SECTION 3: iii

LITTLE SAIGON

A VIVISECTION

by Hugh M. Lewis

The main Little Saigon, the only with which I am acquainted, has the reputation of being the largest this side of the Atlantic and Pacific, with probably close to 100,000 ethnic Vietnamese, young and old, male and female. This population if younger than older, and steadily growing. Wherever one goes, home or business, there are ubiquitous little children running around. Many are newcomers. The sex ratios are more or less equivalent, though there are more older men than women. Most are high school graduates and over a third have been to college, reflecting a predominant prior urban status in Vietnam, as well as successful gains here.

Drive into the parking lot of the always crowded "Today Plaza" and one is instantly transported to a foreign country. A shopping center in a business district, the refugees have managed to open up over 400 mostly family owned and operated businesses. Officially its impact is viewed as positive though not without reservations. Popular skepticism by non-refugee neighbors has long been apparent, with many believing that local resettlement has been a drain on the local economy. Many resent these businesses because they are ethnic and cater primarily to the Vietnamese people. Many also believe that these small businesses were successful because they were financed through "special low interest government loans."

The parking lots are always crowded with carloads of people. One person told me the Today Plaza will draw between 50,000 and 70,000 people on weekends. A walk around/ drive around survey reveals approximately 85 food stores (+or- 16 grocery stores, + or – 40 restaurants, 4 fish markets, 5 bakeries, 18 delis, 33 cafes, and 2 street vendors selling food),43 clothing stores (12 tailors, 11 fabric stores, 11 sewing machine stores, 1 bridal boutique, 33 clothes stores, 2 shoe stores, 2 dry cleaners, 2 laundry mats),+ or – 85 health related stores (+ or – radiology clinics, 19 pharmacies and/or Chinese medicine stores, + or –21 doctors, + or –30 dentist offices, + or – 2 chiropractors, 4 acupuncture/acupressure clinics, 3 optometrists, and a cosmetic surgery office, 1 psychiatrist office), + or – 40 beauty related stores (16-21 jewelry shops, 17 beauty saloons, 1 flower boutique, 1 craft shop) + or – 43 entertainment/media related stores (1 record shop, 1 music store, 5 electronic stores, 5 book/magazine stores, 19 television/video rental stores, 3 newspapers, 6 photography stores, 4 billiards, 1 store selling poker/game merchandise, 1 video game store) + or – 59 business services (4 travel agencies, 10 insurance companies, 10 law offices, 13 tax offices, 1 immigration service, 6 real estate brokers, 3 printers, 1 loan agency, 1 bank, 1 financial services center, including Western Union, Income tax and passport service, minimal secretarial/administrative services). 3 shipping agencies, 1 motorcycle dealer. There are about 8 or 9 nondescript general merchandise stores, 1 kung fu studio and 1 cabaret/bar. Often it is impossible to judge the store by its front—many different kinds of store feature a range of basically similar kinds of items and services—jewelry, pharmaceuticals, fabrics, general merchandise which includes often toys, decorations, ceramics, lacquer inlay wall plaques, hardware, electronics, video rentals, sewing machines, cosmetics. 

All of these are relatively small, highly diversified general businesses which appear for the most part to cater to distinctive ethnic needs and tastes of the Vietnamese community, and only incidentally to visitors. It seems that Food and Health related stores are at the top of the list, most Vietnamese preferring their own distinctively ethnic food and many Vietnamese doctors and medical agents. Next come Business services, perhaps featuring special low rates or better deals—avoiding victimization from other American dealers. Next came clothing and beauty related stores, and if taken together as preeminently female oriented shops, they are in competition with the food stores.

An interesting pattern was observed in this regard. Some of the restaurants and many of the cafes would have exclusively male clientele, while in many of the clothing and beauty shops there would be primarily women. Could it be that husbands spent their time eating and socializing while their wives beautify themselves, shop for clothes and buy groceries? This suggests a pattern of a family coming on the weekend to take care of business and to seek some pleasure. The bakeries and deli sell French pastries, birthday cakes and Vietnamese delicacies. 

Many of the video rental out-lets feature Vietnamese dubbed Chinese movies, a major past time for the Vietnamese at home. Frequently prices are comparatively lower, and often the merchandise seedier. Miscellaneous anything can be found collecting dust in practically any merchandise store. It seems as though these stores frequently run with minimal overhead and do a slow, low volume business. The restaurants, cafes and delis are always crowded, and have their own status hierarchy. Some are hot spots for the younger crowd, who like the darkened, candle-lit evening atmosphere. It seemed as though practically the entire Vietnamese population around my little Saigon circulate through its businesses at least once a week, if not twice, on the average.

Most studies and surveys focus upon patterns of employment, government-dependency, educational status and health/mental health, as these are perhaps the most prominent factors of their general adjustment pattern. The reality lying behind any survey or statistical analysis, even the best, must always be suspect, especially in terms of inferences drawn, or not drawn, from the data available, which is always limited and circumspect. The very objective appearance of finite facts renders them all the more questionable. Earlier surveys after the first few years of their arrival are clearly biased and read over-optimistic inferences into the biased samples, reflecting an official assimmilationist attitude. Nevertheless, these studies reveal broad patterns and interesting tendencies that cannot be completely ignored.

Most studies have documented considerable downward occupational mobility, especially for the white-collar professionals, more than half of whom are holding now blue collar jobs. "Clearly sales and clerical jobs seem to be the most accessible to the Vietnamese in the United States." Medical and engineering skills were the most directly transferable of the professional fields, managerial skills the least. "Blue collar" skills are more transferable with a modicum of downward mobility in large part arising from a shift in skills fields. There is even a modicum of upward mobility into craft fields by "operatives and in transport". Evidence suggests the first four years of occupational adjustment are the most important, after which occupational mobility slows down, with approximately 75% of any recovery after initial downward shift in status occurring within this period. After this "determination and drive wane, discouragement sets in and the refugee accepts the changes in his life and status." (Stein, IMR Vol. 13 #1) There is then transference of rationalization and expectation on to the next generation. Cultural differences, initial lack of ethnic community, and a troubled economy have been cited as preeminent factors hindering socio-economic mobility of the refugees.

The apparently greater occupational mobility of men versus women may be related to numerous factors, not the least of which are structural biases of both American and Vietnamese culture against the economic achievement of women. Early wave surveys reported a phenomenal increase in employment rates of both men and women, for both sexes over 95% by 1977. This is highly questionable considering subsequent indicators of employment patterns.

Occupational mobility is strongly correlated with English proficiency, that is fairly obvious to most Vietnamese. There is not surprisingly a high rate of underemployment by the refugees. There is strong correlation between employment rates and educational attainment, and length of local residency. Less than 44% of the adults (1984) are employed either full or part-time. Unemployment among adults is over fifty percent and has increased in recent years. Adjustment problems, language barrier, and education are the major reasons cited by the Vietnamese for unemployment. The highest employment rates are for males between 25 and 34 years old, older or younger people have poorer employment ratings. Seventy percent or more are unemployed or only work part time, though much employment goes unreported, because such reporting may adversely affect public-dependency status. Unemployment benefits are negligible. The traditional female role of the responsible housewife and mother, "pregnant, barefoot and in the kitchen" is another considerable factor in unemployment.

Around my little Saigon, the so called "high-tech" electronics/engineering industry are important employers of Vietnamese workers, in positions requiring minimal language proficiency, finding these workers to be "hardworking, conscientious, and loyal"—"who could perform repetitive or highly detailed work with unusual diligence." Desirable jobs are electronics technician, computer technician and salesperson. "The Indo-Chinese are usually employed in electronics, pharmaceutical and computer industries as assembly line workers, technicians and office workers." The non-refugee neighbors of the Vietnamese refugees evince strongly negative attitudes towards their community, believing they receive unfair preferential treatment by the Federal Government, viewing them as unfriendly and evincing other negative perceptions. The whole surrounding county is predominantly conservative and strongly middle class.

Employment opportunity and occupational status is directly related to size and structure of households, which tend to be larger than the American average, with from 5 to 6 persons and more than two adults. More than 85% of new households reported incomes of less than $1,000.00 a month. Older residences report consistently higher earnings, but still the proportions are distressingly low. Though average incomes per household have apparently been increasing, to between $1,500 and $2,000 per month, "a large percentage of Indo-Chinese households are impoverished."

This suggests strong income differentials within the ethnic community, between a well-to-do few and many impoverished. Households I have been in tend to be small, crowded and poorly furnished. There is a scarcity of new material items, unlike the average American household, but there are always numerous children playing around. I have been in two bedroom apartments with as many as 11 or 13 people. The size and composition of these households tends to be fluid and ever changing, relatives or even friends coming to stay for awhile, children running in and out, it is more often than not difficult to get even a good estimate. While there may be more mouths to feed, at the same time, if the family is cooperative and corporate like it is supposed to be, then there is a pooling of resources and mutual support which is critical to their adaptive survival and success. Overall, households tend to be large, often taking on adult boarders, with several adults pooling their resources. Most rent, though the number of homes purchased or planning to be purchased is increasing.

Needless to say large households and high rates of underemployment is associated closely with public dependency. Most refugees at some time have received some cash assistance, food stamps, medical assistance. As of 1984 around my little Saigon 44% of the households received AFDC in varying amounts depending on family size, 48% received Food Stamps, and 58% received some kind of medical assistance, mostly medicare. "A continual concern among social workers is that refugees with large families are reluctant to discontinue their use of government aid in favor of jobs that don’t offer medical benefits." Needless to say these patterns of economic dependency are negatively correlated with term of residency, educational status, and smallness of household. "Almost half of IndoChinese households….have no earned income…."

A high percentage live in government housing, and a majority of these go to school. 91% of the unemployed receive government assistance in some measure and kind, and 71% of these go to school. "Because more women live in AFDC households than men, more women probably receive AFDC than men. More women than men also receive Food Stamps and Medical Aid." AFDC is designed to support poor families with dependent children, especially single mothers. Because of this it has been severely criticized for stimulating the manufacture of more babies—there is no fraud in another mouth to feed, but there is seven more years guaranteed subsistence income. A mother of three children receives $700 a month plus food stamps, a family of 11 receives a total of $1,500 per month. Many children mean more welfare dependency, but this is weighed heavily against long term interests—most realize welfare is not forever the solution to their basic problems of survival. AFDC has a tendency of splitting mothers and fathers as a strategy for maximization of resources and optimization of opportunities.

It is not a matter of pride, but a question of survival. Two thirds of unemployed receive cash assistance, one half receive Food Stamps. Around my little Saigon, welfare benefits are some of the best in the country, quantitatively, if not qualitatively, but, at the same time, the cost of living is also among the highest, and the quality of living is questionable. Many refugees moved from Oregon when they suddenly lost their welfare benefits there. 

Even the best benefits though, are not enough to support a large family at even a minimum subsistence level—many households, per capita, fall well below the poverty line. Consequentially most adults of such households are forced to seek alternative sources of income which goes unreported, under the table, because any such reported income will adversely affect the amount of welfare received. Most welfare recipients are caught in catch 22 situation, they do not receive even enough to barely subsist on, much less to buy and own a car or enough to "get ahead". They are not allowed to work, nor are they allowed to save enough which may allow them to escape their poverty. On the other hand, why work at a dirty job full time for lousy pay and still bring home less than a welfare check for staying home and having more babies.

The high correlation between unemployment and welfare dependency suggests a pattern not of temporary unemployment, but persistent and permanent unemployment, or at least chronic underemployment. It also suggests an encouragement of a need for more needy children. It is, after all, their parent’s decision, or indecision, that they should be born into dire poverty. Immediate, versus delayed, gratification produces both babies and welfare dependency, and welfare dependency encourages immediate gratification. The major existential question is how much love is lost on the baby. 

If the welfare workers can’t be directly blamed, the neither can the parents, for the uncaring diffusion of responsibility for misbegotten children. There is no middle class prognostication, if children are not conceived in genuine love and affection, or are born of false consciousness, then money matters not one iota. Instead of thrift and saving and planning for the future, a fixed welfare subsistence income encourages, reinforces in a most behavioral of senses, spending and consumerism for immediate gratification. Parents who want anything for their children, have not option but to subvert the law to seek other, illicit sources of revenue. It is not even a question of money when just a small proportion of America’s families control most of her wealth, it is a question of caring.

An interesting pattern is suggested in the correlation of these figures to the emerging educational status of the refugees. While in general most government dependency is on the decline with longer term of residency, receiving government support for education, in the form of Basic Grant Checks is increasing. Government dependency is positively correlated with increasing age, and age is negatively correlated with educational status. Both occupational status and educational status are directly associated with English proficiency. Over 60% of the adults attend some kind of school, frequently only ESL and adult vocational training. High levels of unemployment, educational attendance, government dependency, combine with a prevalent household organization, certain attitudes and expectations, to reveal a "model" pattern of familial adaptation by Vietnamese refugees. 21% of the households (1984) receive educational assistance, strongly correlated with college attendance and younger males and length of residency. As noted, birth rates are high and so is AFDC among young Vietnamese mothers. Employment is often difficult to find and when found, more often than not temporary and unrewarding. 

For the young adult male, married or single, it makes more sense to go to school in the hope of improving chances for better employment in the future than to desperately search for employment opportunities which are virtually nonexistent. They will receive assistance for going to school, but nothing for going to work. Many go tot school and work concurrently. A predominating pattern of sexual exploitation of women, in varying degrees and in various ways, suggests itself. The young pregnant mother provides a substratum of basic screens of opportunity that allows the male to project himself into socio-economic reality. This statement must be made with extreme caution and moderation, not to step on any hypersensitive toes.

So called "exploitation" fits well both with a traditional ethos of a romantic origin mythology of Vietnamese culture and character, as well as with existential exigencies of socio-economic survival and, most likely, ethnicity. The traditional ("average") female should accept her relative status, and even if they may want deep down inside to rebel, both structural and symbolic circumstances make such rebellion highly unlikely, if not impossible. There is of course a corresponding mythology of the loving, self-sacrificing young mother who gives her all for the welfare and security of her immediate household, supposedly buttressed by the bread winning male who deeply loves his wife and children. This mythology frequently becomes a reality, but frequently it doesn’t materialize or work out, especially when there is very little bread to win. I have watched more than one Vietnamese family sacrifice her life for the sake of her family and often less than responsible husband. It is not a question of irresponsibility, after all this is a relative thing. It is more a matter of exigency in the face of survival in the best way one knows how.

Such patterns of sex-based exploitation predominates within our own middle American cultural milieu, so it should be seen as nothing too unusual or obvious. It is a young woman who produces the babies, goes shopping for groceries, receives her welfare check and/or Food Stamps, takes care of her children, teaching them to read, write, numbers and Vietnamese language and culture in the afternoons, sitting on the floor in a passageway visiting with her status cohorts, and spends most of her time in the kitchen cooking for everyone under the sun—they are wonderful cooks. It is even a languid existence unless unfortunate circumstances force them to find a menial, temporary, underpaid and overworked and frequently degrading job to supplement their subsistence. The husband, if and when he is a good man, will go to work, bring home the bread, and then, if he remains good, stays home with the wife and kids, or better, goes to school. If he is less than good, he may have a predilection for running around with male companions, hanging out in midnight café’s eyeing the young waitress, or worse, gamble with his friends, bringing them home on weekends to sit around all day smoking, talking, drinking, gambling, while the wife slaves in the kitchen for them.

I know one beautiful young mother who knows French and speaks good, correct English, and was a high school teacher in her homeland. I encouraged her to go to school here to find a decent job to raise well her handsome children, instead she stays home and helps her husband who is an ex-high-ranking officer shot up to hell and back in the war, and who practices in his home Chinese medicine and receives his social security checks. The problem of relative responsibility and irresponsibility for disinherited children lies squarely between both mother and father, male and female. 

It is a shared, and hopefully mutually reciprocal responsibility. Indeed, these people are coping in the best way they know how with circumstances more stressful and tragic than anything you or I can ever imagine, and, no matter how bereft and broken down the household, there is never any love or affection spared upon the children, who are given the most that can be given. But the traditional role of the female is supposed to be unquestioning and automatic, motherly instincts run strong in the Vietnamese women, as in most women, while the traditional role of the male is a little more problematic and ambiguous, allowed a little more license and liberty. And emergent, existential ethnicity capitalizes on these traditional expectations to afford group survival. Beyond themselves, the only people really being sold out are their children, and their children do not yet know it. Just how much emotional blackmail goes on beneath the stolid, expressionless surface, preoccupied as it is with saving face will never be known. But it is certain that in the forging of a new ethnic identity and status for the Vietnamese refugees both the female and male egos are on the line, tattered and fragile.