In Depth Reading: A Case Study of Race, Gender, and Class (Stevenson)

The appellate court opinion in People v. Du makes only two references to race (that the defendant was "Korean-born" and that Joseph Du had testified to being robbed by "10 to 14 black persons"). But race played a much bigger role in this case than that. Consider this excerpt from a 2016 Los Angeles Times article:

A generation ago, long before Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and the Black Lives Matter movement, the death of Latasha Harlins lit a fuse inside Los Angeles’ African American community.

Latasha, 15, was shot in the back of the head by a Korean woman who owned a South Los Angeles liquor store. The killing was captured on a grainy security video.

On the national stage, her case was overshadowed by another video that surfaced just weeks before, the one showing Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King.

But in Los Angeles, Latasha’s death had a profound effect in both the black and Korean communities.

For blacks, the killing became a symbol of the dangers and indifference faced by African American youths. Those feelings turned to rage when the woman who shot Harlins, Soon Ja Du, avoided jail time. That — along with the not-guilty verdicts in the King case — became a rallying cry during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

For Korean Americans, the case prompted soul searching and debate about the rocky relationship between Korean immigrants who owned liquor stores in black communities and their customers.

“The Latasha Harlins incident made it absolutely clear that Korean Americans are not spectators to the unfolding American racial drama, nor bystanders,” said Edward J.W. Park, an Asian American studies professor at Loyola Marymount University. “They were now intimately and inextricably implicated.”

Latasha’s killing inspired songs and a book. But the memory of her death faded in a way that King’s beating never did. The King case resulted in changes over the years in how LAPD officers were allowed to use force. Latasha’s death left no standing monuments or policy changes, something that haunts her family.

“All these people came to the surface,” said her aunt, Denise Harlins. “But nothing was ever done. That still bothers me to this day.”

Angel Jennings, How the Killing of Latasha Harlins Changed South L.A., Long Before Black Lives Matter, Los Angeles Times, March 18, 2016 (https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-0318-latasha-harlins-20160318-story.html).

In 2004, Brenda Stevenson, a history professor at UCLA, put together a detailed case study examining the ways in which race, gender, and class came into play when the lives of Latasha Harlins, Soon Ja Du, and Joyce Karlin intersected. As you read Prof. Stevenson's description of those three individuals, pay attention to all the ways that her descrption differs from the court's. We'll use that as a spring board to discuss two important quesitons: (1) How do race, gender, and class affect the distribution and use of power in the legal system? and (2) How do actors in the legal system (lawyers, judges, legislators) talk about the affect that race, gender, and class have on the use of power in the legal system?

Prof. Stevenson's case study is linked below.