating on the deeper causes behind the 1992 unrest. A popular explanation—framed as the Black- Korean conflict—attributed the riots to tensions between African Americans and Korean immigrants, justified by the model minority myth and the urban underclass theory. However, this oversimplified view, despite being undermined by systemic issues such as deindustrialization, discriminatory urban policy, and structural racism, advanced conservative attacks on social welfare spending. While progress has been achieved in the years since, the political weaponization of racial conflict remains a powerful force, shaping public discourse and policy. As Black and Korean community leaders continue their work toward solidarity and understanding today, the challenge remains for all minorities: ensuring that racial tensions are not distorted into political rhetoric to exploit and divide ethnic groups, but instead understood in their full complexity, paving the way for real solutions to systemic injustice.