Usage of the Word Viet Kieu
From: Daniel C. Tsang <dtsang@uci.edu>
Date: Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 6:22 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
In her response to my using the term Viet Kieu to refer to people of Vietnamese heritage residing in California, Prof. Thu Huong Nguyen-Vo addresses an important issue about how the names by which certain groups are identified may be resisted or rejected in practice.
I understand that many in Little Saigon have felt Viet Kieu is used as a derogatory term, especially in reference to those who have returned to visit or work in Vietnam. Yet not all scholars have stopped using it. A search of google scholar will see many uses of the term "Viet Kieu" (search using quotation marks). So there is also no unanimity that scholars should not use it.
In my response, I suggested I was "thinking" in Chinese, because Viet Kieu is akin to Hoa Kieu, a Chinese-origin term referring to overseas Chinese.
I also was using a term used regularly by my Vietnamese friends from Vietnam.
I'd be interested in learning from other VSG members when "Viet Kieu" was first used in Vietnam; it surely predated socialism. Hoa Kieu similarly has a long linguistic legacy, in China, Vietnam and in the Chinese diaspora as well.
To be sure, if the Wiki entry below is to be believed (in reference to Viet Kieu), there is a connotation of "sojournourship". When referring in the past to Asians in the U.S., catalogers, librarians and scholars will remember how the Library of Congress subject heading for Chinese Americans used to be Chinese in the U.S, which many activists believed implied a certain lack of permanence and being outside of the society).
I note that Thanh Nien's English edition, has also identified Overseas Vietnamese as expatriates as well as Viet Kieu.
Wikipedia has this on Overseas Vietnamese:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Vietnamese
Overseas Vietnamese (Vietnamese: Người Việt Hải Ngoại, which literally means "Overseas Vietnamese", or Việt Kiều, a Sino-Vietnamese word literally translating to "Vietnamese sojourner") refers to Vietnamese people living outside Vietnam in a diaspora. Of the about 3 million Overseas Vietnamese, about 300,000 left before 1975 (mainly to neighboring countries like Cambodia, or Western nations like France and the United States).
Originally, the term "Việt Kiều" were used in Vietnam to identify members of the Vietnamese diaspora who return to Vietnam for visits or business before they've become legal citizens of the Western nations in which they have migrated to. In recent years, this term has become a misnomer after the overwhelming majority of Overseas Vietnamese became permanent legal residents in other countries, and therefore no longer fits under the outdated "sojourner" label. Nevertheless, it is still a term often used erroneously in Vietnam's state-run media when running stories about overseas Vietnamese, with complete disregard to their residency and citizenship status. The Overseas Vietnamese community itself rarely use this misnomer for self-identification, instead, most prefer the technically-correct term of Người Việt Hải Ngoại (literally translating to Overseas Vietnamese), or occasionally Người Việt Tự Do (Free Vietnamese).
.........................................................................
Compare the entry above to that of Overseas Chinese:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Chinese
Overseas Chinese
Overseas Chinese are people of Chinese birth or descent who live outside the territories administered by the rival governments of the People's Republic of China (PRC) (mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau) and the Republic of China (ROC)(Taiwan). People of partial Chinese ancestry may also consider themselves Overseas Chinese. A vast majority of the overseas Chinese hail from only three coastal provinces of the mainland viz. Guangdong, Fujian and Hainan[1]
The term Overseas Chinese is ambiguous and inconsistent as to whether it can refer to any of the ethnic groups that live in China (the broadly defined Zhonghua minzu) or whether it refers specifically to the Han Chinese ethnicity, narrowly defined. Korean minorities from China who are living in South Korea today are often included in calculations of overseas Chinese, because ethnic Koreans may also identify themselves as part of the Chinese nation. In Southeast Asia and particularly in Malaysia and Singapore, the state classifies the Peranakan as Chinese despite partial assimilation into Malay culture.
One study on overseas Chinese defines several criteria for identifying non-Han overseas Chinese: there is evidence of descent from groups living within or originating from China, they still retain their culture, self-identify with Chinese culture or acknowledge Chinese origin, although they are not categorized as ethnic Han Chinese. Under this definition, "ethnic minority" overseas Chinese number about 7 million, or about 8.4% of the total overseas population.[2]
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nguyen-Vo, Thu-Huong <nguyenvo@humnet.ucla.edu>
Date: Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 1:12 PM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Gay Viet Kieu in Cali (audio report)
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Dan,
Most Vietnamese Americans prefer not to be called 'Viet Kieu.' Most of
us have to put up with it in Vietnam because the Vietnamese government
called us that and then the term gained accepted usage by Vietnamese
there. But in the context of the US, or until we can subvert and
reclaim the term in the way 'queer' has been, it makes me uncomfortable
that we must call ourselves and think of ourselves by the category name
devised by this or another government, with its tactics subjectification
and power positioning, racial or otherwise.
Thank you for the link. It's very useful, and Gina is great in the
segment.
nvt huong
...........................
dan
Daniel C. Tsang
Social Science Data Librarian
Bibliographer for Asian American Studies, Economics, Political Science & Business (acting)
University of California, Irvine
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From: Brad Owen
Date: 2009/3/1
I haven't the faintest idea of when the term "Viet Kieu" was first used in Viet Nam, however I don't think the term was meant as a pejorative label like 1.) ngu*y , 2.) Pha?n do*ng , or 3.) My~ Die^*m.
Bradley
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From: Jason Gibbs
Date: Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 9:34 AM
That's an interesting question. I didn't realize that Viet Kieu had derogatory connotations - it seems like it's a term used without any qualms by Vietnamese in Vietnam.
Here are a couple of popular culture references that may help date the term's usage. In 1949 the music publisher Huong Moc Lan (located in Cho Lon) published a song entitled "Viet Kieu hai ngoai" by somebody named Hoang Tang (Hoa`ng Ta^'ng).
There also was a radio program, evidently broadcast on Radio France-Asie, that was called the Chuong Trinh Viet Kieu Ba-Le (Ba-Le = Paris). This was recorded in Paris for broadcast in Saigon during the approximate period from 1945 through 1954. I imagine that it had some propaganda value for the French "motherland."
Another reference that is more contemporary - The Voice of Vietnam has a program called "Giai dieu que huong". In the spoken introduction to the program there is no mention of Viet Kieu - they only say that the program is "da`nh cho ngu+o+`i Vie^.t xa xu+'." That seems to roll off the tongue better.
Jason Gibbs
San Francisco
--------------------
From: Tuan Hoang
Date: Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 12:42 PM
I too was not aware of the term being derogatory. It is interesting,
however, to google "Viet Kieu" and see on the first page a couple of
personal experiences from two overseas Vietnamese women (excerpts
below). Perhaps it is not the term in itself as historically used,
but personal experiences on the part of some overseas Vietnamese that
have rendered new (and negative) shades to the meaning of the term?
http://www.enderminh.com/minh/vietkieu.aspx
I feel as if they look down on me, as if I have left the country for
the wrong reasons. Whether it was my choice to leave Vietnam and grow
up in the western world, or whether this choice is morally justified
or not might be irrelevant to them. I am simply not one of them. It
seems like I have betrayed Vietnam, because I might have lost my
Vietnamese identity with my initial escape. I, therefore, often
surprise people when I start to speak Vietnamese as they usually do
not expect this from a Viet Kieu anymore. However, my Vietnamese is
not good at all: it is about enough to communicate with each other
without losing patience on either side. So the language barrier can be
very profound. I have learned to hate to be a Viet Kieu while shopping
in Saigon's many markets.
In Vietnam, shop owners tend to be more aggressive in their selling
style than I was accustomed to in the States.
http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/sections/travel/travel/article_492300.php
When the bill arrives for dinner, my aunt and uncle make a grab for
it. It’s only to see how much the entire meal for nine costs. Then
they smile and pass the bill to me. It’s $100, extremely extravagant
by standards in Vietnam. I am shocked to look up and see blank looks
on their faces as I slowly pay the bill. Nobody says thank you. By now
it is painfully clear: I am just a cash cow to them, they do not care
to get to know me. They are happy with what they presume: That I’m a
rich Viet Kieu living in the States and I should be obliged to pay for
them because I owe it to them, because compared to me, they live in
such obvious poverty...
-------
It should be noted that the negative experiences of the narrators
above had to do with ordinary Vietnamese (including their relatives)
rather than the Vietnamese state and the government. But clicking on
the next page of the google search, I saw a blog post addressing the
term in relation to the state. (Check out also comments to the post.)
http://thebleedingear.blogspot.com/2007/04/tale-of-two-peoples-2-vit-kiu-word.html
The term "việt kiều" is used by the communists to include people of
Vietnamese descent living oversees as Vietnamese--to establish
jurisdiction over them in the government's mind. This concept is
foreign to someone from the United States. We do not wake up each
morning, grab the paper, and read on the front page about the awards
or escapades of someone of American descent living in a foreign
country--France for instance--especially if that person was born and
raised in France.
But that is what the Vietnamese do every morning. Example: Open up
your Tuổi Trẻ newspaper in the morning and you'll likely find an
article (conveniently located online in the "Người Việt xa quê" [Viets
away from home] section) about someone of Vietnamese descent doing
something in another country, often barely related to Vietnam at all.
------
This little search suggests that in recent years, the term has changed
some of its long-standing connotation among, at the least, some of the
overseas Vietnamese.
~Tuan Hoang
-----------
From: Stephen Denney
Date: 2009/3/2
What about the term "Vietnamese refugee"? I guess this would not be acceptable use in the official media of Vietnam as it implies there are people who fled the country based on legitimate fear or persecution. Of course, many overseas Vietnamese might not see this label as applicable to themselves.
Steve Denney
----------
From: Maxner, Steve
Date: 2009/3/2
It is also interesting to note that the term, “Viet Kieu” was used by the former Republic of Vietnam when referring to Vietnamese expatriates living abroad. We have several references to this in the Virtual Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University.
The serial publication, Viet-Nam, published by The Vietnamese Expatriate Information and Liaison Agency, Embassy of the Republic of Vietnam, Paris, used “Viet Kieu in this way.”
e.g. So Phan Nhung Viet Kieu O Thai Lan Hoi Huong Ve Bac Viet [The Fate of Overseas Vietnamese Who Repatriate to North Vietnam]
e.g. Chuc tu Cua Cac Cong Nhan Viet Kieu o Phap Kinh De Ngo Tong Thong Nhan Dip Tet Nguyen Dan [Greetings to President Diem from Overseas Vietnamese Workers in France on the Occasion of the Lunar New Year]
We also have documents that show Vietnamese organizations active in the US doing the same:
e.g. LA THU VIET - KIEU (Newsletter dating to late 1950s for Overseas Vietnamese living in Washington, DC area)
We have other materials where the term is being used in this way by Overseas Vietnamese people, which is obviously neither derogatory nor inflammatory as it is a means of self-expression and self-identity. It would seem, historically speaking, that the phrase “Viet Kieu” is not a term used only by the communist government of Vietnam to refer to former citizens of the Republic of Vietnam or other Vietnamese living abroad. Our historical documents show that it was an expression adopted and used by the Republic of Vietnam as well as Vietnamese living in France and the US during the 1950s and 1960s.
Steve
Stephen Maxner, Ph.D.
Director
The Vietnam Center
The Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University
Special Collections Library Room 108
----------
From: Nguyen-Vo, Thu-Huong
Date: 2009/3/2
Dear Steve,
I didn't use the word 'derogatory' in my original post in response to Dan's, and merely stated the discomfort it causes many Vietnamese Americans (and many diasporics outside the US). Thank you for providing some instances of historical uses of the term in the 1950s and 1960s. Whether such historical usage can reassure us that the term should be one of 'self-identity and self-expression' now for most of us in the diasporas may be another issue entirely.
nvt huong
ucla
----------
From: Tai VanTa
Date: 2009/3/2
Dear All,
I agree with, and thank Steve Maxner, for saying with documents from South Vietnam, what I had wanted to say but refrained from saying it, to wait for the "storm of the debate to calm down first: The term ' Viet Kieu' is completely neutral politically to people originating from South Vietnam but now living abroad who remember that the term was used in South Vietnam before, as well as completely neutral to the people who have lived all the time from 1945 to now in North Vietnam. As for those people who "smell" the Communist flavor in the term "Viet Kieu" , they are only those people who had too much bias in their resentment of whatever the Communist government of Vietnam has used before--even accurate and linguisstically correct words , for example, the term 'Viet Kieu"--- but used in a potlitically pregnant context, such as "Hoi Viet Kieu Yeu Nuoc" (associations of Vietnamese patriots, the pro-North Vietnam associations of students and residents abroad who were in favor of North Vietnam during the war years) .
All I want to say is : Please nobody NOW condemn or understand in a biased way the words that are our neutral Vietnamese cultural heritage, such as the term "Viet Kieu".
On the other hand, for your ENTERTAINMENT, I want now to mention below , just a few examples of "Communist" words that have now been used CURRENTLY AND NORMALLY by many former refugees from South Vietnam who have returned for visits in Vietnam and come back to the United States and use them as if these words are acceptable to them--to show you that the words in the language being used by the majority of the Vietnamese nation, whether abroad or inside Vietnam, will eventally become the common usage words of the whole people, whether abroad or inside Vietnam, according to the natural law of language development-- despite the rage of the exterme anticommunist elements in the overseas Vietnamese communities upon hearing these words:
1) current use of "thông tin" for information or news (instead of "tin tức" or "tin" in South Vietnam at that time, because a South Vietnamese at that time would say "tin chó bị xe cán" --news about a dog run over by a car-- and not "thông tin chó bị xe cán", which would mean at that time " communicating the news of a dog being run over by a car")
2)currrent use of "khẩn trương" (emergency) instead of "nhanh lên", "cấp bách"
3) curent use of "rất ấn tượng" (very impressive) instead of " rất đáng ghi nhớ",
4) Currrent use of "bức xúc" (oppressive, tense) instead of "dồn ép", "đè nén", căng thẳng"
5) cưrent use of "cú xốc" (shock) instead of "bàng hoàng","kinh hãi"
6) current "xử lý" (manage, handle) instead of ""giải quyết"
7) current "quan chức" (officials) instead of "viên chức"
8) current "đăng ký" (registration) instead of "ghi danh"
9) current "có khả năng mưa" (likely to rain) instead of "có thể mưa"
10) current" kênh phát sóng" CNN (channel CNN) instead of "đài CNN"
11) current words "tham quan" (visit) instead of "thăm viếng", "du ngoạn"
12) current words "sự cố" instead of "trở ngại", "trục trặc"
13) current words "tranh thủ" (endeavor , in a hurry) instead of "cố gắng", "mau lên"
14) current words "tư liệu " (documents, data) instead of "tài liệu" , "dữ kiện"
An extremist antiCommunist overeseas Vietnamese would be even madder if he hears someone says" "xưởng đẻ" (maternity clinic) instead of his favored words "Nhà bảo sanh",
or " nhà ỉa" (water closet, toilet room) instead of "cầu tiêu", or "anh muốn quản lý đời em" (I want to marry you) instead of "anh muốn cưới em", and would suspect the speaking .person of being pro-Communist" or "Communist sleeper" ( Cộng Sản nằm vùng).
As you can see, THERE ARE WORSE POLITICAL CONNOTATIONS IN THESE WORDS THAN THE NORMAL WORDS "VIỆT kIỀU".
Again, thank Steve Maxner for judiciously redressing the balance about the words "Việt Kiều".
Tai Van Ta
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From: Maxner, Steve
Date: 2009/3/3
Dear Huong:
Thank you and I did not think you had. I used that word as an interpretation of the overall comments made about the phrase “Viet Kieu” that it is now perceived by some as having a pejorative or derogatory meaning. My point was merely to address the question of this being a “communist expression” (which it is not) and to point out that, in the past, the expression had no such connotations but instead had widespread acceptance in both North and South Vietnam as well as in the Vietnamese expatriate communities themselves in the US and France of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.
I think the issue of Viet Kieu is different from some of the other examples raised (e.g. Negro, Indian, colored, black, etc…) which are all terms created by one culturally and ethnically distinct group (Caucasians) to identify “the others” who were perceived as different from them. Such US expressions were created in an environment of coercion where the other groups had no real choice in the matter. In contrast, “Viet Kieu” is purely Vietnamese, created by Vietnamese, to describe a group of fellow Vietnamese who all seemed to accept and adopt it voluntarily – until now.
Perhaps like many on this discussion forum, I am interested in understanding the genesis of the current feelings about the use of that phrase today as unacceptable by some people in those same communities. Why did this linguistic and cultural flip-flop occur? As some have suggested, I think it does have to do with the evolution of self-identity in the Vietnamese expatriate communities who might no longer see themselves as “Vietnamese” and have become “the other.” After all, many of today’s Vietnamese expatriates left Vietnam in 1975 and after under severe duress and/or coercion. As a result, what was once a neutral expression has become politically loaded as it is perceived now as a term used by those in power to describe a group who is not.
Best regards,
Steve
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From: Brad Owen
Date: 2009/3/3
This is by a no means a one-sided persecution, even if it just an imagined persecution by a handful in little saigon. Viet Kieu use plenty of derogatory terms in regards to Vietnamese inside Vietnam who, communist or non-communist, support their own leadership. They're all VC forever, and wherever.
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From: Shawn McHale
Date: Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 1:10 PM
Dear list,
I don't think this latest comment by Brad Owen is nuanced, fair-minded, or accurate:
It is simply not true that Vietnamese-Americans think that Vietnamese inside Vietnam are "all VC forever." Some think this way, to be sure. But most? Most are more sophisticated. What I do think the discussion on this list shows is generational differences over the use "Viet kieu," as well as differences in the use of the term in Vietnam and abroad.
An issue that has not really been addressed is the role of Vietnamese state practices in perpetuating the notion of "Viet kieu." The Vietnamese government has tried to reach out to what it thinks of as "Viet kieu" in ways sophisticated as well as hamfisted. On the one hand, it wants Vietnamese abroad to contribute to building Vietnam. But it also does things that are not perhaps so wise. When the government states that overseas Vietnamese will be charged the same rate as Vietnamese in Vietnam for plane tickets, or that Vietnamese abroad who have foreign citizenship can buy property, it probably thinks it is doing a good thing in reaching out to overseas communities. Some Vietnamese-Americans, I am sure, will take advantage of such offers. But these governmental attempts to reach out, ironically, will perpetuate the notion that Vietnamese-Americans, Vietnamese-Australians, etc are less American or Australian than their Euro-American neighbors.
This practice reminds me of a comment Professor Wang Gungwu made a few years ago, when he was visiting George Washington University for a lecture. He mentioned how the Chinese government, it a well-meaning gesture, stated that it wanted to make it easier for overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia to acquire Chinese citizenship. To which Gungwu stated -- NO! NO! Don't you realize that we have been fighting all these years to show that we are indeed good Singaporeans, Malaysians, etc-- extending citizenship to all these Chinese abroad would just bring up, again, those arguments over loyalty that we thought were behind us. . . .
Shawn
Shawn McHale
Director
Sigur Center for Asian Studies
Associate Professor of History and International Affairs
George Washington University
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From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Date: 2009/3/3
Googling Native Americans, one finds Office of Native American Affairs as well as Bureau of Indian Affairs. It is my understanding that Native Americans is more widespread in the Northeast and that in the Midwest and West, Indians is the preferred term.
As for Viet Kieu, I wonder whether it is the label per se or the ambiguous position of individuals of Vietnamese origins vis-a-vis the Vietnamese state, Vietnamese society and the country of their new residence that is the source of discomfort. I have indeed heard resentment on the part of returning Vietnamese about the pricing system; at the same time, these returning Vietnamese want it be known that they are not Vietnamese citizens and enjoy the privileges of the country of citizenship.
It is too bad that this discussion began only a few days after I received--and deleted--an ad that came complete with picture advertising a village for Vietnamese expatriates (the ad's term, not mine) in HCMC. The ad was in English, though the company had a Vietnamese name; I wonder what term would have been used if the ad had been in Vietnamese.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
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From: Tai VanTa <taivanta@yahoo.com>
Date: 2009/3/3
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
May I supplement Professor McHale's posting with the news that according to the new nitizenship law of Vietnam, Viet Kieu who are naturalized with citizenship of their country of residence lose their Vietnamese citizenship and do not have apply for relinquishing the Vietnamese citizenship wth the Vietnamese Prime Minister office, as in the old law (which presumably let the government before to control Viet Kieu as they returned for visit to Vietnam as its own citizens--which made the Viet Kieu angry and worried, and which control attempt was really unncessary because the Vietnamese government could and can arrest any one committing crime in Vietnam, even foreigner and did not need this old oppressive law to control Viet Kieu in Vietnam). The new law even wants to please Viet Kieu with foreign citizenship by permitting them to apply to regain or retain their Vietnamese citizenship, in a kind of dual ocitizenship (those who do not apply would have only foreign ciitizenship, that is why the new policy is called a "flexible" citizenship policy), so that--the government points out--Viet Kieu with foreign citizenship and also Vietnamese citizenship can buy property and run for office . On the latter point, Radio Free Asia interviewed me on November 18,2008 and I ventured the opinion that almost all Viet Kieu would not aim at running for office, because they would lose even before the general elections and right at the very first stage of negotiating for registering their candidacy in 3 rounds (3 vong hiep thuong) with The Patriotic Front (Mat Tran To Quoc) and so far, no Viet kieu has been successful in having even the candidancy recognized (not even Professor Nguyen Dang Hung from Belgium who resided many years in Vienam and had been dedicated to the cause of education in Vietnam ). I forgot to comment that the candidates Viet kieu would have more difficulty with putting up their candidacy (if the current difficult policy is maintained) than running in the primaries for the presidency of the United States.
ON the whole, if Viet Kieu have no political ambition or suspicious agitation in Vietnam, they are being welcome in Vietnam if they bring money and skills back to Vietnam., to invest, to buy property and engage in trading.
Because the new law recognizes Viet kieu's foreign citizenship without the attached Vietnamese citizenship and as the government of Vietnam repeatedly said it wants the overseas Vietnamese to be integrated into, and succeed in, the society of their country of residence, I do not think Viet Kieu have to worry about the issue of proving where is the loyaalty of the Viet Kieu, as in the case of overseas Chinese. The fear of Singaporeans and Malaysian Chinese of too close an embrace by the CHinese government does not exist among Vietnamese-Americans in America. If some foreign-born (formerly refugee ) Vietnamese Americans like to show their loyalty to US, to be "more royalist than the king", more patriotic than native born Americans,by enlisting for the Gulf or Iraq Wars. it was on their own enthusiastic volition, not out of the need or fear to prove they are no longer Vietnamese attached to the old land in Asia (it is too far away, anyway).. Some of these enlisting young men later repented for risking their life in enlisting, and at the suggestion of their parents, they asked me to advise how to de-enlist by finding a way to tear off the enlisting contract, without any qualms about disloyalty to Uncle Sam..Among the Vietnamese, The US government does not have to worry about inlfiltration like the Singporean or Malaysian government have to to worry about "Big Brother CHinese Government infiltrating into the CHinese community in Singapore or Malaysia. On the US side, the US Supreme Court in 1967 struck down a law that forced people to relinquish American citizenship if acquring another citizenship. Many countries permit dual citizenzhips too. I guess I am touching on this fact of life: the situatioin of Viet KIeu in Western Countries, especially in the US, vis-s-vis Vietnam, is different from the situation of overseas CHinese in nearvy Singapore or Malaysia, vis-a-vis China.
Tai VAn Ta
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From: Nguyen-Vo, Thu-Huong
Date: 2009/3/3
Dear Steve,
Thank you for the clarification. I actually didn't get most of the thread until Shawn's postings, so was unaware there had been "a storm" as GS Ta Van Tai put it. I would take issue with GS Ta Van Tai's charge that only an ultra-anticommunist would be uncomfortable with the term, but not sure where to begin. My own discomforts with it sprang from my general qualms about most state categorizations that draw on its power of recognition over societal groups to situate them in certain ways in relation to state agendas. Any state. It has little if anything to do with communism per se.
But more generally for many Vietnamese Americans, I think the term 'Viet kieu,' in the intervening years, have acquired shifting connotations as some of the posts already made clear. There were popular connotations of crassness, crudeness, deservedly or not, infused into the term as I have seen with some portrayals of 'Viet kieus' in plays, news stories, cartoons in the 1990s. Some Vietnamese nationals (a term I'm sure some Vietnamese living in Vietnam will contest, as had such person I talked to on the phone yesterday) have tried to redress the inequity in spending power between 'Viet kieus' and 'Vietnamese' in the 1990s. Some rich Vietnamese had other feelings toward 'Viet kieus' that were not about spending power but more about contestations over cosmopolitanism/nationalism and such. These were contests between groups over what an identity category evoked. Most 'Viet kieus' felt this category name was not of their choosing.
The state also used the term 'Viet Kieus' which as you pointed out has a long history prior to its more recent usage. As Shawn and others have pointed out, the current state has in recent decades used it to both stake a claim over overseas communities, and to differentiate hostile ones from friendlier ones to its agendas. Ta Van Tai mentioned "Viet Kieu Yeu Nuoc" (patriotic Viet kieu) dating back I'm sure to the Second Indochina War or even earlier. That was a designation that rewarded those 'Viet Kieus" with nationalist credentials withheld from other 'Viet Kieus,' who as you suggested felt othered. Many feel claimed and rejected at the same time.
And of course there is the element that everyone has been talking about already, which is the uneasy historical relationship between communities that more or less thought of themselves as 'refugees'(another very problematic designation, but one that served the need of Vietnamese fleeing Vietnam to gain resettlement rights in the 1970s and 1980s), and the current government. I suppose many Vietnamese diasporics who shared this history do not like to accept the current government's power of recognition over them. They may not be able to do anything about the term used in governmental discourse, but I think they have a right to not use it themselves, particularly outside of Vietnam. General diasporic attitudes may again change as the Vietnamese government makes more nuanced efforts to improve relations with diasporic communities. Already, legal designations now pay much more attention to the citizenship status of diasporics differentiating between those holding Vietnamese citizenship and those who have acquired citizenship elsewhere. And as GS Ta Van Tai's latest post suggests, new policies come out all the time (by the way, the reality of how well these new laws work is another matter--I recently failed to get repatriation status for my mother who has for the past 3 years resettled in Vietnam).
All this is to say that names for subject categories are usually problematic either because of people's and power entities' (such as states') agendas, feelings, histories, or the implications of larger discourses framing them. For myself, I'd like to subvert some of these names assigned to me if I could; but alas that's easier said than done. More realistically, I think we should be mindful of such complexities.
Huong
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From: Andrew Wells-Dang
Date: 2009/3/4
I like Huong's point about the framing of subject categories by other groups and power entities. The point that I see everyone making in these discussions is that a group should be able to decide for itself what terms it is called by. There are a number of historical examples in which a word that was originally a derogatory slur by opponents became accepted as a self-identifier by (at least some) members of a group: "Protestant" is one of these, "Yankee" another, and "Viet Cong" a third. (Of course, other non-group members may continue to use these names in derogatory ways too.)
I've referred to myself on more than one occasion in Vietnam as a "My~ kie^\u," this always produces smiles. My wife and I also talk about foreigners in Vietnam collectively as "gringos" as we feel this is the best translation of "Ta^y". Here we're applying a (somewhat derogatory?) term from one culture and applying it voluntarily to another. Needless to say, no offense is intended or taken, but maybe a little irony.
(While on the subject, I've also coined and would be happy to spread around an identifier for half-Vietnamese, half-gringo kids as "lai-gers," that is a cat whose father is a lion and mother is a tiger (or is it the other way around). My 3-year old daughter, when asked "are you Ta^y or Ta?" replies "con Ta^y Ta" which is just as good...)
Andrew Wells-Dang
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From: Thach Nguyen
Date: 2009/3/12
Dear list,
Last week I was in Utah and met with a family of Irish origin. The couple has 3 "and half" grand children, but they talked very lively about their Irland, how opten they visited etc... The wife mentioned more then once how she showed her son-in-law Irland and Irish things. Later I met the guy. He is from Texas.
Why this Irish couple who lives nearly all their life in the states still finds Irland very close to them, but not some Vietnamse Americans to Vietnam?
The word 'viet kieu" does not have any derogatory meaning by itself. Maybe some Americans who were born in Vietnam or have parents or grandparents born in Vietnam do not want to be called "Vietkieu". They do not want to recognize their roots. Some o them probably do not want to read Tuoi tre section "Nguoi Viet xa xu" etc, or any mention about the Vietnamese groups of American, Australian, European population. If one looks at the population cencuses of those countries one can find the term. We respect their wills. But is this fair to say to say that the term of "viet kieu" has some derogatory meaning? I talk Vietnamese and I don't see any slight meaning of it.
This obsolutely different from the term of negro or colored. The term means very simply Vietnamese living out of Vietnam. Sure we have to decide what "Vietnamese" means. But this is another question and we will have another thread to discuss it.
In fact, if someone wants to claim its "negative" meaning one can only complain about its "han viet" origin (a vietnamese word of chinese origin). That's why in Vietnam we have changed into using "nguoi viet xa xu" or "nguoi viet nam o nuoc ngoai"
best,
Thach
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From: Daniel C. Tsang
Date: 2009/3/9
FYI... New article by a colleague once on VSG list...Read appropos our the earlier thread on Viet Kieu...dan
SPOILED GUESTS OR DEDICATED PATRIOTS? THE CHINESE IN NORTH VIETNAM, 1954–1978
Xiaorong Han
International Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 6, Issue 01, January 2009, pp 1-36
doi:10.1017/S1479591409000011, Published Online by Cambridge University Press 17 Feb 2009
PDF: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayIssue?jid=ASI&volumeId=6&issueId=01&iid=4174332# [for UCI users]
Xiaorong Han
Abstract
This article examines the triangular relationship among the Chinese community of northern Vietnam, the North Vietnamese government, and China, focusing in particular on how the relationship affected the ethnic and national identities of Chinese residents in North Vietnam between 1954 and 1978. Scrutiny of the two important issues of citizenship and the Chinese school system reveals that North Vietnamese leaders adopted lenient policies toward Chinese residents mainly because they saw the relationship between the Vietnamese state and the Chinese community as part and parcel of North Vietnam's relationship with China. These policies ultimately contributed to a delay in the assimilation of Chinese residents, and by the end of the 1970s they still had not completed the transformation from well-treated sojourners into citizens of Vietnam. Though many Chinese residents embraced a status of privileged outsider, others willingly participated on Vietnam's behalf in the war against America. After reunification, the desire to clarify loyalty, i.e. to “purify” the nation-state, led the Vietnamese government to initiate an aggressive process of forced assimilation. This policy, and the deterioration of relations between Vietnam and China in the late 1970s, triggered an exodus of Chinese residents.
Footnotes
I would like to thank the Institute for Research & Scholarship and Center for Global Education at Butler University for funding trips to China and Vietnam in 2007 and 2008. I am grateful for help generously provided by the following teachers and friends in China and Vietnam: Profs. Fan Honggui and Huang Xingqiu of Guangxi; Mr. Liu Zhiqiang of Beijing; Profs. Châu Thị Hải, Nguyễn văn Hảo and Nguyễn văn Huy of Hanoi; Mr. Truong Thai Du of Ho Chi-minh city; and Prof. Fan Ruiping of Hong Kong. The author alone bears responsibility for the views as well as any errors in this article.
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Daniel C. Tsang
Social Science Data Librarian
Bibliographer for Asian American Studies,
Economics, Political Science & Business (acting)
University of California, Irvine