When Korean-American Elizabeth S. Chong moved to Fairfax County in 1993, it was hard to find a taste of home. “There were one or two Korean grocery stores, but they were small,” she said. “Now there are lots — and they’re Walmart-sized.”
That’s a result of the growing concentration of Koreans in Fairfax County, especially in Annandale and Centreville. But the community can have its drawbacks — some say the growing services for Koreans are keeping new immigrants isolated.
“I think they’re not assimilating as much because they have their own language here,” said Chong, who came to the United States in 1971 to go to college and eventually received her doctorate from George Mason University. “I had to learn English or else I couldn’t do anything.”
Larry Shinagawa, a University of Maryland Asian American studies professor, said the lack of assimilation when ethnic groups concentrate is occurring in suburbs outside major cities across the United States.
“There’s no-quote-unquote mainstream suburbia anymore,” he said. “That’s been replaced by ethnic suburbs that have popped up across the country.
The pattern of just going into a white society or white suburbia and assimilating has really been eliminated nowadays.”
That has been the story in other Washington suburbs like Langley Park, which became a haven for Central American immigrants in the 1980s. Once a target for commercial development in the 1950s, the old stores have largely given way to fast-food shops and ethnic grocery stores.
Meanwhile, the reverse is happening in the city, where ethnic solidarity in the District’s Chinatown is shrinking as Chinese businesses are pushed out to the suburbs. – Liz Farmer
