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African American - Korean American relations
African Americans and Korean Americans had vastly interconnected histories within United States history. Their relationship has been defined by both conflict and cooperation and has been publicized and studied moderately since the 1980s.

This relationship is marked by key events and topics related to the Black-Korean Alliance (BKA), the Killing of Latasha Harlins, the 1992 Los Angeles uprising and Rooftop Koreans, the Family Red Apple boycott, and anti-Korean tropes such as the "middleman minority" and the "model minority."

Shopkeeper and merchant relationships
Many Korean Americans living in predominantly Black neighborhoods owned small businesses such as grocery stores, liquor stores, and convenience shops, which were frequented by Black and Latinx residents. Korean immigrants in these areas were often college-educated and came from middle or upper-class backgrounds in Korea, and their decision to open stores in Black and Latinx neighborhoods was informed by their access to personal savings, and the minimal start-up capital required. The socioeconomic inequity between Korean and Black Americans fueled xenophobic sentiments among the African-American community in urban areas of New York, Washington DC, and Chicago. On November 15, 1986, The Philadelphia Daily News published an article titled "Go Back To Korea" about the anti-Korean boycotts.

One of the main issues claimed by Black neighborhood residents against Korean-American shop owners was their prejudiced hiring practices. Most Korean-owned stores in Black and Latinx neighborhoods employed Koreans at a disproportionately high rate, which was often perceived by members of the African American community as informed by anti-Black racism. However, some scholars suggest that Korean American hiring practices were more informed by class than race: because of the downward socioeconomic mobility many Korean immigrants experienced, they could rarely afford to hire other employees outside of their small family businesses.

Protest and boycotts
Beginning in the 1980s, tensions between the urban Black and Korean communities of the US culminated, in more than a dozen cities, in incidents of protest and violence. Within fifteen years, forty Black-led boycotts of Korean-owned stores occurred, spanning from Los Angeles to Washington DC, due to altercations between Korean store owners and Black customers. In those same fifteen years, local newspapers reported sixty-six incidents of violence, most of which were shootings, physical assaults, and riots.

Much of the violence between the two groups was perpetrated either by African Americans frustrated with apparent socioeconomic inequities, or by Korean American shop owners claiming self defense.

Anti-Black racism among Korean Americans
The tense relationship between Korean shop owners and African American patrons was not only fueled by their difference in socioeconomic status, but also by Korean fear of, and subsequent prejudice against, their Black customers.

Though the violent altercations between Black and Korean Americans were often portrayed as part of a race war, which concerned only those two groups, some scholars contend that Black-Korean conflict must be viewed as a reconceptualization of white racism. In fact, the racist attitudes held about the other group by both Korean Americans and African Americans mirrors those of White Americans.

Black-Korean Alliance
The Black Korean Alliance (BKA) was a nonprofit organization established to help alleviate tensions between Black and Korean Americans after the murder of four Korean shop owners in 1986, functioning to prevent further enmity in their shared communities.

The BKA was comprised of five subcommittees, each tasked with tackling one problem between the two groups. These subcommittees were employment, community education and cultural exchange, fund-raising, religious leadership, and economic development.

Despite their efforts, the BKA did not succeed in reducing hostility in Black and Korean communities, and tensions only continued to rise, as seen in the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, among other boycotts and civil unrest. The BKA struggled for several reasons, from a lack of financial resources to internal disorganization, to miscommunication within their messaging.