Vietnamese Americans’ hatred of communism shouldn’t inhibit free speech

What are some of the signs that an immigrant community has successfully blended into mainstream society?

Off the top of my head:

* Its children have done well in the public school system.

* Workers have found meaningful jobs across the occupational spectrum.

* People have begun taking part in the political system and run for public office.

* The “majority” in society has come to consider the immigrants as part of the overall community fabric.

Those are just one man’s observations and hardly amount to an official checklist. But if you accept it as a working model, you have to agree that the Vietnamese immigrants who came in the 1970s and established themselves in Orange County have pulled off something of a miracle. Overcoming one cultural and social obstacle after another, the now-ensconced Vietnamese Americans who created Little Saigon fit comfortably into the American story of assimilation achieved by European and Latin American immigrants of previous generations.

I’ve written before that the Vietnamese immigrant experience is a particularly amazing story, considering that the adventure for thousands of them began in small boats that eventually landed them in a country utterly foreign in every sense of the word.

Successful and amazing, that is, except for one lingering issue in Little Saigon: the tolerance of political expression. And particularly as we’ve seen again recently, freedom of expression when it butts heads with art.

Because of the devastating rupture of Vietnamese society during the war years and the pain it inflicted on immigrants and their families, memories and vengeance run deep in many Vietnamese Americans. Anything that smacks of the current Communist government of Vietnam or its wartime legacy of yesteryear has the power to inflame.

The thing is, not all Vietnamese Americans share that sentiment. They realize that you don’t have to be a communist to acknowledge communism’s existence or to refer to it in art or writing or public expression. But as more and more Vietnamese American artisans and public figures have done just that, they’ve become the target of self-avowed, ardent anti-communists who bridle at any legitimacy -- real or imagined -- given to Ho Chi Minh and his legacy.

Last weekend, Vietnamese American artists opened an exhibit in their Santa Ana center that rekindled the old arguments. They told a Times reporter that that is exactly what they intended to do, openly raising the issues of freedom of political expression in Little Saigon.

Perhaps they got more than they bargained for. Assemblyman Van Tran, an influential figure in Little Saigon, and the Westminster City Council have asked the center’s leaders to remove some of the artwork. A public protest is scheduled Saturday morning in front of the center at 17th Street and Broadway.

Is this any way to assimilate?

Street protests are about as American as you can get, but the scent of political repression too often has hung over these “anti-communist” confrontations. Sporadically in Little Saigon over the years, political and media figures, shop owners and average citizens have been subjected to fearsome threats if they’re perceived to be pro-communist.

The problem is that it often hasn’t taken more than depicting the flag of Vietnam to incite angry protests. The Vietnamese American artists told The Times that they didn’t set out to offend but felt that they shouldn’t censor themselves in creating art.

They are on the right side of this argument.

It is a hard pill to swallow for some in Little Saigon. I’ve even argued in the past that we should cut some slack for the people especially pained by the war years. Yes, they have over-the-top reactions to all things communist -- reactions that don’t conform to American traditions of political freedom of expression -- but it’s too glib to tell them to forget the past and get on with things.

So, I wouldn’t tell them anything glibly. Nor would I tell them they can’t protest an art exhibit.

In fact, I wouldn’t tell them a thing if they would tell me that they respect American protections of speech. And that artistic expression is a large part of that.

If they’re saying that, I’m not hearing it. For the life of me, I can’t imagine why the Westminster council would even come close to siding with people who want to take down art exhibits.

This lingering hang-up in Little Saigon no doubt will be worked out among Vietnamese Americans. I suspect that time, more than anything else, will resolve things.

But they shouldn’t delude themselves: People who would smite the artists and free-speechers have to know they aren’t writing an especially appealing chapter in the ongoing American story.

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