“Us Vietnamese people are …”

Many foreigner friends have asked me whether or not Vietnamese people still hold a grudge against whites for all the wars and conflicts that had happened. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, the answer is no. You see, despite all the wars and conflicts with the United States and France, white people in the eyes of Vietnamese are still superior. It is essentially because of this rich history of contacts with the white Western culture that has influenced how my people see white people today. For more than thirty years, the French colonized Vietnam. Right along side aggressively ruling all parts of the Vietnamese people’s lives, they also brought to my country innovations like bicycles, railroads, cars, and many other cool stuff. Hence, despite the catastrophe, we see that white people embodied then, and still embody now, innovations, modernity, and prosperity. Unfortunately, this undermines many aspects of the Vietnamese culture and identity.

When I was in primary school, I was actually really into this form of Vietnamese traditional musical called Cai Luong – a type of musical theater where characters would dress up in Chinese-inspired costumes and drag their voices out as they sing. As I was watching it with my house’s maid one day, my dad came in and said “Come on, stop watching that silly music stuff. How can you guys stand such corniness?” Instead, he suggested that I listen to his favorite types of music: Michael Jackson, The Beatles, and basically anything else on his CD “Top Pop Hits” from his mid 20s. My maid, coming from a less privileged rural area, differed from dad, who went to college in the capital city of Vietnam, where he was exposed to Western entertainment. As a little kid, I was already mediated to think that, somehow, Vietnamese traditional entertainment is inferior to white’s.

As I grew up, going to private international schools has only perpetuated my perception of white superiority. Instead of the tuition fee of $10 a month for public schools, a big number of families across Vietnam send their children to $15 000 a year private schools for better education, and for better English – which would ensure study abroad opportunities that would ensure even better education. Can you imagine yourself actually going to school in France, living and studying academic subjects in French? Maybe, maybe not. However, for more privileged Vietnamese students, going to school in first-world countries, living and studying entirely in English is a goal that must be strived for starting at a young age. Because our families and society place such importance on acquiring fluency in English, we are encouraged to read books, listen to music, and watch movies in English. From doing this, we – highly privileged private middle schoolers – were so proud to be able to sort of understand this white culture, and copying it by going around saying “hey bro, what’s up?” or “yea, like, whateverrr”; we somehow saw ourselves culturally and intellectually higher than other Vietnamese teenagers. For another example, while Vietnamese teens in public school generally prefered listening to Vietnamese pop or K-Pop, we private schoolers argued that we were more culturally sophisticated because we were listening to music by Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers.

I wasn’t aware of this then, but for a good 5-year period of my life, I was very internally racist. Apart from dissing Vietnamese entertainment to be corny and backward, I also thought that Vietnamese people were completely unreliable. As we were only exposed to the shiny, poverty-free images of first-world countries, we (not only private schooled students, but many other Vietnamese from different backgrounds) had this perception that Vietnamese people are super inferior because we can’t take a hold of ourselves: we litter, we consume too many drugs, so many of us beg on the streets, we are terrible in traffic, and we are just overall crude people who are aggressive and impolite. More specifically to my generation, and to my circle of friends from private schools, we just thought that other Vietnamese people are inferior to white people because they are terrible: they are racist, sexist, and they are way too conservative. Do you find this surprising? At school, teachers who taught me about sexism and racism were white. Going home, my own parents and grandparents are sexist and racist. On Vietnamese online forums and social media websites, Vietnamese people out there in my society are even more sexist and racist. Before coming to the U.S, I had imagined it to be a place where everyone fights for equality, only to realize the reality that is opposite.

My internal racism was also very personally directed towards myself at the time. In my last essay, I wrote about how white skin is the ultimate beauty standard in my country, and this is also something we have discussed in class. However, I have struggled in the past to realize that this was directly related to race, just because I was convinced that it was just what beauty looked like. All types of media that I was exposed to – American, European, Korean, and Vietnamese – have long been defining beautiful women to be women with fairer skin. Because of this constant exposure, I found that fairer skin was simply more aesthetically pleasing. The people in my society thought so too, and therefore I just thought that it was a fact that white skin is more beautiful. Thanks to my British education, however, I found out that white people didn’t actually think so. I found out that, somehow, white people think tanned and bronze skin was far more desirable. Upon learning this, along with seeing more Western celebrities in tanned skin being promoted as sexy and beautiful, I started feeling good about my own skin color. I remember thinking that other Vietnamese women were so intellectually and culturally inferior because they thought white skin was more beautiful – I saw myself as superior because I prefered tanned skin, just like the people of the superior race.

Other than skin color, the media has also altered my perception of beauty in many other situations as well. As an Asian with typical small slanted eyes, I have always hated the way my eyes looked. When I started to follow high fashion more often, I started thinking otherwise! Asian models with slanted eyes were considered edgy and photogenic! When a superior culture tells you how good or how bad something is, you naturally believe it.
I was not the only victim of internalized racism in my country. One of the most commonly used phrases in Vietnam right now, I’d say, is “Us Vietnamese people are … (followed by any negative characteristics such as: impolite, racist, aggressive, etc.)” Us Vietnamese people hate ourselves for characteristics that we think white people don’t have. Racism, as I have experienced it, was so much subtler than direct discrimination. Racism, as I have experienced it, was the many times that I have hated and then loved myself completely based upon what the superior race was telling me. Racism, as I have experienced it, was the popularity of the only four white kids at my school. Racism, as I have experienced it, was when my friends and I looked down upon our own people because their perceptions in various things didn’t match up with those of the superior race.