Goodbye, Golden Pig!
February 5, 2008
As the Year of the Golden Pig comes to a close, this Vietnamese American is not happy with what the year brought to his community in the United States. Or in Vietnam, for that matter.
Sure, there was a surge in babies born in this so-called auspicious year. Mazel tov to all the lucky families. In a few months, we will have better statistics on the increase in births among Asians, here and abroad, and no doubt it will be significant.
My young friend, Tony, and his wife had their first baby this year — a boy, a fact that promoted Tony immediately to the position of thay (father or teacher). One of my nephews also became father for the first time in the fall. Both infants are cuter than ladybugs and, thankfully, healthy. But do we really believe that these two kids will have a better break in life, simply because they were born in the Year of the Golden Pig? And if they will not, what’s the point of perpetuating some myth, tantamount to those of Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy?
In a broader context, Vietnamese Americans in San Jose have only ourselves to blame for our own stupidity. This year, we could have two smart, attractive, young and potentially powerful VietAm members on the 11-member City Council that governs the biggest city in the Bay Area. And two women to boot. I, for one, would have been very proud of both and been able to wax poetic about the original Vietnamese culture that treated its women as equals. Now that would have been an exceptional Golden Pig!
Instead, Madison Nguyen, the lone member on that board, is fighting for her own survival, while her name and career are dragged in the mud day in and day out — by some of the extremists from our own Vietnamese American community!
And the reason? She wouldn’t #give in to the blackmail by a handful of opportunists trying to position themselves for the next election. Some are the same ones who derailed, deliberately, the chances of Hon Lien, a Vietnamese refugee business woman, to gain her seat on the council in June.
In the March election to replace Mayor Chuck Reed in District 4, three Asians came out on top: Kansen Chu, a Taiwanese immigrant, with 2,952 votes; Hon Lien with 2,356 votes; and Bryan Do, another Vietnamese former refugee, with 1,758 votes. The combined VietAm votes in that district would have guaranteed a second VietAm woman on the Council; instead, Bryan Do threw his support to Kansen Chu on the ground that Lien was not sufficiently anti-Communist!
Between the fiction of the extraordinarily good fortune of the Year of the Golden Pig and the brutal reality of a circular firing squad, I’ll take the fiction any day.
Vu-Duc Vuong is a teacher and writer in the Bay Area (vuduc.vuong@gmail.com).
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Great article, Vuong! Hopefully in the near future, we will all be glad that that three ASIAN-AMERICAN ran for office in our community at the same time to serve our interests and give voice to the voiceless. If each one of us (VietAm, ChineseAm, JapaneseAm, KoreanAm, PhilipineAm, ThaiAm, IndoAm, MalayAm, IndianAm,ect..) only care for ourselves, then we might as well take that AM off our name and move back to the old countries. If we are divided in a small race, how can we win in a larger election, how can we support each other for a Senate sit, a governor sit, and need less to say a Presidential sit.
May the best canditate win! Divided, we are just a piece of sand, together we are a ROCK.
S Ngo
former Vietnamese-Hoa refugee - future Great American!