The words terror and captivity are not commonly found in the scholarship on Asian-Black relations, particularly in the scholarship around Korean storeowners and Black customers in the United States.. But terror and captivity are there. Numerous studies show Black people report being watched, followed, and treated as criminals by Asian storeowners. And if you go off the grid of dominant commentary circulated and sanctioned in progressive spaces, you will hear more explicit discussions of what Black people endure as they shop in these businesses.
In response to Black people reporting in academic surveys and interviews that Asian storeowners treat them as criminals, many Asian American scholars, pundits, and activists reframe these accounts as indicative of âmutual misunderstandingâ or âmutual stereotyping.â According to this narration, we are told yes, Korean immigrant storeowners may have âstereotypesâ about Black people as criminals but in return, African Americans are xenophobic and treat Asians as foreigners.
Black peopleâs desire to live with dignity and free from the constant threat of captivity gets read as Black nationalism and Black nationalism is generally framed in Korean immigrant entrepreneurship literature as American-centric, irrational, violent, and opportunist. Boycotts, calls for community control, and organized challenges to Korean-owned liquor stores in Black neighborhoods are depicted as racist and xenophobic. On more than one occasion, Asian Americanists falsely equate Black protest targeting or affecting Korean-owned businesses with state violence and white supremacy, such as the U.S. governmentâs internment of Japanese Americans or the 1982 beating and subsequent death of Vincent Chin.
The use of âmutualâ misunderstanding suggests shared status or power, with each group contributing to each otherâs vulnerability and suffering. While some concede that yes, Black people and Asian Americans donât have the same power or arenât âtreated the sameâ (by whites or the state), they will often return to a comparative framework to suggest that we are nevertheless âsimilarâ and that once Black people and Asian Americans realize this, Black-Asian conflict will decrease.
The employment of the mutual misunderstanding framework suggests Asian storeowners desireidentification with, and from Black customers across class and race lines. Yet many studies of Asian immigrant storeowners show they hold racist views of Black people and associate them with negative qualities purportedly absent among Asians. And when Asian Americanists emphasize that Asian storeowners do identify with Black customers, the timing of such pronouncements seem preemptive. Solicited comments often appear, in print at least, when the store is considered at risk of being the target of a protest during urban uprisings, such as recently in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland. The fear of another 1992 Los Angeles Riots is explicitly or implicitly expressed in such commentaries. We get quotes from Asian immigrant storeowners saying some variation of, âWe donât have any problems with Blacks.â As a preemptive gesture, we can consider how to read this as, âWe donât want a problem with Blacks,â which of course is different from âWe donât want problems for Blacks.This preemptive move maintains the mutual misunderstanding framework and in the process, keeps analyses prioritizing Black suffering off the grid of progressive discourse. An example of commentary prioritizing the banality of Black suffering is this social media post, shared with permission, written by my colleague Marcel Purnell after protests began in Baltimore in response to the police killing of Freddie Gray:
Some things are not, on the whole, being placed in context, which leads folks (including colleagues) to under describe conditions of black life. Many mom and pop stores in black neighborhoods in Baltimore are non-black owned and staffed. Bulletproof glass is often between the customer and cashier. Many of these non-black owned businesses have never and would never employ black people. Black people know which businesses treat them with dignity and which businesses do not.
Itâs silly to suggest, even at the level of rhetoric, that mom and pop stores, simply because they do business in black neighborhoods, love black people and donât also contribute to everyday black suffering. I am reminded that buying crab chips and tropical skittles at mom and pop stores around Baltimore was too often an occasion fraught with anxiety. I knew many kept pistols and bats behind the registers and were unafraid to use them.
What is particularly pernicious about the mutual misunderstanding approach is it recognizes Black suffering only to throw it in Black peopleâs faces. That is, the structuring logic of the mutual misunderstanding framework requires the recognition of anti-Blackness and to a certain degree, of slavery. But the mutual misunderstanding framework simultaneously suggests Black people protesting their mistreatment are perpetrators of racism against non-Black people of color. Racial power, then, is reduced to stereotypes and not considered in terms of who is in the structural position to determine or participate in the captivity or freedom of another group. This, of course, is a variation of the âreverse racismâ claim.
Related, coalitional gestures often involve Asian Americans and our allies pointing out the âimmoralityâ of Black protest towards Asian-owned businesses, basically saying to Black people, âYou should know better because you too have been oppressed.â In the process, Asian Americanists suggest similarity or sameness with Blacks and thus obscure Black captivity and our relationship to it. For example, among some promoting Black-Asian coalition, Black protests and political organizing directed at Asian-owned businesses are treated as examples of misdirected rage that should instead target white supremacy, corporations, or the police. According to this account, Asian Americans, non-Black people of color, and immigrant storeowners have no relationship to white supremacy, corporations, or the police.
In some variations, the mutual misunderstanding framework casts Black people as akin to whites. We are to assume Black political demands are driven by territorial beef with ânewcomers.â This is the logic of the ethnic succession model, which is unfortunately applied to the study of Black-Korean conflict. According to this approach, there is likely to be tension between long-time residents, whoâve established themselves in an area, with new ethnic and racial groups entering the space. I say itâs unfortunately applied because the ethnic succession model does not know what to do with the afterlife of slavery as it casts Blacks as akin to white immigrants who have become assimilated and American, as having control of space and land they can demarcate as âBlack space,â and in that position block new immigrants seeking to enter âBlack space.â In short, the ethnic succession model assumes Black people can defend themselves from non-Blacks without political punishment. The ethnic succession model also does not know what to do with anti-Black terror, emphasizing competition and conflict between âestablishedâ groups and ânewcomers.â
âOn Terror, Captivity and Black-Korean Conflictâ by Tamara K. Nopper, 24 September 2015
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