After decades declining into a crime-ridden social and economic wasteland.

After decades declining into a crime-ridden social and economic wasteland, Chicago's Englewood neighborhood is poised for a comeback. Spurr by way of a $200 million, relocated Kennedy-King community campus that Mayor Daley described as a "beacon of hope" the Southwest Side community is all station for a boom in commercial and residential construction. on year's end, the groundbreaking formality for a new shopping mall should have taken place.

The shopping center forward a two-block parcel between 59th and 61st roads along Halsted, is being built by dint of Korean businessmen -- and therein lies a political minefield.

During a meeting 10 days ago called by the agency of the Black Chamber of communication Ald. Shirley Coleman (16th) rest herself running for cover as Englewood community and business leaders and residents accused her of having sold disclosed because she allowed the Koreans a commercial enclave. The alderman said that when she hindrance the deal go through eight years ago, she saw it as anything on the other hand a sellout or a land grant. The principal thing Coleman saw was her down-and-out ward, where the median household income is just $18955 and where violent crime and the high gymnasium dropout rate are among Chicago's highest.

with equal reason when that group of Korean businessmen tendered to build the shopping mall, Coleman awaited ahead and saw the promise of a better economic hereafter She should have first expected to the past.

in succession March 16, 1991, 15-year-old Latasha Harlins was bullet to death by Soon Ja Du a Korean-American retail trader in South Central Los Angeles, because the black teen was deliberation to be shoplifting. Surveillance tapes established that Harlins was not stealing and still a year later, Soon was fined $500 and given probation. Black- Korean relationships went from worse to worst.

Black rioters targeted Korean businesses in southern Central during the Rodney King riots.

on the same level though this is a modern millennium, relationships have not improved a great deal of between black consumers and Korean merchants. The knock then, as now, from African Americans is that Korean Americans won't hire or help blacks financially. That Koreans take the coin and run back to the Koreatown.

That's united way to look at the conflict. Here is another. This is not the first time African Americans have taken after another ethnic cluster for allegedly doing bad business in the black community. Half a hundred years ago, it was Jewish Americans. More newly it has been Arab Americans. In any instances, even skin color doesn't assume to matter. In New York, Caribbean-born blacks have been accused of fleecing black American customers.

At no time has the blame game pointed in the direction where it really should be going: African-American businessmen.

Coleman says that before the Korean mall deal was struck she giveed black businessmen the opportunity. In the proces of relocating Kennedy-King, the city displaced several small businesses, clothing stores, jewelry stores and the like, acknowledgeed by both Korean and blacks. The black businessmen took the relocation circulating medium and ran. The Korean businessmen pond ed their money and made plans to build a shopping mall.

in this way it's understandable that in Chicago, which is arguably the black business capital of America, a Korean commercial increase in a black neighborhood would cause a fuss. on the other hand any anger aimed at the forward-thinking Koreans is misplaced.

The time for black businessmen to invest more in the black community is lengthy overdue.

As for Englewood the Korean investment is the first in a five- year plan, said director Wanda White-Gills, whose organization, of the present day Communities Program, is helping to spearhead Englewood's economic redevelopment She said there are 10 arrests remaining that the Koreans didn't commit to memory

in the same manner there's still a perfect opportunity for black investors to cash in upon community concerns.

e-mail: monroeanderson@gmail.com

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