I have very mixed feelings about the Roof Koreans. While their imagery has definitely be coopted as a canard for the fantasy of anti-black violence, there has also been some recent attempts to invoke them as the only well-known example of Asian-American armed self-defense in the background of increasingly fanatical anti-Asian racism in the US.
I don’t like the fact that they’re being used to stoke inter-minority violence, but I also don’t like the fact that some people are using them to try to convince Asian-Americans against the necessity of organizing and arming themselves.
Yeah, a lot of them were. That being said, many of them were small business owners that would not have been much better off materially than people we would all consider to be workers. Asian Americans were also subjected to systematic discrimination in employment, housing, financing, etc which meant that they had no choice but to open up small businesses in economically poor areas.
But of course, that’s not to minimize the fact that black people were justified in being outraged by the failure of justice for Latasha Harlins and the beating of Rodney King.
Idk, it’s hard to drill down into this because it inevitably just results in more unhelpful interminority conflict that only benefits whitey via divide and conquer.
Some Korean shop owners were certainly racist towards black customers, but I’ve never read any accounts which suggest the protestors were selectively targeting racist shop owners. On the contrary, most accounts I’ve read seem to suggest people were taking out their anger on Koreans in general.
In principle, I think that collective punishment is wrong. I don’t see much conceptual difference between targeting all Korean stores because some owners were racist and targeting Muslims because of a terror attack carried out by one group of islamist radicals.
I have very mixed feelings about the Roof Koreans. While their imagery has definitely be coopted as a canard for the fantasy of anti-black violence, there has also been some recent attempts to invoke them as the only well-known example of Asian-American armed self-defense in the background of increasingly fanatical anti-Asian racism in the US.
I don’t like the fact that they’re being used to stoke inter-minority violence, but I also don’t like the fact that some people are using them to try to convince Asian-Americans against the necessity of organizing and arming themselves.
Weren’t they business owners that didn’t want their shops damaged or raided in the riots?
Yeah, a lot of them were. That being said, many of them were small business owners that would not have been much better off materially than people we would all consider to be workers. Asian Americans were also subjected to systematic discrimination in employment, housing, financing, etc which meant that they had no choice but to open up small businesses in economically poor areas.
But of course, that’s not to minimize the fact that black people were justified in being outraged by the failure of justice for Latasha Harlins and the beating of Rodney King.
Idk, it’s hard to drill down into this because it inevitably just results in more unhelpful interminority conflict that only benefits whitey via divide and conquer.
weren’t the shop owners also real shitty to their black customers?
Some Korean shop owners were certainly racist towards black customers, but I’ve never read any accounts which suggest the protestors were selectively targeting racist shop owners. On the contrary, most accounts I’ve read seem to suggest people were taking out their anger on Koreans in general.
In principle, I think that collective punishment is wrong. I don’t see much conceptual difference between targeting all Korean stores because some owners were racist and targeting Muslims because of a terror attack carried out by one group of islamist radicals.