In this week’s reading, the theme is mixed race and Vietnamese American people fitting into society. In Professor Valverdes’ essay, “Doing the Mixed-Race Dance: Negotiating Social Spaces Within the Multiracial Vietnamese American Class Typology” she first shares her own personal experience of growing up Vietnamese-American and also mixed race. For the professor, she found her identity in being Vietnamese-American, but also felt a sense of otherness because of her mixed race heritage; her mother being Spanish-Vietnamese while her father being Vietnamese. She continues this essay by interviewing 30 people from the Bay Area mostly who identify as Vietnamese and engage in their personal experiences.
Overall, there are many types of people in the Vietnamese community in terms of age, sexuality, education level, class level. Professor Valverdes talks about how mixed race people are often seen as “inferior” to pure Vietnamese people. She describes it as a dance, the conversation between Vietnamese Americans and mixed race Vietnamese people because Vietnamese Americans take the lead in asking questions, while the mixed race people often follow the lead, with missteps, avoidance, and carefulness. These questions show the status of a mixed race person depending on various factors, and even so they will not be fully accepted as an equal but as accepted as a “different” or “novel.”
To me, this just shows the blatant racism and ignorance that still exists even today, even here in the modern Bay Area. A mixed race person is treated as inferior for no real reason and this infuriates me and needs to change. A question I might have is, how do we as a society bypass a person’s worth based on their ethnic backgrounds and accept them fully into a community regardless of class or race? Attached is a photo of the growing Vietnamese-American population in the United States.
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