IT’S TIME VIETNAMESE AMERICANS TO TAKE ANOTHER LOOK AT THE WAY WE VIEW BLACK AMERICANS

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IT’S TIME VIETNAMESE AMERICANS TO TAKE ANOTHER LOOK AT THE WAY WE VIEW BLACK AMERICANS

June 13, 2020
Thang Do, PIVOT board member

You could be an ordinary farmer, student, or housewife, going about your business. Strangers take you at gunpoint, tie you up and string you together with folks like you, then force you to walk, sometimes for a thousand miles or more. They pack you along with hundreds of others into the cramped hull of a ship. The place is ridden with disease; there’s barely enough air to breathe, room to move; people relieve themselves where they sit. The journey across the ocean will take at least two months. If you show signs of disobedience, they beat you mercilessly to set an example for others. They are prepared to kill you one by one and throw you overboard until you all “behave.”

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The Terrible Burden of a Skin Color

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The Terrible Burden of a Skin Color

June 7, 2020
Loc Vu, San Jose

Vũ Văn Lộc, pen name Giao Chỉ, served as Colonel in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam prior to 1975. Coming to the United States as a refugee at the end of the war, he was among the first to lead a social service non-profit organization, the IRCC (Immigrant Resettlement and Cultural Center). He later founded the Viet Museum in San Jose's History Park. He is the author of several books, including Cõi Tự Do, published shortly after his arrival in the US. His articles appear frequently in Vietnamese publications in the US.

Thắng Đỗ is a board member of PIVOT (The Progressive Vietnamese American Organization). He adapted the Vietnamese original into English, with permission from the author.

In 1926, almost a century ago, the world designated a week in February as the Negro History Week. About 50 years later, the US thought one week was not long enough and decided to call the entire month of February as the African American History Month. The name pays tribute to the origin of this race, but to be fair, Black Americans continued to experience considerable hardship. Regardless whether the white policeman was right or wrong, or whether the black man was good or bad, the image of a white man pressing his knee on the neck of a black man lying on the ground until he was suffocated resembles a re-enactment of scenes from the era of slavery 300 years ago at the nation’s founding.

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Of Pandemics, Policies, and Police

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Of Pandemics, Policies, and Police

June 5, 2020
Tung Nguyen, PIVOT president

Health disparities researchers have known for several decades the main underlying causes of such disparities. We call them the social determinants of health, and they include poverty, education, the environment, and healthcare access.

Racism is often thought to be one of those determinants as well, because chronic exposure to racism cause the body to change through the release of stress hormones and neurotransmitters. Acute exposure to racism can lead to death, as in the case of the recent killings of George Floyd, Breona Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and others. From a health disparities perspective, the George Floyd shooting was an acute exposure to racism, with the 4 police officers serving as the vectors that delivered the disease of racism and its ultimate health outcome, death.

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What Southeast Asian Refugees Owe to Black Lives

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What Southeast Asian Refugees Owe to Black Lives

June 3, 2020
Trinh Q. Truong

In Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25th, 2020, police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd. Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck for over eight minutes while three other officers stood guard, one of them Hmong American. As horrified bystanders confronted the officers for their actions, and started filming to hold them accountable, Floyd gasped “I can’t breathe.” His dying words were the same ones Eric Garner, another victim of police brutality, uttered while choked to death by a New York police officer in 2014.

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AMERICA, WE NEED A DIFFERENT PRESIDENT

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AMERICA, WE NEED A DIFFERENT PRESIDENT

June 1, 2020
Thang Do, PIVOT board member

I am writing these lines shortly after hearing that San Jose, the largest city of this region, just announced a curfew from 8:30 pm to the following morning for an entire week, to avoid the protests that have led to the destruction of property and violence.

In the past few days, there have been protests and violence everywhere including San Jose, after a white policeman in Minneapolis killed a black man by holding him down on the street pavement and pressing his knee against the man’s neck. The policeman stayed in this position for 8 minutes, prompting the victim to shout out: “I can’t breathe.” 3 other policemen, one Asian and two whites, were nearby but took no action to rein in their colleague’s excessive use of force.

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