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A Vietnamese American is a resident of the United States who is of Vietnamese descent. They make up the bulk of overseas Vietnamese (Viet Kieu) and are also one group of Asian Americans. According to the 2000 Census, there are 1,122,528 people who identify themselves as Vietnamese alone or 1,223,736 in combination with other ethnicities, ranking fourth among the Asian American groups. Of those, 447,032 (39.8%) live in California and 134,961 (12.0%) in Texas. The largest concentration of Vietnamese found outside of Vietnam is found in Orange County, California—totalling 135,548. Vietnamese American businesses are ubiquitous in Little Saigon, located in Westminster and Garden Grove, where they constitute 30.7 and 21.4 percent of the population, respectively. States such as Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Minnesota, Washington, and Virginia have fast growing Vietnamese populations. The New England states and the New York City metropolitian area has a sizable Vietnamese community. Recently, the Vietnamese immigration pattern has shifted to other states like Oklahoma (Oklahoma City in particular) and Oregon. History
Vietnamese Americans today
Politics
Economy Many Vietnamese Americans have established businesses in Little Saigons and Chinatowns throughout North America. Indeed, Vietnamese immigrants—particularly those of pureblood ethnic Chinese origin—have been highly instrumental in intiating the development and redevelopment of once declining older Chinatowns, as they tend to find themselves attracted to such areas. Like many other immigrant groups, the majority of Vietnamese Americans are small business owners. Throughout the United States, many Vietnamese—especially first or second-generation immigrants—open supermarkets, restaurants (serving either ethnic Vietnamese cuisine, Vietnamized Chinese cuisine, or both; hence, phở and chả giò has since become popular Vietnamese food in the United States), bánh mì restaurants, beauty salons and barber shops, and auto repair businesses. There are Vietnamese Americans that provide professional services to fellow immigrants. A small number of these are owned by Vietnamese Americans of Chinese ethnicity. In the Gulf Coast region—such as Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama—some Vietnamese Americans are involved with the fish and shrimp industries. In California's Silicon Valley, many work in the valley's computer and networking businesses and industries, although many were laid off in the aftermath of the closure of many high-technology companies. Vietnamese Americans vary widely in income and social class levels. Many Vietnamese Americans are upper–middle class professionals who fled from the increasing power of the Communist Party after the Vietnam War, while others work primarily in blue-collar jobs. In San Jose, California, for example, this diversity in income levels can be seen in the different Vietnamese American neighborhoods scattered across Santa Clara County. In the Downtown San Jose area, many Vietnamese are working-class and are employed in many blue-collar positions such as restaurant cooks, repairmen, and movers, while the Evergreen and Berryessa sections of the city are middle- to upper–middle class neighborhoods with large Vietnamese American populations—many of whom work in Silicon Valley's computer, networking, and aerospace industries. In Little Saigon of Orange County, there are significant socioeconomic disparities between the established and successful Vietnamese Americans who arrived in the first wave and the later arrivals of solely Vietnamese-speaking and low-income refugees (many of whom were former political prisoners of the re-education camps of post-war Vietnam), with the latter group somewhat looked down upon by the former. A majority of Vietnamese Americans have done very well for themselves and their families. Many have worked their way up from menial labor to have their second-generation children attend universities and become successful entrepreneurs, lawyers, doctors, engineers, dentists, and pharmacists. Recent immigrants who do not speak English well tend to work in menial labor jobs like assembly, restaurant/shop workers, nail and hair salons. A high percentage (about 37 percent nationwide and 80 percent in California according to Nguoi Viet Daily newspaper) of nail salons are owned and operated by Vietnamese Americans. The work involved in nail salons takes skilled manual labor, but requires only limited English speaking ability. Some Vietnamese Americans see working in nail salons as a fast way to build wealth one manicure at a time. This concept and economic niche has proven so successful that visiting overseas Vietnamese entrepreneurs from Britain have also adopted the Vietnamese American model and opened several nail salons in the United Kingdom as well, where few previously existed. In the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Vietnamese Americans have accounted for between 45-85% of the shrimping business in the region. The dumping of imported shrimp (ironically from Vietnam), however, have affected their source of livelihood. * Societal perception and portrayal As with other ethnic minority groups in United States, Vietnamese Americans have come into conflict with the larger U.S. population, particularly in how they are perceived and portrayed. There have been degrees of hostility directed toward Vietnamese Americans. For example, in the U.S. Gulf Coast, the white fishermen complained of unfair competition from their Vietnamese American counterparts resulting in the hostility. In 1980s, the Ku Klux Klan attempted to intimidate Vietnamese American shrimpers. Vietnamese American fishermen are banded together to form the first Vietnamese Fishermen Association of America to represent their interests. Low-income African Americans have complained that the Vietnamese refugee newcomers are receiving more government assistance upon arrival than they did. Gang activities have become a concern among the Vietnamese American population and law enforcement. For example, in 1992 in Sacramento, a major robbery and shoot-out occurred at an electronic retailer between Vietnamese American gangs and the local police— the media sensationalized this incident. Another example is when Vietnamese American gangs commit violent home invasion robberies toward wealthy Vietnamese American families. Some cafes in Little Saigon of Orange County have been rumored to be fronts for gang activity. While gangs have become part of the reality and societal perception of Vietnamese Americans, a contrary perception of young Vietnamese Americans as high achievers has also become common. In their award-winning book, Growing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States *, Min Zhou and Carl L. Bankston III argue that there is a real world basis to the "valedictorian-delinquent" perception of Vietnamese American youth. Based on field work in a Vietnamese American community, Zhou and Bankston argue that Vietnamese American communities often have dense, well-organized sets of social ties that provide encouragement to and social control of children. At the same time, these communities are often located in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods at the margins of American society. Vietnamese children who maintain close connections to their own communities are often driven to succeed, while those who are outsiders to their own society often assimilate into some of the most alienated youth cultures of American society and fall into delinquency. * Ethnic subgroups While the census data only count those who report themselves to be ethnically Vietnamese, the way some other ethnic groups from Vietnam view themselves may affect census reporting. Vietnam-born Chinese (Hoa) A large fraction of Vietnamese Americans consists of ethnic overseas Chinese who immigrated to Vietnam centuries ago. Ethnic Chinese made up a large fraction of the commercial elite who left after the fall of Saigon, and also after the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979, which led to discrimination against ethnic Chinese and contributed to a large fraction of them to become boat people. As a result, many Vietnamese Americans also speak fluent Cantonese (although with Vietnamese influence, "Vietnamese" Cantonese differs slightly from Cantonese spoken in Guangdong, China and in Hong Kong) and serves somewhat as a bridge between the Vietnamese American and Chinese American communities, which in turn helps create the Asian American identity. Chinese Vietnamese Americans generally code-switch between Cantonese and Vietnamese when conversing with fellow ethnic Chinese immigrants from Vietnam. Teochew Chinese, a comparatively obscure Chinese dialect somewhat unheard of in the United States before its arrival in the 1980s, is also commonly spoken by another group of Vietnamese-born ethnic Chinese immigrants. Some Vietnamese Americans may also speak Mandarin as a third or fourth language, in all aspects of business and interaction. However, due to the possession of Vietnamese-style names and the Vietnamese language, ethnic Chinese Vietnamese are often referred to as "Vietnamese" and mistaken for ethnic Vietnamese by Chinese from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Interestingly, while ethnic Chinese Vietnamese Americans are seen and also see themselves as overseas Chinese (or huayi) they generally do not classify themselves as Chinese American, nor are they seen as such. Paradoxically, however, some Chinese Vietnamese may consider themselves more Chinese than Vietnamese which may affect census reporting. The population distribution of Vietnamese Chinese varies. For instance, many Vietnamese Chinese immigrants tend to reside in communities closer to the ethnic Vietnamese, while other have chose to intermingle and concentrate with other Chinese diasporas (namely with emigres from Mainland China and Hong Kong). Eurasians and Amerasians (Con Lai) Some Vietnamese Americans are racially Eurasians—persons of European and Asian descent. These Eurasians are descendants of ethnic Vietnamese and (Caucasian/European) French settlers and soldiers during the French colonial period (1883-1945) or during the Franco-Vietnamese War (First Indochina War) (1946-1954). Amerasians are descendants of ethnic Vietnamese and white, black and hispanic American personnel (mostly military) during the Vietnam War (1961-1975). Many of these Amerasians, as well as their mothers, experienced significant social discrimination in Vietnam following the American withdrawal in 1973 (such discrimination was typically greater for children of African American or hispanic servicemen). As a result, the United States government made efforts to help them, and sometimes family members, emigrate to the U.S. Some, however, continued to face discrimination within the Vietnamese-American community after their arrival in America. Ethnic Khmer Some ethnic Khmer refugees who were born in Vietnam can also be included in the category of Vietnamese Americans. Writing and publishing Both Vietnamese writers in Vietnam and Vietnamese-American writers have a unique set of challenges they encounter when trying to step out of the shadows of writing and publishing. In Vietnam, few literary writers are endorsed by the state and respected by their literary peers; for artists of all types, particularly literature, Vietnam has a climate of repression and harassment. Writers must find ways to get around these barriers and sometimes when they do, they are severely reprimanded or - more infrequently - jailed for their writing. In the United States, a new generation, often referred to as the "1.5 generation" (those born in Vietnam, but who came to the United States at an early age), of Vietnamese-American writers are figuring out how to portray themselves outside of the experiences of the Vietnam War and "fall of Saigon". Many Vietnamese-American writers are for the first time, stepping away from the topic of war and displacement, to the far more urgent subject of identity, or what it means to have a divided cultural identity. The Vietnamese-American writing and publishing scene has been steadily growing since the mid/late-1990s and shows no signs of slowing down. In 1997, Lan Cao’s Monkey Bridge - considered the first novel written by a Vietnamese-American about the immigrant experience - was published by Viking Press. In the semi-autobiographical novel, a young girl and her mother leave Vietnam after the war, bound for America, and once settled in, have to deal with issues that typify the immigrant experience. A slew of similarly themed novels and memoirs have followed as the 1.5 generation has come of age and begun to articulate their identity as both Vietnamese and American, a (sometimes successful) fusion of Eastern traditions in a Western society, and the confusion that resulted from growing up Vietnamese in American culture. In the United States, Vietnamese-American writers have the freedom to explore both negative and positive aspects of their cultural and societal experiences. Only recently, though, has the 1.5 generation, who has the advantage of being raised with the English language, really starting to develop a literary scene and any type of movement. The first generation Vietnamese-Americans had the disadvantages of not knowing English and needing to find work to support themselves and/or their families. Not only do Vietnamese-Americans have the freedom to explore these issues, but people in American society are increasingly interested in those issues as well, as evidenced by the success of Monique Truong’s novel Book of Salt. Other recent notables books include Quang X. Pham's acclaimed father-son memoir "A Sense of Duty," Andrew Lam's PEN Award-winning "Perfume Dreams" and Aimee Phan's debut collection of short stories "We Should Never Meet." If the literary scene in the United States has been a bit fragmented, there seems to be signs of it unifying and strengthening as more novels, short stories, and poetry are published every year. And Vietnamese-Americans are being recognized, apart from ethnicity, for solid literary writing that depicts the outsider experience, allowing people of all ages, ethnicities, and other cultural divides, to connect with one another and with the written word. Notable Vietnamese American See List of Vietnamese Americans See also | |||||||||||||
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