Little Saigon Slowly Kicking the Redbaiting Habit

The mob attack on Truong Van Tran’s video electronics store in Westminster, his treatment at a hospital after being hit on the head during a demonstration and a judge’s subsequent decision that he must remove a portrait of Ho Chi Minh and a Democratic Republic of Vietnam flag displayed in his store indicate that the price of nonconformity in Little Saigon can be high. But the incident should not be allowed to obscure demographic and political changes underway in Little Saigon that may augur the end of the reflexive, occasionally violent anticommunism that has marked the community.

In terms of size, Little Saigon comprises only a few blocks along Bolsa Avenue in Westminster. But, symbolically, it is the largest overseas home of Vietnamese exiles. Estimates of Little Saigon’s population vary widely. The 1990 census put the figure at 11,000 Vietnamese, of almost 72,000 in Orange County. Today, estimates of the Vietnamese population in Orange County run as high as 200,000.

Despite public-opinion polls showing that a majority of Vietnamese Americans support U.S. recognition of Vietnam and increasing trade ties with the Southeast Asian nation, redbaiting comes easily for a community largely at the peripheral of U.S. politics. With more former South Vietnamese army officials and rank and file settling in Orange County than elsewhere, anticommunist rallies are a popular pastime, especially with each influx of political prisoners released from Vietnam.

Political violence against reputed communist sympathizers peaked in 1987 when a Vietnamese American editor, Tap Van Pham, was murdered in an arson fire. Pham had run ads from U.S.-based companies that did business in Vietnam. A shadowy anticommunist group seeking to overthrow Vietnam’s government claimed credit for the assassination. Since then, such violence has been more sporadic. Until the attack on Tran’s store, the most notable recent example of redbaiting involved Tony Lam, a member of the Westminster City Council and the first Vietnamese American elected to office in the United States. Lam was labeled a “commie” by the Lost Vietnamese Commandos, a group of Vietnamese who claim wartime ties to the CIA, because he supports expanding trade with Vietnam.

Newer generations of Little Saigon seem less and less interested in the old politics of division and the history that sustains it. Increasingly, these Vietnamese Americans are U.S.-born. Many attend UC Irvine. They may speak some Vietnamese, but they do not read or write the language. Some would like to visit their parents’ homeland. While younger Vietnamese did join the more than 400 people protesting daily in front of Tran’s store, their understanding of why they were there was nebulous, at best. One student admitted he didn’t know anything about Ho Chi Minh, but attended the protests because his parents opposed the late Vietnamese communist leader.

Despite the dangers inherent in being a political or social nonconformist in Little Saigon, many young Vietnamese Americans have chosen that route. Recently, I met some gay college students who live in Little Saigon and are afraid to tell their parents about their sexuality. They had never heard of the Orange County-based Gay Vietnamese Alliance or the Gay Asian Pacific Support Network in Los Angeles. To these Vietnamese, the ideological battles of the past mean nothing.

Since May, a group of grass-roots activist Vietnamese Americans, who met at a Serve the People! conference at UCLA, have been striving to be a counterweight to the old politics of Little Saigon. They have no taste for Vietnamese communism, but these activists know full well that if they venture into Little Saigon as, say, labor organizers, they risk being labeled “communist.” Yet, they persist in their community work in behalf of the poor and abused.

Many Southland universities have students from Hanoi, and the student exchange is not just one way. The University of California’s Education Abroad Program just added Hanoi as one of the destinations where UC undergrads can study for a semester.

Party-registration statistics are another sign of the changing demographics of Little Saigon. More and more new registrants identify themselves as Democrats or independents. Yet, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove), who spent more than $3 million to defeat Robert K. Dornan a second time, still marches around Little Saigon waving the flag of a defunct (South Vietnamese) regime. At the Lost Vietnamese Commandos gathering, Sanchez stood at attention, hand over heart, while the national anthem of that discredited regime was played. Such a display betrays her ignorance of the liberalizing forces at work in Little Saigon that could be drawn to her politically if she would just reach out to them.

There are other hopeful signs that strident anticommunism is becoming passe, even among the less vocal members of the Little Saigon community. When the film “Hanoi--Winter 1946,” made by Vietnam’s Feature Film Studio, had its Orange County premiere at the Newport Beach International Film Festival last year, there were hardly any protesters. Instead, Vietnamese Americans lined up to see the film about Ho’s life as a patriot fighting the French. A similar turnout is expected at this year’s Newport Beach Film Festival in March, which features another film from Vietnam, this one about a mythical goddess. Finally, a trip by Irvine High School’s swimmers and divers to Ho Chi Minh City last summer sparked no outcry in Little Saigon. A visit by swimmers from Vietnam is expected this summer.

The protests against Tran regrettably reinforced many of the more unflattering stereotypes of Little Saigon and its old-time religion of anticommunism. Yet, the community is changing under the growing influence of its younger members, who are uninterested in keeping the divisive past alive.*