On Corner Stores, Storekeepers and Race Relations

A couple weeks ago, I witnessed a disturbing incident on Fifth Street. While on my way to work at the library, I stopped by a mom and pop store on the same block to pick up some Spiderman stickers (for bribing my student, naturally). I was rummaging around the stationary shelf when I heard a scuffle. I peeked over to find the proprietors, who happen to be Korean, scuffling with a young black boy. One man was holding him down and another was patting him down. “You shoplift! You shoplift!” shouted the younger man, as he reached into the boy’s pocket.

“I didn’t shoplift nothing, man!” said the kid. And sure enough, they could find nothing on him.

Now I don’t know whether the kid fit the profile of what they perceived to be a shoplifter, or whether he was just about to shoplift when they confronted him, or whether he was just an innocent bystander. Who knows? As the kid walked out of the door, I met his eyes. He was furious. His face reflected his anger and humiliation.

The neighborhood in which the incident occurred happens to the place where I grew up. Some people call it Little Korea. Some call it the Latin Ghetto. Suffice to say, a large percentage of the neighborhood’s merchants (whose businesses line Fifth Street) are Korean-Americans.  And their customers are mostly black and Hispanic. Race relations in Olney? Everybody minds their own business. We try to get along. We do. Most of the time.

At the same time, I kept hearing about the tensions between the Korean American community and the African American community. ( On My Own, a book by In-Jin Yoon, provides an excellent analysis.).  The first time I actually witnessed it was when I was a student at Temple. I liked to go to a place called The Breakfast Club. The clientele was mostly local with the occasional straggler or Temple basketball player thrown in. One day a woman sat beside me and we started talking. She told me she’d lived in the neighborhood when it was all-black. “All the business on this street were black-owned,” she said. “Now we got nothing but them Koreans.” And she sniffed towards the elderly Korean couple who were (and continue to be) revered by their customers.

This conflict is nothing new. Long before Korean Americans opened up shop in socioeconomically-challenged urban areas, Jewish Americans merchants were getting heat from their customers. (Read The Pawnbroker by Edward Louis Wallant or any of Bernard Malamud’s stories/novels, you’ll run across those themes.) In the last year, the number of violent crimes in Philadelphia that involved Asian storekeepers prompted police to issue this warning. ““Business owners, and especially Asian and Asian-American shopkeepers, are advised to take care in the handling of cash,” Delaware County District Attorney G. Michael Green said Friday during a late-afternoon press conference.” In 2009, there was enough concern that folks organized a meeting between police officials and Asian Americans. “In Montgomery, Philadelphia and Delaware counties, there was a total of 15 incidents against Asian-Americans between Nov. 20 and Jan. 9. Fourteen were robberies of business owners; the last was a home invasion that resulted in the death of a Montgomery County man.”

But things aren’t always black and white. Er, black and Korean. This past Sunday, there was another incident between an Asian shopkeeper and a customer. The owner of the shop, Jongyoum Kim died. She was shot by a customer who lived a block away from the corner store in Mt. Airy. The customer, Nicole Dolby-Beckam reportedly had a history of mental illness. Mrs. Kim, who had owned/operated the shop for 16 years, had a gun that she apparently pulled out after Dolby-Beckam threatened her. (Could this be any more Crash?)

The response from the community was overwhelming. There are stuffed animals. Mesasges. Flowers.

I can’t say I expected it. After all, just a few years ago, a shopkeeper was killed in my neighborhood. Soon, one of his relatives came to replace him and life went on. Our community’s response was the polar opposite to that of Mt. Airy. What a testament to the Mrs. Kim and her neighbors.  What a legacy. “She was described as a firm but kindhearted woman who allowed shoppers who were short 10 cents, 25 cents, or even a dollar to take their merchandise and pay later.” R.I.P. Mrs. Kim.