This column by Jin S. Kim is an except from a sermon, Walking Humbly, preached at the 218th General Assembly of the PCUSA • June 24, 2008. Click here to read the full sermon.
From Martin King to Rodney King (Part 1 of 2)
We are living in a time of complete dysfunction as pertains to our nation’s immigration policy. Racism continues to rear its ugly head even in, and maybe especially because we live in the Age of Obama. Remember the Rodney King incident and the riots that ensued in Los Angeles in 1992? We had 400 years of white racism against blacks, and when black people exploded in anger at the white police brutality finally caught on videotape for all the world to see, it ended up being blacks and Koreans fighting it out in South Central L.A. How did this happen?
Koreans started coming to this country in the late 1960s, after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. How did Korean immigrants get caught up in the middle of the racial fear and hatred between blacks and whites that goes back to the time when Europeans first stepped foot on this continent in the early 1600s?
However, I am not at all suggesting that we Korean people are not culpable in this great American tragedy. Like all immigrants before us, we used the same strategy to “get ahead.” In the mid 1800s, millions of Irish were escaping the great potato famine ravaging their land. American nativists considered them European refuse dirtying up America. They were greeted by angry mobs who shouted, “Go back to Ireland!” and “They’re here to steal our jobs!” Sound familiar? But the Irish immigrants’ response was essentially: We know we’re starving, diseased, uneducated “European scum,” as you say, but at least we’re not black. After the second generation lost their Irish brogue, they were accepted as “white” and became part of the great American melting pot. Of course, we are well aware that this melting pot only worked for European immigrants and had always intentionally excluded darker skinned Americans.
A few decades later after the Irish, the Italians started coming. They were a little darker, a little hairier, but they made the same case: “Hey, we know we’re not as white as the Anglo-Saxons here. And we know we’re from southern Europe and Catholic and not as ‘American, baseball and apple pie’ as you people who have been here before us. We’re not even as ‘white’ as the Irish, but at least we’re not black.”
And so in America, the Irish and Italians got to be “white people.” This is no small feat considering the historic bias against new immigrants from the earliest days of our republic. Benjamin Franklin, one of our most illustrious founding fathers, said about the Germans, “Why should the Palatine boors be suffered to swarm into our settlements and, by herding together, establish their language and manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us, instead of our Anglifying them?” He claimed that the non-English immigrants were not “purely white,” and that the Germans, Russians and Swedes were of a “swarthy complexion”.
However many generations it took, Germans, Swedes, Norwegians, Irish, Italians and Jews all got to be part of melting pot whiteness in America because there was a common target of hatred called blackness. Now what do we do with the middle-colored people, like Latinos and Asians? With racist laws forbidding interracial marriage, third generation Asian Americans looked just as Asian as the first generation. We could lose the accent, but we couldn’t lose our non-European looks. For instance, my Korean wife was born in Montgomery, Alabama, and our children are third generation Korean Americans, but they look just as Korean as their grandparents who came from Korea in 1975. Now here’s the sickening clincher: Even though we Koreans can’t get rid of our Asian-ness enough to enter fully into whiteness in this country, “At least we’re not black” became the godless thought in our heads.
So the deal we middle-colored people made with the white power structure of this nation is: “Let us enter into your elite educational institutions, let us work in your corporations, let us live in your neighborhoods. We know you flee when black people move into your neighborhoods, but hey, slow down. We’re Asians; we’re not black.” And so we Asian immigrants used the same strategy as every immigrant group before us, stepping on the backs of black people to enter into white privilege.
As Asian people who have been offered the crumbs of white privilege in exchange for silence and invisibility, we’ve traded in our birthright of dignity for the petty crumbs of empire. We have chosen the path of least resistance rather than the narrow path of solidarity with the poor, the marginalized and the oppressed of society. O Lord, how now do we recover our humanity and our prophetic imagination?
I think it’s tragic that the Rodney King incident incited such violence between the African American community and the Korean immigrant community…but I understand. The 1970s, ’80s and ’90s was the time when many Korean immigrants got their start in low-cost, urban neighborhoods. Now if you go to South Central L.A., there are hardly any Korean-owned businesses there as newer immigrants have taken over. You see what I’m saying? Korean immigrants have been here long enough now not to need to be in the poorest neighborhoods. “Well, we’re movin’ on up, to the east side, to a deluxe apartment in the sky…” From a Korean perspective, it was tragic that the Rodney King incident exploded just in that brief moment of immigration history when Koreans owned businesses in South Central L.A. The dream of Martin King seemed to turn into the nightmare of Rodney King.
On the other hand, it’s not just a historical accident. It’s a historical pattern that my people were a part of. That it happened to us might be tragic, but that this sort of ethnic conflict occurred at all in the 1990s is indicative of how hidden the structures of racism are on a day-to-day basis. Is this how a new immigrant group becomes “American”? And what does that say about whether we are Christian or not? Are we genuinely Christian when we ourselves participate in this historic pattern of injustice in this country?
Given the brutal reality of our history, I pray that we can walk humbly with God and with one another. On behalf of all Korean immigrants in this country, I apologize to my African American sisters and brothers, and ask their forgiveness. On behalf of all Korean immigrants, I also apologize to our Native American sisters and brothers for benefitting from the land that was stolen from them. I also apologize to my white American sisters and brothers, for when we as Asians gladly exploit the “model minority” myth for our own advantage, we are complicit in perpetuating racial divisions and the dehumanization of us all. I humbly ask: Please forgive me and my people, by the grace of God. And may that same grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all. Amen.
Jin S. Kim is founding pastor of Church of All Nations (www.cando.org), and serves as moderator-elect of the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area, Advisory Board chair of the Cross Cultural Alliance of Ministries, and as a PCUSA delegate to the National Council of Churches.
This column by Jin S. Kim is an except from a sermon, Walking Humbly, preached at the 218th General Assembly of the PCUSA • June 24, 2008. Click here to read the full sermon.
