Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) represents a district in Orange County which includes heavily Hispanic Santa Ana and a couple of other communities. She also has a large Vietnamese constituency. Her oppont in the current congressional race is Van Tran, a Republican state assemblyman, who is of Vietnamese origin. Here is what Sanchez had to say about the Vietnamese community in a Spanish-language interview with Univision TV:
“The Vietnamese and the Republicans are, with an intensity, trying to take away this seat, this seat that we have done so much for our community, take away this seat from us and give it to this Van Tran, who’s very anti-immigrant and very anti-Latino.”
This is a shameless exercise in dividing one ethnic group from another. She is literally pitting Hispanics against Vietnamese/Asians. What is that all about? This woman needs to apologize to the sizable Vietnamese community in Orange County.
I have mixed feelings about "the Vietnamese community." I believe Rep. Jefferson's district in Louisiana, which is heavily African-American, voted to replace him with a man whose name certainly sounds Vietnamese. But, like the "Cuban-American community," when a few traditional leaders keep an ethnic population tightly bound as a political unit, sometimes with outright violence, strange things result.
ReplyDeleteIf we had never gone into Vietnam, huge populations would never have been displaced into Saigon, we would never have created a client "anti-communist" welfare state in the cities, and this "community" would never have had occasion to emigrate en masse to the United States. On the other hand, having disrupted their country and put them in that position, we owed them refuge, no question.
Then, they bring with them a kind of politics that the dark side of U.S. diplomacy taught them, overseen by the self-taught gangsterism of men like Nguyen Cao Ky, who last I read was running a chain of liquor stores in Orange County and running protection rackets on his "fellow countrymen."
So, at best, Sanchez's words are poorly chosen, not unlike a lot of Republican ads I've run across. But, I don't have a clear picture of what "the Vietnamese" really means to people in Orange County, politically speaking, and I do know how mendacious Republican candidates can be, most of the time.
In my lovely state, there is a Republican running on attacks against the economic recovery bill, who says he's never sought federal stimulus money for his company, when there are multiple documented instances when he did.
I'd like to see Sanchez speak in a more nuanced way about this, but from what I hear, nuance kind of goes over the heads of even some well educated college instructors in Orange County.
Siarlys,
ReplyDeleteMe thinks you don't know much about the Vietnamese community. They are quite large here. There have been some problems with youth gangs, but all in all, the community has done well.
You are not really going to blame the Vietnamese community for the defeat of William Jefferson are you?
Ky is dead, if I am not mistaken.
I'm not "blaming" any "Vietnamese community" for the defeat of Jefferson. I'm applauding the fact that a mostly black district could elect a Vietnamese candidate to replace an obviously corrupt incumbent who happened to be the same color as most of the voters. I don't know if that is exactly what happened, I don't know Louisiana that well, except that I love the speeches of Huey P. Long. But it looks that way, and its a great "only in America" story.
ReplyDeleteKy is dead? Well, I must not speak ill of the dead. He won't be missed.