Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots

Nancy Abelmann and John Lie have written a provocative work that deserves to be read and debated widely. Their book, Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots, can be read in two different but, ultimately, interrelated ways. First, Blue Dreams can be read as an innovative, theoretical work that offers a penetrating analysis of American race relations in our time of massive immigration. Second, Blue Dreams can be read as a study of Korean American politics in Los Angeles and, more specifically, an ethnographic study of the community’s political consciousness in the aftermath of the Los Angeles civil unrest of 1992.

As a theoretical work on American race relations, Blue Dreams represents a ground-breaking book. Abelmann and Lie, using Korean Americans in Los Angeles as a case study, make a compelling case for examining the transitional ties to understand immigrant political consciousness. From the book, it is clear that immigrant political consciousness plays a critical role in not only shaping the internal politics of immigrant communities but also the terms of their engagement with the broader society. The authors trace Korean American political consciousness to the complexity of Korea’s own troubled history — in particular, its history of colonization and military dictatorship — combined with the imported and distorted visions of America that Koreans consume from the popular media. Because both of these authors have written more extensively on Asia than Asian America, their expertise on Korean history and politics makes this section especially powerful. They go on to show that once in the United States, Korean Americans solidify their new American political consciousness, adding to the mix America’s harsh realities of race, class, and violence. While showing the common transnational roots of Korean American political consciousness, they insightfully capture the tremendous range of Korean American political consciousness that exists in post-civil unrest in Los Angeles. Some feel victimized by American racism and false promises; others blame “ghetto-merchant” Koreans for contributing to inter-racial animosity, and others, mimicking the Right, blame the African Americans and Latinos for undermining their access to the American Dream. Abelmann and Lie also show the importance of transnational roots to the internal divisions in the community — a Korean brand of regionalism, classism, sexism, and generational conflict informing Korean American political consciousness, all reconfigured in varying degrees by the process of transnational transplantation.

By focusing on the political consciousness of Korean Americans — especially Korean immigrants — Abelmann and Lie insist on viewing Korean Americans in their full complexity, not merely as ghetto merchants or as silent victims. In the narrative, we find Korean Americans using their own, rich political vocabulary to make sense out of their complex and contradictory place in American society. Also, by placing the transnational dimension of Korean American identity along with their status as racial minorities, Abelmann and Lie directly theorize the status of Korean Americans as immigrants of color, although they do not use this term. While their book focuses on Korean Americans, it is easy to see how transnational ties have shaped the political ideology and personal lives of all new immigrants that come from the similar post-colonial, neo-colonial settings as South Korea notably Southeast Asia, Central America, and Mexico. As immigrants of color become increasingly implicated in political debates ranging from immigration policy to welfare reform, and as they begin to organize politically in the United States, Blue Dreams comes at a critical time.

As a study of Korean American politics in Los Angeles, Blue Dreams’ contribution is more uneven. The major strength of their work comes from the authors’ ability to weave Korean history with Korean American subjectivity, academic race relations literature with ethnographic narratives, and structural analyses of Los Angeles’ economy with detailed descriptions of Koreatown. Through their compelling writing, they allow the reader to appreciate the many social forces that have shaped the lives and the political consciousness of Korean Americans in Los Angeles.

However, Blue Dreams is not without its...