The Marmot’s Hole

When the tale of Roy Pearson, the DC administrative law judge who is suing a Korean-American dry cleaner for $54 million for a lost pair of pants, was first reported, I asked whether race might have something to do with it.

Not everyone thought that was wise.

It appears, however, I’m not the only one asking that question. In the WaPo’s blog, Marc Fisher discusses the simmering tensions between DC’s black and Korean communities.

He writes:

Interestingly, until the start of last week’s trial, the mail on the Pants Man was focused almost entirely on issues of abusing the legal system, the eternal battle over tort reform, and how the District could possibly have such a fellow serving as an administrative law judge. But once the trial started–and most importantly, once the first news photos of Pearson started appearing online, on TV and in the paper–the tenor of reader reaction changed dramatically. I still heard plenty of outrage about how Pearson was tormenting the owners of the dry cleaners and wasting the court’s resources, but now that it was widely known that Pearson is black, a good chunk of the mail shifted to matters of ethnic rivalry.

Similarly, the surprise announcement that Rhee, a Korean-American woman, would become the first non-black chief of the D.C. school system in nearly half a century immediately engendered all manner of comment about supposed antipathy toward blacks by Koreans–all this from people who know nothing of Rhee’s background, approach or personality.

He continues:

I’ll spare you the comments that consist solely of racist vitriol, but I think there’s value in looking at the texture of the incidents and complaints that readers report about encounters with Korean merchants. I doubt that these incidents are much different from those that could be catalogued about any dry cleaner, no matter the owner’s ethnicity, but here’s one of the more thoughtful comments I’ve received from readers who believe the pants case is more about black-Korean tensions than anything else:

“The main thing here is the strained relationship between Korean businesses and Blacks with regard to customer service or lack thereof,” wrote Keith Jones, a legal assistant at a major Washington company. He told of an Asian-owned grocery in his D.C. neighborhood where he says the owner routinely sells coffee creamer that has passed its sell-by date, as well as a dry cleaner that he says charges exorbitant rates.

“It is clear that the Korean merchants have a lot of businesses in urban America and that they are unified,” Jones writes. “Blacks in these urban settings, for the most part, rely solely on Korean establishments in their neighborhoods. This is due to access and ultimately, their socio-economic status. I am certainly not saying that this justifies the Pearson case, especially not the amount. From the examples I gave from my own experience, however, one can only imagine what a Black person experiences daily dealing with the Koreans.”

Now, does this mean the Pearson case is definitely racial? Not necessarily, says Fisher:

Did Roy Pearson sue the Chung family, owners of Custom Cleaners, because they are Korean immigrants? There’s no evidence of that. Will the rank and file of the D.C. school system refuse to give Michelle Rhee a chance to succeed because she is Korean-American? Certainly most people are better than that. But in both cases, the noise around the black-Korean tension is loud enough to make hard situations much harder, and that’s worth keeping a close eye on.

Frankly, I know nothing about the state of relations between Koreans and blacks in the United States other than they don’t seem to get along particularly well, and even that is gathered just from what I read. I’m sure some of this blog’s readers — especially Korean-American readers — have more insightful commentary to add.

(HT to reader)