In the San Jose Mercury News today, there’s an article on the impact on Vietnamese American politics and politicians in San Jose. Madison Nguyen, the first Vietnamese American to ever be elected to San Jose’s city council despite the city having one of the largest populations of Vietnamese outside of Vietnam, found herself in the middle of a controversy last year over whether or not to name of a strip in San Jose called Little Saigon, which raised the ire of conservative Vietnamese Americans across the city. The controversy quieted down after she relented and allowed the strip to be called Little Saigon, but not without exposing the relative political immaturity of the Vietnamese American community.
While the obvious impact of Communism on the Vietnamese American community is very apparent to those who know about this community, the frankly petty fights over whether to call certain areas of Vietnamese American communities Little Saigon, such as in Orange County, San Francisco, etc. have exposed how incredibly short-sighted many of these “activists” are. Many non-Vietnamese in San Jose grew tired of all the infighting, and were left wondering whether Vietnamese Americans are able to actually govern without letting this be a dominant issue, time and time again. Many Vietnamese American political hopefuls who tried to run in San Jose City Council using ONLY the Little Saigon controversy as their only political issue found themselves unable to raise any significant money and placed last or close to last in the most recent elections.
This isn’t just restricted to the Vietnamese community. Speaking from personal experience and what I’ve seen in the Filipino American community,for example, we are so caught up in regionalism, and conflating Filipino with Asian, that we often lose sight of the fact that we can’t just pander to our own ethnic communities if we’re going to gain any real political power. I’ve seen Filipino American political newbies in Daly City and San Francisco spit out slogans, saying what they’ll do for the Filipino community, not realizing that there are other constituencies that they’re responsible for with the obvious result being that they lose the election. Why should a non-Filipino vote for these candidates if they’ve shown that they know next to nothing about them? In San Jose, why should a non-Vietnamese person vote for a Vietnamese candidate whose only issue is about one little strip of road?
I think it’s high time for many of these politicians to realize that it takes a lot more than representing one small population in order to win an election. I think it’s also time for the Vietnamese American community to start having dialog about confronting their past and learning how to use that past to their advantage politically, and not use it to balkanize each other.
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David Fishsauce wrote:
Kudos. You make some very good points. From my experience, these protests are organized and attended primarily by the older generation, one that refuses to look over their blinders while desperately clinging to the past. It’s unfortunate that the younger generations are either too apathetic or have been brainwashed by their parents.
Posted on 12-Jun-08 at 12:02 pm | Permalink
silverkris wrote:
Absolutely. It’s the problem of narrowly-focused exile/emigre politics crowding out other issues and the greater political scope. You see this a lot in South Florida with the Cuban Americans trying to “out-anti-Castro” each other and injecting a lot of anti-Communism jingoism into partisan fights when it just really isn’t necessary. And it’s a big turnoff to other non-Cuban constituencies there.
Fortunately, the Cuban American electorate is getting to be a bit more mature - the knee-jerk anti Castroism becomes less and less with 1) the younger voters and 2) the farther away you get from South Florida.
I’m hoping that Vietnamese Americans will in time get away from the obsession with exile politics, until then, I sometimes think they’re Asian Cubans.
Posted on 12-Jun-08 at 8:16 pm | Permalink
Thomas wrote:
I walked with my colleagues to Little Saigon to have lunch during the Semicon West 2008 from Moscone.
“I’m coming back to San Francisco today
I’m coming back to my little Saigon by the Bay”.
My family and friends are fascinated by the LS gate pictures, not by the SemiCon West show. I feel connected to San Francisco.
K30
Posted on 18-Jul-08 at 2:14 pm | Permalink