Friday, June 17, 2011

What do you think about this part from menace to society?

In the 50s and early 60s the black communities in the big US cities were mostly serviced by Jewish run mom and pop convince stores. The big chains refused to open businesses in the black neighborhoods because of the high loss due to shoplifting and armed robberies. In 1965 race riots starting in Watts started happening every summer for the next five or six years. The first thing targeted by the rioters were the mom and pop stores which were trashed. When things calmed down in the early 70s the Jewish families that had run these stores refused to reopen them. The black community complained bitterly about not having basic service available in their neighborhoods, but attempt by black entrepreneurs never took. In the late 70s and early 80s Korean immigrants discovered this unfilled business niche and started opening small mom and pop convenience stores in the black neighborhoods. This has led to the stereotype of the Asian (mostly Korean, but a lot of Indian) small business man in a convince store in a minority neighborhood. However, like their Jewish predecessors, they suffer a high loss rate from shoplifters and armed robberies from kids in the neighborhood. The movie scene was just a dramatization of the kind of racial tension that exists between the (mostly) Asian (Korean/Indian) owners of these shops and the kids how live in the area. It existed back in the 60s when the shop owners were Jewish, in the late 70s when the shop owners were Black, and today when the shop owners are Asian.

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