Nguoi da den

[Vsg] Nguoi da den

Grace Chew gclchew at yahoo.co.uk

Thu Nov 1 04:31:24 PDT 2007

Dear List:

I am curious what this term means to Vietnamese. Does

it refer to any dark-complexioned foreigner and/or

only the black?

Is a "ngýời da ðen" a "Tay"?

Looking forward to reading your opinions,

Grace

Lan PHAMNGOC lan_phamngoc at yahoo.com

Thu Nov 1 05:06:29 PDT 2007

Hi Grace,

From what I know in my "long" life, "nguoi da den" refers to real black skin people, not just "dark". Usually, this means black Africans. Maybe now there is a shift in the meaning?

Pha.m Ngo.c La^n

Aix-en-Provence

Hai Le hai.le at bbc.co.uk

Thu Nov 1 05:07:05 PDT 2007

Simply 'Tay den' or 'My den'. However, it's a little bit trouble now with football players arriving to Vn from Africa.

Hai.

Christina Firpo christina.firpo at gmail.com

Thu Nov 1 17:37:08 PDT 2007

Dear Grace and Ginger,

This is a very interesting thread. I know Shawn McHale is also working on

race during the First Indochina War.

In my research on the colonial period through the First Indochina War, I

noticed that "Tay Den" referred to Africans from the French empire. Since

"tay trang" wasn't used to refer to whites, and instead "tay" alone was

used, then "tay" did have racial implications. In other words, the first

assumption was that a "tay" would be white French, but the term was not

exclusive to whites. From that it appears that "tay/west" was only loosely

associated with skin color during the colonial period.

I'd be very interested in hearing other thoughts.

Best,

Christina

g.de-gantes at laposte.net g.de-gantes at laposte.net

Fri Nov 2 01:30:06 PDT 2007

Dear list

I am not a specialist of Vietnamese language, but I have read a lot of French newspapers and files, among them a lot expressed Vietnamese opinions from the 1890s to the 1930s. The confusion between French/Black take roots in the beginnings of French colonization in Cochinchina as a large part of the French living in Saigon were originating from La Réunion and from French India (the Five French trading posts : mainly Pondichéry). In the 1900s, many Vietnamese from Cochinchina who were fighting to get political rights were angry because "Blacks" from India had the right to vote and not them (Gilbert Chieu used the argument : they are not French more than the Vietnamese). The "Pondichériens" gave (and sold) their vote to get advantages and the Vietnamese couldn't). At this time, following a study by Holbé (1916), you had only one example of a family Arab/Vietnamese and I think that African soldiers were not so numerous before WW I.

So, in my opinion, the confusion is older than the Indochina War.

But I agree with Shawn McHale: Vietnam is changing so fastly that these preconceptions are certainly on the point to vanish.

Gilles de Gantès.

Tobias RETTIG tobiasrettig at smu.edu.sg

Fri Nov 2 06:19:18 PDT 2007

Dear All,

I just checked the number of Africans during the French Indochina War. All the data are from Michel Bodin, Les Africains dans la Guerre d'Indochine, 1947-54 (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2000).

"Between 1947 to 1954, 122,900 Maghrebins (North Africans) and 60,340 Africans (Black Africans, mainly from Senegal) disembarked in Indochina..." (p. 6)

Page 10 provides a breakup of troop numbers on a yearly basis from 1948 to 1954 and the respective percentage of the total number of troops.

Hence, for instance, in 1948, 10,783 soldiers were North Africans (14%), and 2,477 were Africans (3%), thus making up 17% of all 'French' soldiers.

In 1954, 36,092 (28%) are North Africans, and 19,569 (15%) are African, making a total of 43% (sic!) of all 'French' troops.

So, I assume, the Vietnamese could not help but see quite a few of these African troops.

The interesting thing is that they do not seem to have entered the public consciousness: the far less numerous Foreign Legionnaires have, and other units as well, but not so the soldiers from the Maghreb and Senegal.

My assumption would be that they did not often make it into newspapers (I could be wrong on that), which makes me recall a crucial scene in the recent French movie 'Indigenes' (on North African troops liberating / invading Italy and then France during the Second War): a group of four (?) of these 'indigenous' troops and their mestizo French-maghrebin officer have just 'liberated' a remote village, when the rest of the troops march through, the photographer only taking pictures of how the 'white' troops are fraternising with the French population, thus completely hiding the crucial role played of these North African troops in the liberation of that particular village.

The book by Bodin lifts the soldiers out of historical obscurity, whereas the book by Nelcya Delanoe (Poussieres d'Empires, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2002) gives some of these soldiers - the Moroccan ones who defected to the Viet Minh - a voice.

Best,

Tobias

Adam at UoM fforde at unimelb.edu.au

Thu Nov 1 17:57:26 PDT 2007

This is interesting.

My first wife is Kenyan, of European descent, and I have often referred when

asked to her as 'Khong da den' with responses so far as I could see, as you

report, having for the Vietnamese noticeably different resonances and

meanings than in other places (such as Kenya or Australia). Also 'den' can

it seems to me be used rather differently than 'black' and closer perhaps to

'dark' - as I have heard references to people posed in terms of their skin

being 'den hon' - darker rather than blacker ... being a better translation

into English.

I would guess that the semantic ranges are different - for example, 'black

heart' surely uses some Han-Viet? Whilst we are at it, I recall an

Australian friend of Thai-Pakistani extraction remark that for her

Vietnamese skin colour was different from hers as it had 'gold under the

skin' which I thought was rather nice, especially given the semantics of the

Vietnamese 'vang'. Good title for a song?

Adam

Hoang t. Dieu-Hien dieuhien at u.washington.edu

Thu Nov 1 19:11:23 PDT 2007

...

> Vietnamese skin colour was different from hers as it had 'gold under the

> skin' which I thought was rather nice, especially given the semantics of the

> Vietnamese 'vang'. Good title for a song?

... as in "Nguoi con gai Viet Nam da vang" by Trinh Cong Son?

On the serious side, I concur with most of what Christina Firpo said

based on my experience growing up in Viet Nam in the 60s and 70s.

We need to differentiate between "nguoi da den" -- a noun phrase --

with "den" when referring to skin color -- an adjective. "Nguoi da

den" refers to persons of African origin regardless of country of

residence. A person who has "da den" is a person with darker

complexion which can mean a Vietnamese, such as what many Hanoians

would consider the majority of southerners, or anyone with a darker

skin tone.

The meanings of "Ta^y" is less clear cut. In the broadest sense, Ta^y

means westerners/of European origin, regardless of country of

residence. When Ta^y is used alone, it connotes whiteness. However,

this whiteness may not be the same as what some Americans would

consider "white." A person of Jewish, Greek, Spanish, or Italian

ancestry would also be considered "white" while many Americans would

disagree.

However, sometimes, Ta^y means French. For example, "Ong ay la Tay

hay My?" Or "tieng Tay" is definitely "the French language."

To confound things, in vernacular use, "Tay den" can refer to a person

of African origin regardless of country of residence. Perhaps this is

an old usage left over from the colonial period when black African

soldiers -- who spoke French -- were in Viet Nam. The terms "My den"

was common during the 1960s and 1970s due to the presence of black

American soldiers. The terms "African American" was not in the

American vocabulary in the 1950s, so I would not expect to see it in

the Vietnamese media during the same period.

As for the difference between "nguoi da den" and "My den," the sense

I've got is that "nguoi da den" is more neutral, and, therefore, more

respectful; whereas "My den" has a more negative connotation.

Would love to hear others' perspectives.

Hien

Ginger R. Davis ginger.davis at temple.edu

Thu Nov 1 18:17:00 PDT 2007

Hi Christina,

Thanks so much for your insights. I'd like to add that most

textbooks and journals/magazines (say between 1945-65) use

nguoi da den to refer to people from Africa, not necessarily

in Africa. Additionally, coverage in 1950s periodicals of US

race relations used nguoi da den to mean African Americans --

very few I've read thus far from this time period used the

terms nguoi My goc Phi or My den. Perhaps Christina and

others can elaborate on what they've read?

Best-

Ginger

Shawn McHale mchale at gwu.edu

Thu Nov 1 19:39:22 PDT 2007

Dear list,

Tuoi tre (Ho Chi Minh City) had an interesting series on foreigners ion Vietnam who could speak Vietnamese --See, for example, this article on "Andreu", who was born in Nigeria, lived in the US, eventually made it to Viet4nam:

http://www.tuoitre.com.vn/Tianyon/Index.aspx?ArticleID=224075&ChannelID=89

As Vietnam and the south in particular is changing so rapidly, I assume concepts of race or "blackness" are shifting as well. It is definitely true that one can find in newspapers from the late 1940s, and even in Viet Minh propaganda in the south from 1951-52 (!), notions that equate black and African with backwardness and barbarism. One has to remember that at that time, a good percentage of the soldiers fighting the French war were Senegalese or North African, thus shaping popular perceptions.

But now? *If* the Tuoi tre story above is accurate in how it conveys common perceptions, "Andreu" had to disabuse persons of the notion that he was a beggar or a sponge. He has a hard time keeping a job as an English instructor, even though he is a fluent speaker, etc. Is this because he is African? Black? Unclear.

At the same time, Vietnamese know about Beyoncé . . . black soccer/ football stars . . and so on.

As for what a Tây is: another recent Tuoi Tre issue had a story on a Western [Tây] robber. This intrigued me, I read on -- it turned out the Western robber was Turkish, which is a reasonable attribution, even if not one shared by many Europeans.

And finally, a funny story from around 1993. A Balinese acquaintance was walking down the street in Ithaca, NY when an African-American saw him and said "Hey bro!" This acquaintance was a bit perplexed, and we explained that this may have happened because his skin was dark, and the African American saw him as kindred. To which this Balinese man said in surprise: --"I'm not black, I'm blue!" It turns out that in Bali, darkness classifications are different from those in, say, the US and Europe.

Shawn McHale

Associate Professor of History and International Affairs

George Washington University

Washington, DC 20052 USA

(on leave, 2007-08, at Vietnam National University --

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam)

Tai VanTa taivanta at yahoo.com

Fri Nov 2 06:58:38 PDT 2007

To anyone interested in this "Tay den" (Black Westerners)

issue in Vietnam, during the 1945-54 War and prior to that.

1) The Pondicheriens, especially the half Indian and half

French people residing in Vietnam, with French citizenship:

They were wealthy as businessmen (espcially as dealers in

garment industry in the business district of Hanoi). I

forget now whether they voted or not at that time, because

I was young then . But I knew they were resented for their

privileged position in Indochina. One of my aunts married

one of them. And I still remember a poem (even if I was a

teenager at that time and hust heard of it) being said to

mock at such daring ladies who dare to marry a "Tay Den An

Do" (Black Westerner from India):

Than em nhu tam lua dao,

Em tham dong bac trang, em lan lung vao lay chu Tay Den

(Your body is as refined as a roll of pink silk,

You long for the white cold cash,you roll over and marry a

Black Westerner)

2) When I moved as a kid and teenager refugee from the war

from Hanoi to the countryside in the Ninh BInh province (in

the area of Hoa Lu,Emperor Dinh TIen Hoang - Dinh Bo Linh

--'s home town, of course under the control of the HO Chi

Minh government,I heard so much about the Vietnamese

peasants so afraid of the Tay Den Rach Mat (Black

Westerners with slit faces--the Africans in the Corpds

Expeditionnaires-- with those faces) raping Vietnamese

women during their military campaigns. They sometimes

referred to those as Tay Den Moi Ro (Savage Black

Westerners).

Those were the historcical facts of human interest to

historians.

Tai Van Ta

Tobias RETTIG tobiasrettig at smu.edu.sg

Fri Nov 2 07:32:06 PDT 2007

Natasha Pairaudeau has been working on some of the non-African 'blacks'.

http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/2004-5/vietnamconfabstracts.html

Tamil Migrant Families and Domestic Life in Colonial Vietnam

Natasha Pairaudeau (Department of History, School of Oriental and African Studies, London University)

The Tamil presence in colonial Vietnam has not yet been the focus of substantial historical or anthropological research. Though never as numerous as the region's Chinese migrant population, by the early 20th century thousands of Tamil-speaking south Indians had taken up residence in Vietnam's northern and southern cities and in the smaller towns of the Mekong Delta. A high proportion were either small or large-scale traders, but Tamils from the French colonial territories of Pondicherry and Karikal were also recruited in large numbers to fill middle-ranking posts in the colonial administration. While there is a tendency to view the history of French colonial occupation in Vietnam as a two-sided affair of French control and Vietnamese resistance, my research suggests otherwise. The Tamil migrant population was one of several communities which played a key role in the making of the French colonial project; their experience was thus a critical factor in the shaping of Vietnam's distinctive forms of urban modernity. In keeping with the theme of "Colonial transformations: negotiating the modern under French rule", my paper uses both anthropological and historical perspectives to explore the 'sexual economy' (Markovits, 2000) of the Tamil migration, dealing in particular with the ways in which aspects of conventional Tamil domestic practice were maintained or modified in the Indochina diaspora.

The key issue on which I focus is that of long-term unions involving Tamil migrants and Vietnamese partners. Unconventional domestic practices were made possible in colonial Indochina through the forging of these novel relations. This took place at a time when both Indians and Vietnamese were working out separate responses to colonialism, and their home societies were deeply engaged in debates about social reform. The meeting of people from two distinct cultural traditions, neither of which was western, and at a time when both were under colonial rule, confounds any simple definition of modernity as an uncritical adoption of western conventional values and conceptual categories. The paper explores the intimate ways in which 'progress' and modernity were negotiated by Tamil /Viet families, through family structures and patterns of daily life in colonial Vietnam and in the former French colony of Pondicherry.

Christina Firpo christina.firpo at gmail.com

Fri Nov 2 08:47:36 PDT 2007

Dear Group,

In response to Ginger's question, I was reading newspapers from the

1920s-1956 and that's where I saw Tay Den. It sounds like during the

colonial period Tay referred to people of the French empire but most likely

white French? I also most frequently saw Nguoi An-do for Indians, but I'm

sure there were more that I don't recall. As for the use of Den for darker,

I noticed that 1939-1945 the French used "noir" (black) in a similar way to

refer to Franco-Viet Metis who resembled their Vietnamese parent. 'Noir,'

however, was used in the context of comparing them to the 'blanc' and

'legerement teinte' (white and lightly tinted) Eurasians.

Yes, Indians from the French colonies could vote in Cochinchina's

representative government because as residents of 'anciens colonies' the

Indians were given French citizenship. In fact, as Truong Buu Lam writes,

in colonial Cochinchina their representation on the colonial council was

disproportionate to their population numbers (few VN had citizenship and

thus had a smaller representation in the colonial council). I think it's

important to note that while they were politically privileged (to an extent)

they were not necessarily wealthy across the board. I'm presenting a paper

next week at the WSFH about impoverished French citizens and I found that

Indians made up a large portion of the demands from the particular

government welfare program that I focus on.

Mike Vann wrote at least one very interesting article and part of his

dissertation on racial categorization. I'd love to see more work on the

historical changes in racial categorization in Vn, maybe along the lines of

what Dikkoter (sp? sorry!) did for Chinese history. This is a great thread.

I'm glad to read perspectives from those doing research on different time

periods and even different disciplines.

Best,

Christina

Tai VanTa taivanta at yahoo.com

Fri Nov 2 09:26:59 PDT 2007

Hello again from Ta Van Tai (that was my actual name, which

was changed to Tai Van Ta by ong Tay Americans --Messrs

American Westerners Immigrantion OFficers-- when I became

US citizen; so sometimes I use both orders of name)

On one aspect in Tobias's email,below, the cultural

amalgamation between Vietnamese and Indian residents in

Vietnam originally from Pondicheri or other parts of India

, I would like to add that some of these Indian French

citizens in Vietnam and families took advantage of their

French citizenship to emigrate abroad, to France for

example, after 1954 or 1975; while others stay behind as an

integral part of the Vietnamese society, after 1954 or

1975. One such family is my uncle/aunt's family in Hanoi,

who decided to stay behind to wait for their eldest son's

return from Dien Bien Phu in 1954(the family stayed back in

Hanoi in 1945 and lived under the French 1945-54, but the

eldest son joined the Viet Minh in 1945 to fight during the

Resistance War against the French and fought at Dien Bien

Phu)--and so they have been there in Hanoi ever since 1954

and their house is now having to put up with three

generations of grandparents/parents and grandkids. I

visited them many times in the last 16 years .

Where is the motherland of these half Vietnamese-half

Indian/French? Pondicheri or Vietnam or France?

Ta Van Tai

Hoang t. Dieu-Hien dieuhien at u.washington.edu

Fri Nov 2 08:56:46 PDT 2007

Thanks for the addition of persons of the Indian sub-continent in "Tay

den." In deed, this meaning did make it into vernacular use also,

although there is a (somewhat derogatory) term "cha` va`" used

specifically for this group.

My speculation is which term is used for which group depends largely

on the user's intimate knowledge of such group, or lack thereof, and

on his/her regard or disregard of such group. For example, East

Asian-looking persons may be referred to as orientals, chinese, japs,

chinks, etc. in the U.S., or by their specific ethnic backgrounds.

Similar rules apply in Viet Nam, historically and even now.

I note, too, that my notion of "Africa origin" may differ from others,

as I include the whole Africa continent in the term.

Very interesting discussion.

Hien

Diane Fox DNFOX at holycross.edu

Fri Nov 2 08:32:01 PDT 2007

a tangent I can't resist on Tobias's reference to "Indigenes", which

came here not so long ago, one other noteworthy moment in the film:

a French officer is asking his counterpart (whose mother is Maghrebin,

though he hides the fact) about the "indigenes". The man tells his

fellow officer that his troops don't like that name.

"Musulmans?" the first officer tries.

Not that either, the second officer replies.

What then, the first officer asks.

Men, is the answer.

df

Bill Hayton bill.hayton at bbc.co.uk

Sun Nov 4 13:03:05 PST 2007

(even more tangentially) that reminds me of a recent TV documentary about the early days of the troubles in Northern Ireland in which a black British soldier described an encounter with elderly Catholic woman while on patrol in Belfast. As he walked up the street she came out of her house and shouted, "Every Sunday I've put a penny in the box for the wee black b******s - and now you'se over here, shooting at us!"

Erica Peters e-peters-9 at alumni.uchicago.edu

Sat Nov 3 11:41:40 PDT 2007

A few other references to add to the discussion:

Hoang t. Dieu-Hien wrote:

>>>> Thanks for the addition of persons of the Indian sub-continent in "Tay den." Indeed, this meaning did make it into vernacular use also, although there is a (somewhat derogatory) term "cha` va`" used specifically for this group.>>>>

On the term "Chà và," Shawn McHale suggested to me last year that it

means literally Java, and was an elastic term which could refer to

Tamils, Malays and others who had come to Saigon from the Malay peninsula.

On the term Tây -Den:

In 1925, the southerner Michel My wrote that Vietnamese in the north

referred to Muslim Indians as "black Frenchmen (Tây -Den)," suggesting

the term was less common in the south.

On the presence in Cochinchina, before 1900, of French citizens who were

seen as black, but who were not South Asians:

In 1899, Léopold de Saussure said that "nègres et mulâtres" had taken

over Cochinchina's judicial tribunals, and that 45% of Cochinchina's

magistrates were "hommes de couleurs." As shown below, Saussure

differentiated between the word "nègre" and the word "noir," which

included South Asians. I think his 45% statistic included South Asians.

Psychologie de la colonisation français, Paris 1899), 158-160: "Par

suite du faible goût des Français de France pour l'expatriation, nègres

et mulâtres affluèrent dans cette magistrature ... Je constate, Annuaire

en main, que les tribunaux de Cochinchine, y compris les greffiers,

comptaient, il y a trois ans, 45 p. 100 d'hommes de couleurs. Nous en

sommes ainsi arrivés à faire juger par des nègres, cette race annamite,

si policée, si cultivée et dont l'organisation est si remarquable. On

conçoit la profonde humiliation ressentie par les Annamites, car ils ont

une horreur instinctive de la race nègre, qu'ils considèrent, non sans

raison, comme très inférieure à la leur. ... Je ne peux me défendre

d'une sympathie pour ce courageux Annamite condamné pour une infraction

de police, à Ben-Tré, par un tribunal composé entièrement de nègres,

sauf le greffier qui était noir aussi, mais hindou: 'Je veux bien être

condamné par des Français, s'écria-t-il, mais non par des nègres'"

Other mentions of supposedly black people in Cochinchina:

By 1871 some French ethnographers claimed Cochinchina's hill people were

black, asserting that Vietnamese informants had confirmed that information:

"Tout ce que nous savons des Moïs, c'est qu'ils sont nègres; sur ce

point, tout le monde est d'accord. Les Annamites et les Cochinchinois

que [G.-W.] Earl interrogeait dans ses voyages aux Indes orientales

[1853] lui donnaient des renseignements qui concordent avec ceux des

quelques voyageurs qui ont vu de vrais Moïs." Séance du 7 sept. 1871,

Bulletin de la société d'anthropologie de Paris (Paris, 1872), 146-7.

And here's a reference to a very early reference: apparently, an

inscription at the Cham monument of Po Nagar refers to an invasion by

foreigners who were black, skinny, and terrifying, who had come on

ships, and who lived on foods even more horrible than cadavers. Abel

Bergaigne, Inscriptions Sanscrites de Campa et du Cambodge (Paris:

1893), 252.

Erica

Erica J. Peters

Culinary Historians of Northern California

Email: e-peters-9 at alumni.uchicago.edu

www.chonc.com

Grace Chew gclchew at yahoo.co.uk

Sun Nov 4 02:41:06 PST 2007

Dear all,

I've enjoyed all your input- interesting opinions,

readings on history, personal experience, and poems!

So I can see that the meaning has been shifting, in

fact, expanding. "Tay" has taken on the meaning of

"foreigner" rather than "Westerner" - e.g. Tay den,

tay den An Do and others, the "Tay Rau Muong" for

Andreu in the link pasted by Shawn. Certainly a few

Asian friends and I have been referred to as "Tay" as

well.

I'd like to take this opportunity also to ask if any

one of you have come across the term "NGUOI KHACH"

(guests) being used to refer to the Chinese? I have

not heard of anyone using this term although I have

come across it very briefly in a reading.

I look forward to your interesting insight.

Thanks,

Grace