This article explores why Korean merchants in Los Angeles County have not encountered the same hostility from Hispanic communities as they have from black neighborhoods. We reviewed the racial, social-psychological, and materialist explanations for intergroup antagonism. While these theories do help to predict Korean-black tension, they do not explain why such hostility has not occurred in similarly deprived but Hispanic-dominated communities. To explain this anomaly, we propose the “immigrant hypothesis” which calls attention to the high percentage of foreign-born among Korean and Hispanic populations. We argue that racial antagonism is strongest between Korean merchants and black merchants and customers, and mildest between Korean merchants and Hispanic groups.
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