Content area
Full text
Bitter Fruit: The Politics of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City. BY CLARE JEAN KIM. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000. xii, 300 pp. $37.50 (cloth).
In the 1990s, the specter of the Black-Korean conflict haunted the megalopolises of the United States. Amidst nationwide discussions of deindustrialization, the drug wars, and the urban underclass, the mass media disseminated the notion that African Americans and Korean Americans (and Asian Americans more generally) were at battle. Whether articulated as the struggle between the exploited poor and the exploitative middleman minority or as the contrast between the hopeless urban underclass and the hopeful model minority, the reality of the interethnic conflict became widely accepted. Indeed, from New York (most notably the 1990 Red Apple boycott) to Los Angeles (most obviously the 1992 Los Angeles riots), from the director Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing) to the rapper Ice Cube ("Black Korea"), the specter was not merely haunting but hounding urban America.
Claire Jean Kim's Bitter Fruit superbly limns a major episode from the specter. The boycott of the...