I Am Entitled

Because my ancestors paid their dues for their Asian and African descent
Because women from generations past paid their dues
Because I work my ass off, I am entitled
To my own intelligence, worth, well-being.
I am entitled to wealth,
to health, to respect, to dignity...

and not to live oppression

The word oppression frustrates me because it is dis-empowering. I get annoyed with the Ivory tower professors who use it as if they KNOW it as a LIVED experience. It's ridiculous and it's much more complex than they make it seem.

It is a word that feels helpless and solutionless. It makes me skin crawl.
As an educated, young, hard working person from an elite college, in the wealthiest  nation in the world; I shouldn't know that word. That word is the kind of word that, when I was a student facilitator for Campus Conversations on Race, we discussed in order to enhance campus rapport amongst different groups, so that when we get out in the world, we as educated people won't perpetuate things so much.

But now that I'm in the world, rather than my bubble of "people who care about things," I question how much of that is bullshit. How much of that was just student enthusiasm, and student movements, that are not translating into how people treat each other in the world.

My dream was to come out in 2011 and get a masters or PhD or make 70 grand off the bat with ample opportunity for growth and advancement from doing what I want to do and helping people because that's what I deserve. That's what I'm capable of. That's what my parents paid their dues for. That's what I went to school from 3 to 22 for. That's what my hard work should bring me. And I didn't suck at school so I should have been there. But I was not there, didn't get those career success stories off the bat, and still am not remotely close.

And in the real world, every now and again I have the kind of interactions with folks, which forces me to go straight to the gym and sweat out the dirtyness and scent of degradation and oppression that I feel penetrated by from those conversations. And they, as (I'm just gonna say it) White folks, have no damn idea.  It's hard to be a grown up and to realize I have to pick and choose my battles in order to progressively get to where I deserve to be but also to understand that I need to hold onto to my sense of self.

In college and high school, it's easy and ok to dislike White people for the terrible history of "oppression" they've created and obliviously perpetuated. It was ok to be annoyed at them for their sense of superiority and entitlement because they believe they were innately more capable and intelligent simply because of where they stand in society. And it was ok to laugh at them because of their lack of understanding of how history has played a role in that and is continuing to play a role in it. Because we were college students, and that was our role to be informed and to fight that ignorance.

I should have fought it harder. Because it feels like a reality now. The answering to folks who all look the same who hold certain positions of power frustrates me. The randomly having to prove myself to those people. Their complete oblivion to that, their belief that it was all their hard work that got them there frustrates me. Those interactions are poisonous. The fact that I pick and choose my battles and tip toe around that sometimes, frustrates me most of all.

I suppose it serves as motivation to be so much more than this because I deserve so much more than this.
And incrementally one day I will be way beyond them.
But at this moment, I'm frustrated because this is not where I'm supposed to be. I don't believe in that word, oppression, so I get disgusted every time it touches me.

I expect a lot from me and I expect a lot from people who look like me as far as education and career are concerned. Everything from who I date, to the expectations I set from people who I love, because I believe those things are to be reality, and people who don't believe big things can be reality don't exist in my circle. I had this conversation with family last night. But at the same time, I stated that I don't blame some people for feeling a little depleted by how society interacts with them and disrespects them AND simultaneously expects them to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps after that.
It is hard to erase all that and step above it, when as people of color it's an everyday reality that white people are privileged enough not to even acknowledge.

If I don't get to where I think I deserve to get by my 25th birthday, it will be time for starting over and finding something that feels right. That feels like I can dream and reach for the stars without settling. Sometimes I write my blog because it is like a big F you. It's a form of expression. I love this thing. And I am aware of everything I'm writing. Sometimes that's good. To be in touch with your true self. 

Colorism

Every corner of the world that has been affected by colonialism has been affected by colorism, which is to say every corner of the world has been affected by it. And yet, outside of the academic realm where students are forced to delve deeply into how the history of dictatorship and colonization has shaped each of us and our relationships, we tend to not talk about it in a way that's constructive if we decide to talk about it at all.

Often when I write these blogs, or have the feelings I feel, I think about how the friends I have who are White and well-meaning must wonder why this is so prevalent or feel attacked, and perhaps a little awkward by never being able to fully understand that experience.

Or I think about my black friends who may be a little perplexed by the ongoing "people of color" ordeal. Or the Vietnamese family who are a little more hu-ra about Vietnamese culture than I would ever be.

It can get quite divisive and so often people choose to attend to their everyday lives rather than to explore it. And to be fair, if your looks suggests that you're authentically one race--- if you look like what "black person looks like", or what a white person looks like, or an Asian person outside of the middle east, Thailand, and India looks like--- there is an option to suppress those questions in order to attend to daily obligations.

But it's 2013 which means America (including the islands and South America) is increasingly filled with mixed, light-skin, or racially ambiguous people like myself. And that inbetweenness, though not new, creates a lot of questions for parents, society, and "racially ambiguous" people to incrementally answer.

1. Do we still, in theory, have the paper bag rule?

2. Do we still, in theory, have the one-drop law?

3. What type of hair qualifies a person as Black? And what type of hair dismisses them?

For me, and for millions of other kids who have an Asian, White, Middle-Eastern or Hispanic (non-black identified) parent, it may be about the space we keep in our identities for the parent who is not Black. Or in my case, the 1.5 parents. There are questions about that, too. Because even more of us will have to talk to our racially ambiguous children one day about the history of their ancestors and allow them that room to explore who they are.

And maybe in a few generations the majority of people will be racially ambiguous but until then, if there is a system of mimicking than people still need to face that reality. People in the U.S. from all minority races mimic how a certain dominant race speaks and writes. People lightening themselves throughout the world to incrementally approach a certain ideal-- because subconsciously they know that not only is that ideal for beauty but that those people who they are vying to imitate hold the power, resources, respect AND admiration.

It's different for everyone but for me, my mother knows I identify more with my father's dominant race and ancestry, because whether in Vietnam or the U.S., the paper bag, one drop, mimicking realities are the ones that he, and as a direct result, I face more often than she or my brother (who resembles her racially and ethnically) does.

People say Barack Obama or Tiger Woods or Hallie Berry or Alicia Keys aren't Black because they have a non-Black parent and therefore, they must identify as mixed. Which they may. I do. There are many black experiences, mixed being one, first generation being another, immigrants from the African Diaspora being another; Latino yet another, but if they have to navigate their world, their society, their lives experiencing the experiences that their non Black parent does not experience based on their Black genetics than, they are justified to own their own experience as a Black person. Simple. Who is anyone to tell Barack Obama he is not the first Black president because his mother is white?

But I think racial ambiguity also brings up the fierce contradictions of how you view yourself versus how society views you. Not everyone will get 20 minutes to explain their racial identity to everyone else. And the way society perceives you is powerful. If my hair were thicker, I may be more likely to be considered Black, but currently, I am, as crude men would say, "exotic." And regardless of self identification, a lot of the time, how we look defines our challenges and experiences. I don't experience things Vietnamese women experience but I certainly don't experience or face many of the challenges that the average phonotypical Black woman faces either. I have some experiences, mostly derived from the Asian or liberal (confused) White community, but certainly not all. That's a fact. Self identification has NO bearing on that, whatsoever. My skin is olive-brown and my hair is naturally straight and my 3-year-old students adore the hair almost as much as they adore me.

Perception matters because it shapes a large part of the experience. It is why a white person is not a black person no matter what neighborhood they grew up in, what rallies they went to, what non profit they started, and what friends they had. It's why a man doesn't understand a woman's experience. It is why anthropology, education, and sociology are still so fucked up because they are filled with white people who study people and otherness, albeit for a long time and possibly a lot of hard work, who are well meaning and intrigued, and would like to create discourse, and spread the knowledge and experiences they think they know through those years of hard work. But while the numbers and facts are there, and the experiences are captured second hand, the authenticity may not be. The way the story is told, what is left in, what is left out, what order the chapters are arranged... is the choice of, an outsider.

I relate to my blackness, to my one dropness, to my experiences but I don't claim it when sharing spaces where I did not need to navigate through certain experiences the way certain others would have. That's where colorism comes back in.

This is why the discourse is difficult. Because if you don't come authentic, you don't come at all. Where does that leave white friends?

Where does that leave Vietnamese people, including my father, who are perplexed that I don't relate to, identify as, and live that particular experience?

Where does that leave my black friends who question why this dark skin, yet biologically majority-Asian girl dedicates so much of herself to understanding race, white supremacy, colorism, and blackness?

But it's discourse that needs to be had because the world is more free and more inbetweenness and boxes exist to check. And whether more boxes is necessary or not (boxes inform the allocation of resources and the reality of white domination in every sector of society, so more seems unnecessary),  we still need to talk.

Tet 2012

"There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock

news and no pictures of hairy armed women

liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.

The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,

Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom

Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.

The revolution will not be televised." Gil Scott-Heron, 1970.... I love that revolutionary spirit.

I've never been too much of a holiday person, especially with Tet (Lunar New Year) because I'm a little claustrophobic and a lot self-conscious around large groups of Vietnamese people... and their Vietnamese expectations.

But Tet in the U.S., especially for the waves of refugees who escaped here is a beautiful celebration. In Viet Nam, the revolution was televised. In Viet Nam, you'd probably be shot dead if you displayed the South Viet Nam flag, and sang the Republic of Viet Nam's national anthem. Especially around those joyless northern guards or street people who still believe it's ok to call people niggers. Here, you couldn't have Tet without the flag. During the Tet planning in Maryland and greater D.C., the MVMA staff attempted to shield the people from the communist flag at the school where Tet was held, and at least for a while, we were successful.

Especially in the older generation, there is a sense of pride and country when they honor their flag. Unless they're privileged international college students from Ha Noi, every person with Vietnamese decent in the U.S. is fromSouth Viet Nam. They call it little Sai Gon and not little Ho Chi Minh City for a reason. As many differences as I have with Vietnamese elders, I do find it a bit ironic that American schools disrespect their democratic allies, those who have been P.O.W.'s, refugees, immigrants, soldiers... literally fresh off the boat, by displaying the communist flag and not teaching about South Viet Nam. Especially since these refugees (I guess I would be included in this category) came to the U.S. to have more of a voice.

The seniors insisted on the flag salute, and will once again organize against Montgomery Schools, with the help of parents and Vietnamese American students, to take down a flag that represents a lot of fear and oppression... and is the very reason they're persecuted here to the U.S. Other state protests have succeeded, and I'm glad to see that the spirit of activism still exists within the older generation. It's something that many apathetic young people of my generation, who attain degrees for the sole purpose of serving themselves and making money, could learn from.

.

Photo Credit: Thanh Luong

Additionally, for those who identify as Vietnamese Americans, Tet is a rare opportunity to hold onto a bit of themselves, their motherland, their food, their dress, their music, to walk around and see faces of people who look like them and speak a comforting dialect. It reassures them that they still have something in their soul that America hasn't completely white-washed over. Helping plan Tet in Silver Spring was new and challenging. I can't lie and say I didn't run 11 miles 2 days before to de-stress from the idea of 1500 people looking at me like I'm a Vietnamese girl who has passionate Vietnamese ideals (why else wouldI work for an organization with Vietnamese in the title and help plan Tet, right?). I'd survive ok not seeing another Vietnamese person outside my family for a good while. Yet ultimately, the venture was overwhelmingly successful and ultimately, it's not about me but about bringing Tet and a little piece of home for the people who love it.

Photo Credit: Thanh Luong

The Tet recap I co-wrote.

A link to some research I did on Vietnamese Americans in Montgomery County, Maryland.

A Needs Based Report

Because I like the international field of it:

Amerasians in Portland, Maine.

My independent study project on Amerasians in Portland.

Dust Children/ Gold Children

Surviving Twice

Trin Yarborough’s Surviving Twice provided a thorough overview of the Vietnamese Amerasian experience during the past 50 years. Apart from outlining historical events, her book provided rich perspectives on the concepts of race, poverty, family, and exploitation through the eyes of six Vietnamese Amerasian informants. Some of her contributions to the knowledge on the Vietnamese Amerasian follows:

Amerasians in Viet Nam served as a reminder of a war lost (45).

Their mothers, many of whom had legitimate relationships with American men who had promised to bring them to the United States, were laughed at and labeled loose and prostitutes. Fear of having an Amerasian child, especially a black child, and facing additional prejudice and disapproval in an already impoverished South caused many women to abandon their children to orphanages (20). Many Amerasians ended up homeless and having to fend for themselves (97) until the passage of the Amerasian Homecoming Act in 1988.

Growing up after the war, the children were called “bui doi,” literally dust of life/ dust children (157), and many were mercilessly teased and beaten (58). Robert S. McKelvey's book, Dust of Life, also addresses this.

In a nation where whiteness has long been associated with divinity, beauty, and being angelic (88), the situation was worse for black children. Being called “Black” in Viet Nam can roughly be translated of being called “nigger” or "savage" in the United States (87, 85) and many Amerasian children were either denied an education or treated unfairly by classmates and teachers, resulting in high rates of drop outs and illiteracy among Amerasians(86).

Echoing what I’ve heard from my own grandmother about what the post-war period was like for South Vietnamese and those associated with American imperialism, one of Yarborough’s informants explains “My mother had burned almost all the pictures of my dad in 1975 because if you had a picture of an American they would put you in jail.” (198) Up to 58 percent of Amerasians know nothing at all about their fathers (138).

Gold children

After the passage of the Homecoming Act however, many Amerasian children, long abandoned and mistreated were showered with gifts and bribes from both family members and outsiders hoping that they would claim them as a relative and bring them to the United States (111-113). Once in the United States, the Amerasian teenagers or young adults, many whom had no actual family, were often again abandoned by their “families (153).”

Having no one and lacking education and English skills (199, 209, 244), many faced their second bout of poverty, depression, and abandonment in their father’s homeland (153, 171-172). Many idealized their fathers as brave and upstanding men who loved their mothers, but only 2 percent were ever able to find their fathers, and many soldiers had either died or did not want to be presented with a reminder of a dark period in their lives.

Although her position as an outsider led Yarborough to make some over-generalizations about Vietnamese people, the war, Amerasian and “culture,” her work brought to light the similarities or prejudice against blackness that exist in both nations. Although contact with American culture was limited before the war, once soldiers arrived, bars where women worked were divided into "White" bars and "Black" bars. Some Vietnamese even saw having a half white child as a status symbol (17).

As an aside, I find it necessary and crucial to compare the parallels between the experience of inequality black soldiers faced while serving during the Civil Rights movement to the experience of some of their children as a measure of how history repeats itself.

Images property of Trin Yarborough.
Yarborough, Trin. Surviving Twice: Amerasian Children of the Vietnam War. 2006. Washington D.C. :Potomac Books. Print.

Amerasian Homecoming

With the guidance of anthropology professor, Winifred Tate, I will explore the past and contemporary experience of Amerasians in the United States and Viet Nam. My project is tentatively entitled "Exploring Interracial Realities of Vietnamese Amerasians to Their Mothers, Fathers, and Homeland(s)."

Amerasians are individuals "born of American servicemen and Vietnamese or Cambodian women" during the Viet Nam (or Viet Nam American) War period (Nwadoria and Mcadoo: 1996). (However, Amerasians, as the name implies, may also be fathered by U.S. American servicemen with women from a variety of different Asian nations (Korea, Philippines etc) during the Cold War.))
The Amerasian Homecoming Act, passed in 1987 and lasting until 1990, allowed for these individuals and their family members to immigrate to the U.S. My goal for this blog, or more accurately archives, is to compile a list of articles, clips, and resources about an inadequately studied population who quintessentially (physically, ideologically) represent the complex relationship between the U.S. (or more broadly speaking, global north) and Viet Nam (global south) extending from the red scare period onto today.

I've seen estimates of Amerasians in the U.S. ranging between 12,500- 30,000, not including descendants of Amerasians like myself. The number is astounding if not for other estimates placing the total numbers of Amerasians at 155,000 (Pearl S. Buck foundation).

What happened to those children who resemble their fathers who fought for the "enemy" side, particularly impassable children of Black or Latino servicemen, who were unable to escape Viet Nam (or Cambodia) after the fall of Sai Gon in 1975? What happened after the expiration of the Homecoming Act? This blog aims to show, not tell, at least a portion of the Amerasian story.

"So the ones in the west will never move east and feel like they be at home"- Damian Marley in Patience

Below is a collection of short articles about Amerasians and the Amerasian Homecoming Act from the Morning Call, a paper in Allentown, Pennsylvania (slightly north of Philadelphia), where a large population of Vietnamese immigrants reside. These articles were published between 1988- 1991 when the act was in place: (Therein lies a problem with the lack of reporting on progress and further efforts to advance the lives of Amerasians once in the U.S. in the past 20 years)

Homecoming Act

Some of the more poignant articles from the site:

"Lan's" story. "All the Americans left, why are you still here?"

...and what are "refugee" benefits when Amerasians are expected to make a life for themselves just 4-8 weeks after arriving in the States?

The story of Ngoc Hai's father leaving Viet Nam after service and being disconnected from his child is a theme.

Smithsonian journalist, David Lamb, researched and wrote an astonishing article in 2009 about the Amerasians' conflicting realities, due in large part to their mixed race and mixed heritage, of belonging to the United States and Viet Nam but fully to neither. But similar to the Morning Call articles; the tone concludes with an almost dream-like hope,... I question if that is the overall reality.

Children of the Viet Nam, American War

Photograph by Catherine Karnow: Smithsonian Magazine

Most Amerasians are between their late 30's and late 40's today, and with time and reflection, may now be able to if not speak, at least understand their realities.

If you have thoughts or have come upon any interesting information concerning Amerasians, please contact me or leave comments.