ASA 115 001
Week 4 Reading Blog
This week, our theme is "Sleeping with the
Enemy and War Babies", which I interpreted as a reference to Amerasian
history. In "From Dust to Gold: The Vietnamese Amerasian Experience"
by Professor Valverde, I found it very painful to read the excerpts focusing on
how traumatic the Amerasian experience was. Although I was raised under a roof
with Vietnamese refugee parents, they rarely actually talk about their
experience growing up. Thus, my overall awareness of the diversity of the
demographics in our native country was only through school (which offered very
limited insight on Vietnamese history other than French Indochina and the
impact of the Vietnam War to America's pride...) as well as when my family
members would mention terms in Vietnamese that I rarely ever hear.
For example, the terms they would mention
consisted of: Mỹ lai (mixed American and Vietnamese), con lai (mixed-race
child), or người lai (mixed-race person). I had never really considered how hurtful
these labels were until my friend told me about her experiences when visiting
Vietnam. I have known her since elementary school and although she identifies
primarily as Asian, her phenotypically Black features have made her feel unaccepted
by the older Vietnamese generation. Even then, she’s talked about how people in
our age group question her authenticity as being Asian; these issues are
largely relevant and it’s important we learn from history. It is clear that Vietnamese
society largely discriminated against Amerasians. Barring them from jobs,
preventing them from attaining higher education, and encouraging the victimization
of Amerasians, the group was stigmatized and underrepresented.
It makes me wonder: how can we address the
social stratifications that have been set for decades while being conscious of our
own ethnocentricities, coming from an American point-of-view? The reason why
this is a concern to me is that I often catch myself thinking, “I feel so sorry
for them [in reference to the Vietnamese people] …they’re so defenseless,” when
I read through historical texts from the wartime and post-wartime period. Besides
from spreading awareness, what’s the next course of action in helping Amerasian
stories be told?
The link below is a video produced by BBC,
titled “AmerAsians – Children from the Vietnam War”. Although it is rather old,
this video can be interpreted as ethnocentric – most of the comments on the
video show sympathy for the Vietnamese women and Amerasian children.
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