Deconstructing Hierarchy & Reconstructing Community

Soo Lee

A002

Week 9

I think of Valderde’s “Doing the Mixed Race Dance: Negotiating Social Spaces Within the Multiracial Vietnamese American Class Topology” as an extended investigation and elaboration of her another article on Chau Hyunh’s art on existing complexity within communities of Asian Americans and those in diaspora. This essay lays out the different and more concrete layers of Vietnamese/Vietnamese American’s internal social structure and hierarchy. The depiction of three most common types of multiracial Vietnamese Americans, according to Valverde, are Amerasian, Multiracial Vietnamese, and Cosmopolitan mixed-race Vietnamese. Not only Vietnamese American, but also many other immigrants/refugees from many different counties who reside in the United States navigate their and others’ identities based on various factors such as gender, geography, phenotype, language, education, and more which are often put into a place of social hierarchy. The judge of one’s identity can be himself/herself, but one can also be put into the system of hierarchy by fellow community members. This article brings out more tangible components that affect the classification and division within Vietnamese communities.

Often times I find myself being isolated or actively isolating myself from my own community whether that is Korean American Community, community within academia, or my family. This is a current phenomenon that troubles me and provokes me to try to understand with much urgency. Especially with all these beautiful, expensive, and luxurious education that I am getting, I seek to be in solidarity with the people to fight against injustice and oppression, and NOT DIVDED. 

Questions: Utilizing our education/understanding of the complexity of marginalized communities, what are the things that we as a friend, immigrant, and descendant of immigrants, and Asian American academic can do to bring unity, solidarity, and empowerment within our community?