asian diaspora antics: why are vietnamese americans stuck in a time warp?
explaining the paradox of vietnamese american culture and the community’s general political sentiments
Welcome to Flop Era, a digital platform to muse on pop culture, cultural trends and all things Gen Z. Today, I’m diving into an issue I have with my family and the Vietnamese American diaspora.
Paris By Night was always on TV nearly every Sunday night when I was growing up. It was either that or some odd hours of Sunday Night Football that I paid no attention to. Sunday nights were one of the few consistencies in my childhood. For my mom, it was a long day of preparation as she would spend hours prepping one of her signature dishes for our weekly family dinner festivity.
From phở or bún riêu to bún bò Huế, a huge pot of broth is centered on a portable gas cooker on top of a table cloth or newspaper laid on the floor as the steam and aromatic flavor escapes from the pot and into the room. A plethora of empty bowls and garnish plates of veggies and condiments would fill the cloth to the brim, and so did my relatives – who lived three floors above us in the mundane apartment complex – in our living room which occasionally became our makeshift dining area.
Much like my parents, grandparents and uncles who lived in the same apartment building in order to maintain a sense of community and familiarity, so has the rest of the Vietnamese diaspora in the United States – settling in pockets of areas such as California, Texas, Louisiana and the DMV area.
Both my paternal and maternal relatives were part of the “third wave” of Vietnamese immigrants in the late 1980s and early 1990s. With them, my family brought their Vietnamese values such as their Buddhist faith, their emphasis on the importance of family as well as other “soft” cultural values that well…are unfortunately eschewed with conservative undertones.
Can anyone fault them or other older members of the Vietnamese American diaspora for this though? In a society where assimilation is encouraged or even forced upon, you can’t help but hold onto the cultural values.
But the determination of cultural preservation and holding onto every value – even the obsolete and offensively outdated – you were taught growing up and the resistance of malleability can lead to dangerous, antediluvian outlooks on society. Why is it so difficult for our community to discard outdated perspectives and norms?
Vietnam has transformed physically and socially since my family left the country decades ago. The motherland isn’t what it used to be like during French colonization, American occupation and the introduction of Đổi Mới. Vietnam has changed dramatically and is not the same dreaded image of a war-torn country that has been memorialized in my family’s minds. Vietnam’s residents may arguably have drastic perspectives on various topics in contrast to my family.
Vietnamese culture is very much multifaceted. With thousands of years under Chinese occupation and decades of being an imperialist French state, their influences made their way into the heart of the country.
For better or worse, that’s the underpinning of our culture: while uniquely ours, incorporation of heritage of near and afar – through our cuisine, entertainment and philosophy – permeates into hidden corners of our culture. Like the Sông Mê Kông that begins in China passing through Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and making its way to Vietnam. Yet uniquely uniformed and whole, the river touches millions pieces of land through its journey. The good and the bad. The flora and fauna. The dirt and minerals. So did our culture.
Having lived in the United States for nearly 30 years now, my parents and relatives pretty much only experienced the Vietnam they grew up in until the 1990s. And when they arrived in America, their main priority was survival and climbing up the socioeconomic ladder. Reaching the unattainable, so-called “American Dream.” Because of this, my family has an outlook of life in the United States and life in Vietnam that I believe is uniquely third wave Vietnamese immigrants.
To be totally clear, I admire and strongly support my family for preserving traditions and am grateful that my parents are instilling Vietnamese customs in me. I appreciate my mom's commitment to celebrating every Buddhist religious holiday and cooking traditional Vietnamese cuisine. Making sure I learn the language she grew up speaking and is only fluent in. And every Viet kid remembers VHSes of 2000s sensation Xuan Mai playing every day growing up. But there are certain outlooks that my family and many members of the diaspora hold onto that bewildered me to this day.
The politicization of Vietnamese American culture
AAPI voter turnout soared this past presidential election, but it may seem like some of the voters flocked to the right. Nearly half (48%) of Vietnamese Americans were inclined to vote for Trump in 2020, according to a 2020 survey by AAPI Data, a APPI-oriented data and policy research publisher. As of 2020, 38% of Vietnamese Americans identified as Republicans.
During the 2016 presidential election, only 25% of Asian Americans voted for Donald Trump, but 34% of Vietnamese Americans voted for Trump in 2016.
For many, this data may seem alarming about the fastest growing racial minority group who, for the most part, have been reliable Democrat voters. While Asian Americans do typically tend to vote blue, ethnicities within the group have varying voting behaviors and patterns. Vietnamese Americans, for historical and cultural reasons, have tended to lean Republican.
As Vox’s Terry Nguyen observed, there seems to be a phenomenon of “first-generation, older immigrants with low English proficiency” of Vietnamese descent who are Trump supporters or sympathizers.
Or they may just be apolitical and avoid talking about politics altogether. “It doesn’t matter who I vote for, I still will just make $14 an hour cleaning hotel rooms,” I recalled my mom saying. She votes in nearly every election, but she refuses to tell me her political stance even to this day.
If you take a look at the history of Vietnamese Americans’ politicization, it may explain why many Vietnamese Americans are politically and socially conservative. Older Vietnamese Americans who immigrated from South Vietnam in the late twentieth century typically hold anti-communist beliefs as many of the immigrants were sympathizers of the former South Vietnamese government.
For many Vietnam immigrants, the Republican party’s emphasis on family, less government interference and capitalistic entrepreneurship – despite whatever that really means – is the antithesis of the then newly-united Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
This results in categorizing any policy or values that are left-leaning as “socialist” or communism, which in their mind equates to corrupted evilness, something they endured in Vietnam and the reason they fled. It sort of make sense that a majority of Vietnamese Americans lauded the Republican party, which has had an unwaveringly anti-communist stance dating back to the Red Scare.
Relations between Vietnam and China have been rocky, to say the least, dating back thousands of years. Despite Trump spewing xenophobic and anti-immigrant remarks, many Vietnamese Americans are drawn to his anti-China fervor. And this anti-China attitude also dates back to the Red Scare and McCarthyism era and the Reagan administration’s so-called Reagan Doctrine policy.
Because most Vietnamese Americans primarily immigrated from South Vietnam after the war, many have held onto such fervor viewpoints to this day, effectively creating a Vietnamese American culture that is distinctly unique (compared to the motherland Vietnamese culture) yet frozen in time.
It’s a culture that prides itself in the unique traditions and heritage but has become too blinded by the longing of the life in the fallen Republic to realize Vietnamese society has changed in the last three generations span.
It’s almost an open secret within Gen Z Vietnamese Americans – often comprised of second generation or first generation Americans – that the community is largely conservative. Many of my Viet friends I’ve talked to share similar horror stories of their relatives spewing conservative talking points.
How Gen Z Viets are combating against certain norms in the community
Living in a digital technology era helps perpetuate these sentiments as disinformation and propaganda are now easily accessible. It propelled Vietnamese conservative personalities into stardom within the Vietnamese social media crowd and led an unprecedented, dangerous echo chamber online, which can ultimately spilled over into streets. And it quite literally did: a South Vietnam flag was seen flown throughout the U.S. Capitol perimeter during the January 6 insurrection.
It’s alarming to see a spike in Vietnamese Americans rallying and spewing alt-right talking points and history demonstrates that this is not a new phenomenon. But as history and studies also demonstrate, there’s always a trend of younger generations who are typically more progressive compared to older generations.
As this conservative fervor grew within the last few years, so did groups and individuals of Vietnamese Americans trying to combat these conservative sentiments through the same social media that older Vietnamese Americans are active on such as Facebook as well as creating political and non-profit organizations. Gen Z is also utilizing TikTok to tackle and question some outdated Vietnamese American values, such as Ca Dao “Cookie” Duong, a prominent TikTok personality.
Some are even creating neutral or progressive Vietnamese-oriented media outlets to counter the multitude of right-leaning ones. Co-founded by Cookie Duong, The Interpreter or Người Thông Dịch aims to combat the wildfire of disinformation within the community by translating credible news sources into Vietnamese “to provide a trustworthy alternative news source to unverified streams of information online,” Duong wrote. She continues:
“Through this project, we’re trying to build a generational bridge and empower the diaspora by lowering the language barrier and making knowledge more accessible.”
I remember when I was a teenager, my mom excitedly showed me a Youtube video for a bánh tráng nướng, or commonly translated to “Vietnamese pizza,” recipe and proudly proclaimed that this is the newest trendy dish in Vietnam. She is technically right. It is a trendy dish. But it entered the Vietnamese street food scene about 20 years ago – a few years or so after she left for the States.
While it’s frightening how technology and social media can spread misinformation like wildfire, the internet has become a channel for my mom and other Vietnamese immigrants to reconnect with their relatives back in Vietnam as well as Vietnam culture through video chats, Youtube videos and Facebook. It’s exciting to witness my mom being able to catch up on the latest trends and cultural shifts happening in Vietnam.
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Paris By Night is known to be masterfully crafted and gained popularity within the Vietnamese American diaspora for its musical performances, comedy sketches and the nostalgic atmosphere it embodies every production.
Over the years, the show had to adapt and evolve with the time and sprinkled in more modern pop songs to reflect the changing demographic and climate. What was unwavering though was its premise of reconnecting the Vietnamese American community to Vietnamese culture.
There is nothing wrong with nostalgia and upholding our culture with pride, especially in a land that for so long tried to destroy every effort of minority groups that try to preserve their heritage.
I hope that resilience and mindset permeates to other avenues. Traditions can evolve over time and it is our responsibility to question some of the values we were taught as impressionable kids. We can choose to ignore it and look away or we can change it for the better.
Some good soup (according to me):
Asian American voters are diverse in terms of voters identification and issues prioritization and so is the Vietnamese American community. To dive a little deeper into the different types of voters and issues Vietnamese Americans are concerned about, read this Al Jazeera’s article by Valerie Plesch.
Currently watching: HBO Max’s Genera+ion. This is the literally the best coming of age show and HBO is EVIL for canceling this show. This ranks HIGH on my best shows list. The queer representation in this show trumps all shows I mentioned in my previous post about queer coming of ages shows. Also currently watching season 2 of Euphoria, where’s my Cassie Hive at?!
Currently reading: The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (add me on goodreads!).
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