Ted, > But it doesn't change the fact that some Koreans blatantly ripped off poor people......and they knew what they were doing.
Maybe you'd like to provide some proof, because the whole nonsense over "price-gouging" comes from a mentality of entitlement.
Either they were poor businesspeople or they were price gouging....take your pick. Either they were price gouged or they were jacking up their prices on their goods way above where they were bought from the wholesalers. Prices on their goods often were 4,5,6 times the prices found in bigger markets. Now if you were in a hurry and willing to pay the price, they were ubiquitous throughout LA. However, in the ghetto and barrio of LA, there was no close by alternative until the last few years. Consequently, poor people were paying exorbitant prices for lousy food.
When Koreans open up stores in high crime areas, they aren't doing it to spite the residents there. They're doing it because no one else bothered to, not even the residents themselves.
I didn't say they were spiting the residents.
Many Koreans were fortunate to have money coming from Korea to help them with opening their shops. Blacks and Latinos didn't have that foreign financial support.
Koreans arrived here with not much more than the shirts on their backs, and they're being accused of "blatantly ripping off poor people"? Please, consider the source before accusing hard-working first-generation Korean-Americans of being oh-so-greedy.
Not all Koreans arrive here with just "the shirt on their backs". And I never said they were not hard working.
And dude, I am the source. When in LA, I lived both in the ghetto and the barrio at different times. I saw how the Koreans treated me as well as the blacks. I saw the prices they charged for their foodstuffs. Unlike many blacks and Latinos, I had the mobility to shop at the larger supermarkets........I saw the price gouging first hand.
Again, not all Koreans price gouged but many of them did. And a few were friendly and pleasant when doing business with them but many were not.
And again I say........all of that doesn't justify the trashing of their stores during the riots. |
