Class 8 respond | Reading homework help

Most studies report the cause of Los Angeles riots of 1992 as a result of racial tension between the African-American community and the whites. The riots resulted in almost $1 billion in property damage, nearly half of it was property owned by Korea Americans. The media, especially Los Angeles Times, played a major role in instigating tension between the African American community and the Korean American community. The Los Angeles Times covered on the conflict excluding the positives meeting that were happening to bring the two communities together. The media drifted attention from the real nature of the problem and started directing the problem to racism and cultural ignorance. In the words of Darnell Hunt, “by covering conflict to the exclusion of harmony and collaborations, they misled a lot of people who get all their information from media and in the process shaping the attitudes to a large degree, which influenced their behavior” (Goldman, 2012).

These periods were times of economic downturn where big companies had closed down and others were downsizing their workforce living many people unemployed. Los Angeles was the most affected by these events of economic turmoil and as a result most African American who depended on these jobs were left jobless. Also, there were shifting demographics that saw the rise in Korean emigrants occupying areas that were previously dominated by African Americans. The only difference is that the Korean emigrants were highly educated and had vast resources. Most of them were pioneers and they started investing in the African American communities, offering them products that they did have access to before. As time went by, the African Americans started resenting the influx of Korean emigrants and their dominance in businesses in their community. In this regard, they started blaming the African Americans for their problems and these resulted in tensions between these two communities. 

Reference

Goldman, T. (2012, May 26). ‘CLASH OF COLORS’ The 1992 Los Angeles Riots from the Korean-American Perspective [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An8LJ_fv0mo&t=2308s

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