Black Korea Analysis

O’Shea “Ice Cube” Jackson’s song “Black Korea” was released when tension in the African-American and Korean-American community was building, which leads to the question of whether Ice Cube carries any responsibility for the 1992 Los Angeles riots where Korean owned stores were burned down. Although the song’s lyrics were violent and hateful towards the Korean-American community, Ice Cube is not responsible for any of the happenings during the riots because his song is the voice for the Black community. His lyrics were built from a history of conflicts that were piling up and simply stated his community’s thoughts on the situation, rather than igniting the fire that started the L.A. riots, which was ignited way before.
One of the first events that elevated the riots were Black civil rights protestors being battered by the police and their dogs in May 1963 and Rodney
The responsibility is in those who let the tension and racism continue in the communities and it is also the responsibility of the people who acted with violence, since the whole African-American community were angered by the events that led up to the riots, but not everyone took a violent route. In addition, his song was only a message to the world about the unfairness that his community felt because of all previous events that built the tension leading to the violence. Like Aubry said in the Los Angeles Sentinel, “The so-called Black-Korean problem reflects the pent-up frustration of both communities. And it is a problem that goes well beyond Blacks and Koreans per se; its genesis is the racist history and structure of the country which fosters social and economic inequality and leaves it to the victims to fashion solutions” (Chang