SECTION 3:iv

THE MAKING OF THE MODERN MANDARIN

by Hugh M. Lewis

The strong familial patterning among the refugees must be understood in light of certain significant attitudes that are commonly expressed by these people. Almost all of them want to return to their homeland, and many believe that the Communist Regime will eventually collapse so that they can return. This attitude seems to mellow a little bit with length of residency and perhaps is negatively correlated with ascending age. Indicators point to somewhat ambivalent findings that the most successfully adapted here are also the ones who evince the strongest expression of the desire to return. As the prominent ethnic representatives of the phoenix people who articulate directly with the host social structure, it is to their best advantage, and perhaps profit, to fuel the fire and stir the foment which landed them here in the first place, and sometimes for less than purely ideological reasons.

Few refugees want to become U.S. citizens. Virtually none identify very strongly or even remotely with the "American Way of Life" though they frequently do respect, admire and seek to learn more about it. Few consider themselves American, even hyphenated Vietnamese-American. Most found America not only different from expectations, often disappointing, but difficult to adjust to as well. The number of cultural differences are great. Most prefer to have their ethnic identity respected rather than be considered fellow Americans. 

I earned a great deal of respect for indulging myself wholeheartedly and unreservedly in their ethnic soul food and for not minding hopping across their filthy floors in bare feet and for sleeping off a drunk on old dilapidated sofas amidst the smoky, noisy atmosphere from early morning to late at night, but I was never quite forgiven for not learning or knowing how to speak Vietnamese. Many households are scrupulously clean, well kept, and quiet, but there often reigns supreme a spooky and almost unnatural atmosphere of subsurface tension and discomfort—I could never fit myself in well to such situations, never loosen up, kick my shoes off, lean back and sit a comfortable spell.

There is evidence of low ethnic self-esteem. Most refugees perceive their own existential plight more negatively than neighboring non-refugees. Their quality of life ratings are lower. Most believe they deserve better in life than they presently have. Not surprisingly the better the socio-economic status the more optimistic the attitude about the ethnic communities circumstances—indicating higher ethnic self-esteem positively correlated with length of residence and occupational success. "Eight out of ten refugees believe that America should have done more to help them settle in this country."

Many still strongly believe that the U.S. government is responsible "for making good things happen to them," though this attitude is on the decline. While faith in working hard and in family effort is gradually increasing, "Faith in education or God has decreased slightly." They express a common difficulty in making ends meet, though as a whole they believe their lot in life is gradually improving. Preoccupation with problems of unemployment, language barriers, racial prejudice, housing costs, inflation, financial worries, traffic and transportation problems, as well as with crime rates, is on the increase. "Too much freedom, racial prejudice, and an unfavorable economy created problems often mentioned by the refugees." The assimmilationist policy has always been one of the immediate employment as rapidly as possible, an emphasis which often compromises the future status and quality of life of the refugee. "Despite a high rate of unemployment, many Indo-Chinese do not consider getting a job as something good that could happen to them and their family, and this response suggests that many refugees may be working toward reaching goals other then immediate employment." Perhaps a new kind of ethnic status petty cash can’t buy. Many of the worries they are commonly concerned with are rooted in a common existential ethnicity. The preoccupation of this new emerging ethnicity is with the significant self in relation to the significant other.

Sense of familial attachment is extremely strong and deeply rooted. Finding a good job and reuniting with their families in Vietnam are equally most important to these refugees. Almost all refugees have immediate kin remaining in Vietnam. They all fear going back to Vietnam because of Communist persecution, and they all fear for the lives and welfare of their family under the Communist claw. These feelings of imminent persecution of themselves and their loved ones combines with a sense of disorientation, of loss in coming here, of difficult and minimal gains, and of overwhelming homesickness and feeling of displacement and loneliness, to produce the most important characteristic of the ethnic attitude of the Vietnamese refugee—a deep seated sense of insecurity, expressed in hyper sensitive feelings of a need for security. 

This general, social psycho-social or ethnic feeling of insecurity, a particular Vietnamese brand of refugee anomie is reflective of their whole plight and flight as refugees with all its connotations of homelessness, with its mixed bag of motivations and its continuing, never ending liminality of transition to nowhere of only gradually subsiding betwixt and betweeness. Their expression of insecurity is not only the insecurity of their kith and kin back home under the shadow of the Communist storm cloud. Though "the passage of time has an impact on nostalgia and old attachments, living form day to day forces the refugee to adjust to the new environment." (Rutledge 1983) Essentially the Vietnamese refugee still regards Vietnam as his/her home in deep-seated emotional attachment and identification.

It is worthwhile to speculate whether this may not also be an expression of deep-seated, rationalized, repressed guilt for deciding to become refugees, coupled with losses for which they themselves were partially, existentially at least, responsible. This guilt itself may be connected to a pervasive feeling or fear of social persecution that is internalized but repressed. Thus their preoccupation with crime and worry over police protection. "….The refugee’s prefer that the Americans provide them with police protection first, followed by jobs and housing third….The refugee’s desire for police protection may reflect a deeper feeling of fear and insecurity. Many anxieties are combined during resettlement; the fear of not being able to adjust, of not being accepted, of not being able to make a decent living, and of never being able to return to their homeland."

The picture presented of refugee occupational adjustment is not a very hopeful one, but it must be remembered that the refugee embarked on his journey because of other values. Occupational and economic factors are paramount in the immigrant’s decision making process but are only secondary importance for the refugee. Because the refugee flees as a result of persecution or a fear of persecution, the ability of the country of resettlement to protect him is more important than the occupational opportunities it offers the refugee. (Stein IMR Vol. 13 #1)

Feelings of guilt and persecution may also be tied emotionally to basic infra-familial ties of dependency—to emotional dependency on a significant other. Culturally sanctioned ties of familial interdependency, of filial piety that are strongly reinforced socially and through socialization patterns. Of course it is all too easy to project all of this, in order to cope and survive existentially, upon and to blame the communists, for their feelings as well as their plight. Though perfectly well legitimated by a past record of events, this does not in and of itself explain the need for projection of underlying feelings of hate and persecution. The significant other, for the ethnic Vietnamese significant self is not only the successful American but more Ho Chi Minh, and it is a strongly ambivalent and negative other in relation to the positive significance of the ethnic Vietnamese refugee self.

Thus the Vietnamese refugee not only wants or wishes to return home some day but frequently, even if unconsciously or in a day dream fantasy, plots and plans to return home eventually, to recoup losses, to resurrect a destroyed life, to rectify their names. Assimilation becomes a moot issue, placed on the back burner. The high costs of assimilation are not infrequently simply too much to bear. "The refugee, an involuntary migrant, had a satisfactory and often prominent position at home, and a commitment to the old society. He flees out of necessity and fear, but often with little thought about the demands migration will place on him. Indeed, many refugees harbor the hope that their fears will be unfounded, or that conditions at home will change, and that their flight will be temporary." (Rutledge 1983) Indeed the emergence of existential Vietnamese ethnicity is a conscious and conscientious strategy not only to preserve traditional language and culture and to perpetuate a conservative ideological status quo, but it is actually a systematic attempt to resist and retard the forces of assimilation—not a piece of foreign meat for the melting pot but a separate cooking pot. "There exists within the Vietnamese community….a conscious strategy of resistance to linguistic assimilation. This strategy is above all a positive action. It consists in valorizing the transmission of the Vietnamese language, as a privileged vehicle for culture. It also takes the form of a collective awareness of the dangers inherent in the linguistic assimilation of second generation immigrants."

The refugees in time not only transfer their hopes for success in the future upon the next generation, but as well their fears of failure linked to a lost past. He paternalistic sense of traditional Vietnamese identity in ethnic culture and character comes into direct confrontation with modern values of assimilation. Children are spoon fed to the South Vietnamese National Anthem. On the whole, because of this weak but active resistance, assimilation is forecasted to be a gradual process, never to be wholly completed. I attended with a friend an 11 year memorial of the fall of South Vietnam. We waited patiently until nightfall for the ceremonial to begin. Candles were passed out to the crowd (there was not enough seating) and little paper South Vietnamese flags. The slogan on the stage read emphatically "No Diplomatic Relations with Communist Hanoi." It opened with a flag ceremony of a "colored guard" of South Vietnamese "marines" dressed in camouflaged utilities and wearing green berets. It was a well lighted stage. It was followed by a prayer administered by a priest, and then a series of speeches railing against the communists. Afterwards I participated in a "Freedom march" up and down the boulevard—shouted slogans rippling down the thick strand of people "Communists get out of Vietnam," "Communists get out of America," "Down with Communist Hanoi," "No diplomatic Relations with Hanoi." 

Candles were lit, flags were waving, the crowd being harangued up the streets by ushers with loud mouthed megaphones. I do not know what was more intense, the sense of infectious euphoric excitement or the loud screaming noise. I marched silently and said nothing, at my friend’s elbow. This ceremonial blended political and religious symbolism, serving both as a political rally and a religious ceremonial. It was well planned, organized, and executed by a smart, middle class looking cadre whose intentions were quite deliberate and clear. Its participants were the average ethnic Vietnamese refugee, young and old, first and second generation, male and female.

There is an essential paradox of this strong ambivalence of attitude reflected on the one hand by the almost universal rationale for flight in the first place as being to find "Freedom" and yet one of their major criticisms, almost in the same breath, of the United States and of their adjustment problems to the United States, is "too much Freedom." "Too much Freedom" is reflected in their preeminent desire for enhanced "Police protection." 

I know Vietnamese parents who have lost a lot of sleep at night worrying about their children not listening to them. Punishment, often severe restriction and harsh physical abuse, will be doled out in ample measure for failure of a obedience. As one Vietnamese student explained to me about the adjustment problems of Vietnamese youth "They are like birds in a cage who have suddenly been let free, and who do not know how to deal with freedom." paternalistic authority, parental obedience, filial piety, and familial a-moralism run strong in traditional Vietnamese culture and character and is struggling however tenaciously and tenuously for survival in ethnic Vietnamese identity. It seems as if too much of anything, even "Freedom" can be not a good thing. There is in all of this a fundamental lack of responsibility, or a reneging of responsibility, a renegade irresponsibility, in a general diffusion and rationalization, especially a responsibility towards one’s children, and for the significant ethnic others who should not be made to bear the guilt, persecution and hate of one’s own personal losses. But irresponsibility is the heart of social anomie and the beginning of psycho-social pathology, and anyway, responsibility, like the culture it was born in, is a relative thing.

There are many implications for this prevailing patterning. Most essentially high achievement motivation associated with the American assimilationist success ethic may only be of secondary consideration in the cultural ethos of the emerging ethnic character of refugee Vietnamese identity. S

Socio-economic, political and religious security presumes more importance than enhanced status, reflecting deeply rooted insecurities and need for security typically expressed through inordinately strong familial interdependencies. It is a paternalistic character-cultural orientation not well adapted to a competitive capitalistic market place. This explains high rates of government dependency—the sense of security dependency offers is more valuable than the opportunity and risks of the open market place. This character orientation is closely tied with ethnicity, reinforced by the dominant representatives of ethnic Vietnamese identity, is positively correlated with ascending age, and negatively correlated with length of residency.

I met one older Vietnamese male in a restaurant, who was drunk, with his older cohorts, who presumed upon my friend’s kindness, telling him a lie that he was from the same village and remembered his father and family, in order to sit down at our table and talk with us. He ordered food for us, demanding me to eat and drink. In the process he treated the young, courteous female waitress like utter dirt, commanding her to immediately serve us, threatening her. It was a tremendously embarrassing situation, for which my kind friend apologized afterward, saying he did not know the man and that he had lied to him about his village. In such a way does a common existential plight become forcefully translated into a self-fulfilling, highly symbolic, mythology and ideology of ethnicity.

This attitudinal complex modifies or mellows with time of residency and success of socio-economic adjustment. Assimilation, however partial and incomplete and gradual and resisted, seems unavoidable, socio-cultural and character adjustment tied to socio-economic adjustment. "Given the time, the refugee’s sense of well being and hope for the future improves." But such improvements are always conditional, foremost upon a willingness to adjust. Possible superior rewards, socially and economically, offered within their new homeland, proves "the dynamic element needed" to attract many towards assimilation, which becomes a feed-back process of limited dimension, new found success breed new contacts, friendships, new desires and pressures for further conformity and assimilation. "Successful occupational and economic adjustment promotes a willingness to assimilate and increases the refugee’s capacity to overcome obstacles to social adjustment. The higher the occupational status the refugee attains the greater the contact with the dominant culture and the greater the pressure to acculturate." (Rutledge 1983)

The kind of decisions commonly made in terms of existential purposes and expectations associated with a common ethnicity will be reflective of a mixed type ethnic character orientation along the paternalistic competitive continuum, evinced by marked ambivalence. Though there is an overall tendency for polarization of symbolism about the two types, resulting in a fundamental schism and conflict of values within Vietnamese ethnicity. This mixed type will be conditional to immediate contexts, within one sub-structural context, say working relations, or family, a paternalistic mode will prevail, while among friends, in the market place, a competitive form of stoical transaction will occur.

There is a common predilection, ethnically sanctioned, of choosing as a form of social insurance of security in the future, specific fields within education that have the best ethnic guarantee of future security. Professions and career fields chosen are neither the highest paying, most adventuresome, or the most intrinsically, personally rewarding, but the most secure, stable and the best guarantee of steady employment. Within the modern milieu these are seen to be electronics, computer and bureaucratic fields. Preferred jobs are those offering maximal security, possibly benefits, but not necessarily the highest paying. "The Indo-Chinese are usually employed in electronics, pharmaceutical and computer industries, as assembly line workers, technicians and office workers." Their loyalty is not soon quitting a dead-end job for the chance to find a better one, but when a better one comes along, and they always have an eye out, even if not their own, then they will unhesitatingly pursue it "with hard work and diligence."

But this characterization of ethnic Vietnamese identity must be tempered by an understanding that this is an existential orientation in relation to a great deal of successful compartmentalization between a growing Americaness and a shrinking traditional Vietnamese identity, that reduces the level of anxiety and ambivalence of being caught between two worlds. To voice a strong desire to return to Vietnam no longer necessarily conflicts with an achieved status and relative independence and security as ethnic Vietnamese. The urgency and immediacy of their existential plight gradually wanes, subsiding below the level of consciousness, receding beyond the common horizon of refugee. Rationalization then becomes a primary ego-defense mechanism for an insecure unconscious psyche, crystallizing into ethnic rationality. They have learned to adopt elaborate coping mechanisms which are part of the existential ethos of their ethnicity which assists their adaptation by striking a compromise, carving out a separate niche for themselves which takes a distinctive, elaborate form of ethnic consciousness. In becoming mediators between two worlds, they also function as ethnic boundary markers and reinforcements.

Only time confers a sense of security, stability, of healing old wounds, and it takes time to fashion an ethnic consciousness, to carve out an identity and a domain between two realities, capturing the best of both worlds and as much as possible excluding the worst. It is never a perfect or completed model, always an improvised compromise. The phoenix people in my little Saigon have for ten years been in the process of fashioning a new ethnic identity for themselves, in part refugee, in part Vietnamese-American and in part traditional Vietnamese. With time things have a way of falling into place or remaining permanently out of place.

The future has become a projection of what is for the refugee in his/her existential plight a reflection of the past, the golden dream of tomorrow become the golden years of the past. The ideals and aspirations of the ancestors become the purposes and expectations of the second-generation descendants that is in the process of self-fulfillment in the present plight of the emerging, existential ethnicity. With increasing sense of security and of power there develops a relative sense of independence defined in relation to American identity. The most successfully adjusted function as culture brokers and mediators between emerging ethnic boundaries serving both as a focal representatives of the existential predicament of their people as well as the symbolic ethnic embodiment of successful adaptation. 

Though a perception of the ascriptive status of refugee is a distorted label, distorted by the existential dilemmas of their plight and flight. The corruption of Vietnamese identity is purely socio-economic in the never ending quest for a guarantee of familial security, but politically and religiously the Vietnamese have always remained quite pure. For their phoenix people their plight is not so much an economic one as it is a political religious blight of communism. Economic deprivation is only a proof of insecurity entangled with socio-economic status.

Relative feelings of insecurity and the need for security are derived from and translate into feelings of relative powerlessness at being unable to control changes in one’s life, and the subsequent need for power manifests itself in a preoccupation with political religious forms of symbolism. This feeling of all pervasive powerlessness and undercutting sense of loneliness and homelessness is closely associated with refugee status.

Ethnicity, symbols of cultural boundary, is defined as "conglomeration of religious and political symbols that embody the cognitive and emotive cultural boundaries of a group." Political and religious symbolism, "vehicles for the conception and dramatization of group heritage," are said to exist in a dialectical relationship, "and are transformed and synthesized when used to conceptualize and dramatize group identity." (Pandian 1982:7-8) There is suggestion that these symbols have associations with the male and female principle. It has been suggested that political religious status of the Vietnamese "refugee" has been disrupted and divorced from its original context, reflecting and reinforcing a sexual status differential and disruption. "Those young men who are heads of households appeared….to constitute the group most consistently manifesting feelings of uselessness, futility, homesickness and depression. These men, who previously active and productive, now find themselves in a passive, inactive position. Their distress may well begin to erode the strength of the family and ultimately impose stress upon the youngsters. Fortunately for the children, the young mothers appeared busy and cheerful." (Looney May 20 1975:a2-3) It is possible that the political symbolism and the structure they embodied were the most fractured, and that males were the more stressed by the refugee plight. Political religious status, as it is expressed symbolically and structurally reinforced, has become disintegrated in the ethnic consciousness of these refugees, resulting in a kind of "ethnic identity crisis." (Grable 1983:15) Relative status is shared social identity. It has been suggested that the refugee’s preoccupation with symbols of security is bound up with this fractured political religious status. Traditionally political religious symbolism of Vietnameseness have been well rooted, well integrated, relatively undifferentiated and synthetic in character. Political movements are richly infused with religious iconography, religious ideologies have always had political motivations and aspirations. There are no clear boundaries between sacred and profane, ideal and reality, human deeds and words. The legitimization of "truth" was always held in its practical alleviation of human suffering. There was no strong need to separate thought from actions, ideology from political ruse, rationale from behavior. Political and religious, the two sets of aims and symbolism were part of a single, rather narrow continuum of thought and action.

In the emerging ethnicity of the phoenix people, there has occurred a gradual rectification of names, attempting to synthesize a disintegrated political religious cultural character. This synthesis has become embodied in education of a future generation. Education has taken on focal interest as the primary theme of symbolic synthesis between the old and the new, political and religious. The creating of a Vietnamese ethnicity has become the "making of the modern Mandarin." As a primary adaptive, ethnic strategy of symbolic resynthesis, of frame reevaluation restructuring their political religious symbolism, it is to be seen in a positive light. But it has had some negative consequences ad well, not the least have been the total disregard of first amendment human right in gluing pages together of a library book of Ho Chih Minh’s poetry, crossing out, blotting out, cutting out, scratching out unacceptable words, or rationalization for basic cheating by claiming a teacher was too lazy, to change the test, by suggesting that the way to improve American culture is by restricting the freedom and liberties of its young people, by justifying the assassination of a college professor by rationalizing that he was a communist. Independence, and learning how to live with freedom, can become tricky, even with the best of intentions.