Director of International Initiatives of Global Studies ...

1

Vietnamese Americans Place Making in the
America Mosaic
Source U.S. Census 2000
Presented by Le Si Long, Ph.D.Director of
International Initiatives of Global
StudiesCo-Founder of Vietnamese Studies Courses
of Modern Classical LanguagesUniversity of
Houston (USA)lsle_at_mail.uh.edu
2
Overview

• Introduction Being Vietnamese, Vietnamese
  American, and American
  
• Vietnamese American History
• Vietnamese Refugee Experience From 1954 to 2005
  
  
• The Second Generation of Vietnamese Americans
  The Balancing Act of Two Cultures
  
• From Refugees to Transmigrants Place Making in
  Vietnam?

3
In Maintaining My Vietnamese Heritage(Below is a
description of my family historical roots in
Vietnam written by my paternal grandfather in
1982 while living in France)
Source Généalogie (gia-phå) des Lê
4
In Maintaining My Vietnamese Heritage(Below is
my familys genealogy being maintained by family
members in Hanoi)

• Source Gia Pha cua Ho Le (in Hanoi)
• Picture My familys ancestral alter which is
  being maintained by donations from family
  members.

5
My Familys Legacy of Having Two Cultural Worlds
During the French Colonial Era

• Le Tai Truong (a bio data of my paternal
  grandfather)
  
• Born on 04/14/ 1907 in Hà Dông (29e day of 11e
  month, Dinh Mui year, Hoi hour, (23h)
  
• Elementary school in Tuyên Quang (Hoà Binh).
  Middle and High schools at Lycée du Protectorat,
  Hànoï (1914-1921-1926)
  
• Participated in the students strike in 1926
  organized after the death of Phan chau Trinh, a
  revolutionaire fighting against the french
  domination. Suspended for 3 months by the Lycee.
  Did not return to the Lycee.
• A few weeks later, took the Baccalaureat, First
  part exam, as an independent candidate, at the
  Albert Sarraut Lycee. Passed with grade. The
  following year, as an independent candidate,
  passed the Second part exam, Option Mathematics,
  June 1927, with grade B, Option Phylosophy, Sept
  1927, with grade C.
• Nominated as chiefs assistant in the Residences
  in1928 (after his marriage). Assigned in Lao Kay,
  Kien An and in the Cabinet of the Resident
  Superior in Hanoi (1933). Collaborated with the
  newspapers and revues France-Indochine, Annam
  Nouveau, Patrie Annamite,
• In 1934, passed the exam of Upper Judicial
  Indochina Studies (Hanoi University). Ranked No
  1, in the first examination for Tri Huyen
  (District Chief) organized in Hanoi, in 1936.
  Intern in Thai Binh Province, then Binh Xuyen
  District Chief in Vinh Yen Province (1937-1938)
  
• Returned to the Cabinet of the Superior Resident,
  in Hanoi. Nominated by Yves Chatel, Superior
  Resident, to replace E.Vayrac, Administrateur,
  in the functions of Chief of the Press Bureau.
  Kept this post until 1945.
• The Viet Minh abolished the Corps des Mandarins
  (District and Province Chiefs corps). Took
  refuge in Saigon in 1946 (to avoid arrest, warned
  by his brother in law Hanh). Chargé de mission
  in Hong Kong (with Administrator J.Cousseau) in
  1947. Got in contact with Emperor Bao Dais
  entourage. Returned to Saigon, then Hanoi
  (12/31/1947)
• In 1949, right after the return of Emperor Bao
  Dai, named Director of Political Affairs, in the
  Imperial Cabinet by Prince Buu Loc. Member of
  the Vietnamese delegation at the Pau Interstates
  conference. Chief of the Civil Cabinet Civil,
  Assistant Chief of staff for Civil and Military
  Affairs, and Vice Imperial Delegate in the
  imperial domain (Province of Son La, Hoa Binh,
  Cao Bang, Lang Son, Mon Cay in the North, Darlac,
  Langbian, Ban Me Thuot, Kontum in the South)
• Resigned at the ascension of Ngo Dinh Diem. Lived
  in France with the entire family from 1955 to
  1964.
  
• Source Généalogie (gia-phå) des Lê

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My Familys Legacy of Having Two Cultural Worlds
During the American Era(Below is picture of my
father during the Vietnam War)
(Le Thuc Can, project leader of the An Hoa
Industrial Complex (center), discuss plans with
Gen Walt and Lt.Col William W. Taylor (left),
commanding Officer, 3rd Battalion, 9th
Marines. The battalion is about to reenter the An
Hoa region in Operation Georgia). (Cpl Robert L.
Peragallo, USMC 1/9B-1st Plt, 12 of May 1966)
Source http//www.americans-working-together.co
m/american_veterans/id91.html
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My Familys Legacy of Having Two Cultural Worlds
at 331 Einstein, Thu Duc (Below is a picture of
my home before we escaped by boat in 1982. I
find it somewhat poetic that I grew up on a
street with a Western name).
8
My Becoming an American and Shaping the America
Mosaic
9
My Becoming an American and Shaping the America
Mosaic
10
Shaping the Diversity in American Higher
Education

• VIETNAMESE STUDIES PROGRAM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF
  HOUSTON
  
• Vietnamese Language Courses
• Beginning Vietnamese I
• Beginning Vietnamese II
• Intermediate I
• Intermediate II
• Advanced Speaking and Reading
• Vietnamese Courses in English
• Vietnamese Global Diaspora
• Vietnamese Culture and Society
• Contemporary Vietnam Politics
• Vietnamese American History Experience
• Vietnamese American Community its Culture
• Vietnamese Study Abroad Program
• Offered since 2005

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Teaching Vietnamese American History

• Defining three interrelated cultural identities
  Vietnamese, Vietnamese American, and American
  
• Who are the Vietnamese?
• Le Van Huu constructing an identity of
  Vietnamese that place Trieu Das Nam Viet
  (207-111 B.C.) as the starting point for
  Vietnamese history, so as to illustrate
  Vietnams equality with, and defiance against
  the imperial expansion of, China.
• Ngo Si Lien constructing an identity of
  Vietnamese that was equal, if not superior, to
  the mythical emperors of China by predating the
  origin of Vietnamese civilization via the Hung
  kings to 2879 B.C.
• Early U.S. and Vietnam Contacts
• Thomas Jefferson in July 1787 as a American
  Minister to France expressed an interest in
  acquiring rice seed from Cochinchina (southern
  Vietnam), constituting the first official
  American awareness of that distant foreign
  country. In a letter, Jefferson noted that The
  dry rice of Cochinchina has the reputation of
  being whitest to the eyes, best flavored to the
  taste, and more productive (Miller, 1990).
• John White a US Navy Captain was the first to
  make contact with Vietnam in 1820. The Minh
  Mangs court was willing to sign a contract in
  purchasing artillery, firearms, uniforms and
  books but unwilling to open ports for trade
  (Miller, 1990).
• Bui Vien an official of the Tu Ducs court was
  sent to the U.S. in 1873 to ask U.S. to intervene
  against French intrusion in Vietnam of which was
  noted to be well received by President Grant.
  However, this has lacked historical documentation
  in which such visit actually took place.

12
One of the Earliest Vietnamese Americans in the
U.S.
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Vietnamese in the U.S. before 1975

• Vietnamese Immigrants Admitted to the U.S.,
  Fiscal Years 1951 through 2001
  
• Source Adopted from Southeast Asia Resource
  Action Centers Southeast Asian American
  Statistical Profile.

The Vietnamese population before 1975 was small
but active about 20,000, of largely students
and professionals. Many Vietnamese individuals
were agents of change, not only promoting a
better understanding of Vietnam as a country
rather merely as a war in mainstream press and
forums, but also assisting their fellow peers on
adjusting to life in the U.S. (Vu, 2003).
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The Vietnamese In-country Refugee Experience of
1954

• During the early 20th century, a modern
  Vietnamese integration emerged in which
  Vietnamese could adopt and adapt Western values
  and ideas, blending them with the Vietnamese
  value system without viewing them as
  contradictory.
• This East-West fusion was expressed by Phan Boi
  Chau, raising many of the significant questions
  of westernization and modernization in French
  Indochina. Boi Chau saw the necessity for
  Vietnamese, particularly women and soldiers, to
  be trained professionally and vocationally in the
  western ways in order to achieve modernization,
  which will bring about a desire for progress and
  adventure, love and trust, virtue and heroism, no
  obnoxious mandarins, no dissatisfied citizens, no
  imperfect educational system, no neglected
  industry and no losing commercial activities.
  After that, the West will learn from us,
  according to Chau (Lam, 2003).
• The partition of the country in 1954 through the
  Geneva Accord provided the conditions in which
  the East-West fusion could continue to develop in
  southern Vietnam. In fact, southern Vietnams
  urban centers which were being subsidized by
  American ambitions to win the hearts and minds
  of the people from 1954 to 1975 provided
  millions of migrants from the north as well as
  from the rural areas of the south the opportunity
  to synthesize Vietnamese culture and western
  culture.
• As a result, southern Vietnamese urbanites were
  far more likely than anyone else in the country
  to have attended or had children attending newly
  built schools with trained teachers and printed
  textbooks on mathematics, chemistry and
  engineering. They were also far more likely to be
  affected by the information and communication
  explosion, such as owning a television set, a
  radio, a telephone, and a car. They were more
  likely to have seen English TV programs such as
  Dragnet, Batman, I Love Lucy, The Ed
  Sullivan Show, Gunsmoke, Mission Impossible,
  and Combat. Moreover, Vietnamese urbanites were
  far more likely to have been an entrepreneur by
  way of the American consumer economy in
  southern Vietnam.
• With the fall of South Vietnam in 1975, these
  southern Vietnamese urbanites disproportionately
  made up the numbers of refugees who evacuated and
  escaped Vietnam. Moreover, the first wave of
  Vietnamese refugees right after 1975 was made up
  disproportionately of the 1954 in-country
  refugees.

15
Motives for Migration from Homeland among
Vietnamese Refugees in Thai Camps
Source Institute for Asian Studies, 1988
16
Vietnamese Refugee Arrivals to the U.S., Fiscal
Years 1975-2002
17
The Little Saigons Place Making in the American
Mosaic

• Vietnamese were systematically dispersed across
  the states to avoid burdening local governments
  budget and to prevent Vietnamese from clustering
  into large geographically ethnic communities. And
  once leaving the camps, governmental officials
  delegated and depended on the voluntary agencies
  to resettle Vietnamese refugees.
• While simultaneously adapting to America society,
  they were very capable of resisting and rejecting
  aspects of U.S. resettlement policies in order to
  retain aspects of their own cultural heritage of
  which provide them social and psychological
  support. Vietnamese refugees, in fact, saw the
  dispersion presented a major obstacle in
  adjusting because it prevented ethnic support and
  a sense of belonging (Tran, 1976).
• After a few years, government created diasporas
  were reversing, as Vietnamese themselves sought
  for the presence of a Vietnamese community,
  providing a source of practical, economical, and
  cultural support (Haines et al. 1981). Many of
  the emerging enclaves became known as Little
  Saigons.
• The Little Saigons were replications of the
  Vietnamese urban villages in which they provide
  the individual with a sense of community and
  security in a potential hostile environment (Do,
  1999). Vietnamese with limited English gain
  employment, older immigrants find solace, and
  Americanized children can connect with the
  Vietnamese culture (McLaughlin Jesilow, 1998).
• Today, there are various Little Saigons across
  the states. They are now integral part of the
  American environment landscape. Little Saigons
  are also laboratories to test and integrate
  American ideas on commerce, marketing,
  entrepreneurship, and the like. And like other
  ethnic American communities, a number of the
  Little Saigons are taking advantage of the
  information age in going international and going
  high-tech.

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The Adaptability of Vietnamese Refugees

• Vietnamese refugees were noted to have had a
  distinct kind of anticipatory socialization to
  American society, given southern Vietnams unique
  socio-historical familiarity with Western
  language, employment, customs, and traditions.
• The adaptation of the first generation Vietnamese
  refugees in the United States has been to use
  cultural elements, both ancient ones and ones
  required through cultural contact and to rely on
  cultural ingenuity which views American society
  as a necessary ingredient for survival and for
  success (Rutledge, 1987).
• Such bicultural patterns among Vietnamese
  refugees have caused analysts to describe
  Vietnamese of having various characteristics,
  including eclectic, adaptable, resourceful,
  practical, passive, indirect, and resilient.
• Vietnamese refugees see their exodus after 1975
  as having been for the childrens future. As
  such, they would accept the prospect that their
  own generation may experience prolonged economic
  hardship so long as it would provide greater
  educational and career opportunities for their
  children. Thus, higher education was viewed as
  a path to attain economic attainment,
  particularly for the children of refugees and
  immigrants.
• Empirical studies have found members of the
  younger generation in marginal socio-economic
  environment who have strong adherence to
  traditional family values, strong commitment to
  work ethic, and a high degree of personal
  involvement in the ethnic community tend
  disproportionately to have high grades, to have
  definite college plans, to score high on academic
  orientation (Zhou and Bankston 1994).
• In fact, refugee studies have, in part,
  contributed to the relatively robust social
  mobility of the first generation of Vietnamese
  refugees to this cohorts ability to retain
  aspects of Vietnamese culture. That is, in making
  places for themselves, Vietnamese refugees have
  retained Vietnamese cultural ideals of the family
  such as hieu (filial piety) and of the
  community such as nghia (the obligation to
  participate rather than withdraw from societal
  affairs). These Vietnamese cultural ideals
  co-existed with views that the American way of
  life was modern, scientific, and progressive.
• Vietnamese Americans have also documented a whos
  who among their members, entitled in a large five
  volume edition of The Pride of the Vietnamese by
  Trong Minh Vu Van Chat.

19
Source Paul Stars and Alden Roberts Community
Structure and Vietnamese Refugee Adaptation
(1982).
20
From Refugees to Immigrants
Vietnamese Immigrants Admitted to the U.S.,
Fiscal Years 1951 through 2001

21
Self-Expression Values and English Acquisition
Over Time Among Vietnamese
Source Authors Analysis of Houston Area Asian
Survey, March 1996 (N151).
22
Measuring Immigrant Assimilation in the United
States Among the Top Countries of Origin
Source 2006 Index of Immigrant Assimilation by
the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. The
index is a quantified measurement based on the c
omparison between foreign- and native-born people
in economic, cultural, and civic factors.
23
Progress Among Vietnamese Refugees and Immigrants
Source 2006 Index of Immigrant Assimilation by
the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. The
index is a quantified measurement based on the c
omparison between foreign- and native-born people
in economic, cultural, and civic factors.
24
Cultural Values Index Between Vietnamese and
Asian Non-Refugee Immigrants
 
25
Vietnamese Katrina Evacuees Becoming Refugees
Once Again

• After Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in
  late August 2005, more than 15,000
  Vietnamese-American evacueed, and thousands of
  Vietnamese families were left homeless in Bayou
  La Batre, Alabam, and East Biloxi, Mississippi.
• The Vietnamese Versailles community in New
  Orleans East has touted by national and local
  media region as an example of a community that
  refused to place its salvation into the hands of
  the government.
• Forty-five of the 53 Vietnamese-owned businesses
  concentrated in the area are back, and over 90
  percent of the Vietnamese American residents have
  returned, while fewer than 50 percent of the
  African Americans have done so.
• The Vietnamese Versailles communitys faith and
  cohesion demonstrates how collective history and
  memory, contributed to the ability to rebuild so
  quickly after Hurricane Katrina.
• For example, Father The Vien Nguyen of Mary Queen
  of Vietnam Church explained that the central role
  of the church in the community was not a
  postmigration phenomenon. Instead, it grew out of
  a pattern of church leadership that had developed
  in Vietnam over several hundred years in which a
  form of local leadership had played a major role
  in motivating villagers to flee their homeland
  for fear of religious and political persecution.
  
• "During 21 years of war in Vietnam, we were
  always having to evacuate and rebuild," he says.
  "Katrina is just another detail for us to deal
  with." Father Vien Nguyen of the Mary Queen of
  Vietnam Parish.
• Leaders of the community leaders are now looking
  beyond the rebuild phase and to the future. They
  submitted to the Bring New Orleans Back
  Commission extensive plans and drawings for a
  community center, including a museum reflecting
  the area's history and culture a retirement
  home pedestrian bridges spanning canals an
  expansion of the community's famed
  Saturday-morning market that once offered some of
  the area's freshest and most-exotic produce and
  a eye toward drawing tourists as an engine of
  economic development.

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The Second Generation of Vietnamese Americans
The Balancing Act of Two Cultures

• Studies found that Vietnamese youth involvement
  in an Anglo-American middle class community in
  Lansing (MI) is associated positively across
  personal, interpersonal, and achievement domains
  (Nguyen et al. 1999). This is because taking on
  the characteristics is useful in such community.
  
• Conversely, Vietnamese who have high involvement
  in the Vietnamese culture in a primarily American
  context may experience less cultural fit because
  it is a context that has little support or
  utility for such involvements, although ethnic
  involvement was found to predict good family
  relationships (Nguyen, 2000).
• As such, bicultural patterns that lean toward
  Anglo middle class values and norms, while
  maintaining ethnic cultural practices in the
  home, may provide the opportunity to develop
  strong coping strategies protecting them from
  psychological distress, and perhaps facilitating
  upward mobility (Lam, 2005).
• In cases where Vietnamese youth is in contact
  with young people of native-born minorities and
  their adversarial youth culture, it has been
  found that Vietnamese students who have strong
  family ties and whose family is connected to the
  community such as religious or ethnic groups
  succeed in maintaining a more positive academic
  orientation (even if they live in single-parents
  homes) than those who are alienated from their
  families and communities (even if they live in
  intact families) (Zhou and Bankston 1998 Phan,
  2005).
• However, it is important to that American
  individualism is at odds with Vietnamese familys
  hierarchy and obedience. That is, reverence for
  traditions and behavior based on social orders
  are at odds with American youth culture. By
  implication, adapting culturally transmitted
  norms and values to new circumstances involves
  some degree of conflict, if not in some cases
  alienation and delinquency.

27
Self-Expression Values Among Vietnamese 40 Years
Old and Above
28
Self-Expression Values Among Vietnamese 18-39
Years Old
29
Vietnamese American College Students Speak Up Via
E-Poll
Source The E-Survey of Vietnamese Students
Associations (VSAs) was conducted by Long S. Le
in 2004
30
Marking the Vietnamese American Heritage at the
Smithsonian
"Exit Saigon, Enter Little Saigon" Traveling
Exhibit
31
From Refugees to Transmigrants Place Making in
Vietnam?

• Discussion

32
Conclusion

• In becoming American, Vietnamese have culturally
  and structurally assimilated to the American
  society.
  
• However, at the same time, Vietnamese have
  retained their ethnicity via their family,
  community, and their experience as political
  refugees.
• And because becoming Vietnamese Americans is a
  process, it will entail some form of generational
  and gender conflicts.