Vietnamese Amerasians

Vietnamese Amerasians

http://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/05/23/vietnamese-amerasians/

23 May 2009 by abagond

Vietnamese Amerasians are those who were born to an American soldier
and a Vietnamese mother during the time of the Vietnam War in the
1960s and early 1970s. Outcasts in Vietnam, most are now in America
living in poverty. Few have ever seen their fathers.

There are about 22,000 of them in America, at least 4000 of which are
black. Maybe 2000 more still live in Vietnam but there is no way of knowing.

In Vietnam they were called "half-bloods" and "children of the dust".
They had no fathers in a land where fatherhood is strong. They were
mixed in a land where almost everyone is pure Vietnamese. To the
Vietnamese they looked like black and white Americans, they looked
like the enemy of a long war in a country broken by that war.

They were outcasts. They were unwanted. Sometimes their mothers were
outcasts, seen as loose women. Sometimes even their own mothers threw
them out to live on the streets. Other children called them names,
beat them up or were not allowed to play with them. Most only went to
school for a few years. Some cannot even read.

When Saigon fell in 1975, about 2000 of them were flown to America
and were adopted. Others were hidden or made to look more Vietnamese.
Any proof of their American fathers, like pictures and letters, were
destroyed for the most part.

In 1988 America passed the Vietnamese Amerasian Homecoming Act. If
you went to the Amerasian Transit Center in Ho Chi Minh City
(Saigon), an American official would look at you and if you looked
white enough or black enough he would send you on to a camp in the
Philippines where you would learn a bit of English and something
about America (not necessarily what you needed to know) and then be
sent on to America where you would get some help for six months and
then be left to sink or swim.

Most sank. Their English was bad and that along with a lack of
education and a car made it hard to find good work. So most live in poverty.

Only 3% found their fathers. Partly because they had little to go on,
partly because most of these men did not want to be found. Most
fathers, when found, refused to see their children. Yes.

Vietnamese Americans want little to do with them ­ they do not seem
Vietnamese to them. Even to Asian Americans they often look too white
or too black. And, because they are foreigners in America, they do
not seem to black and white Americans like one of their own.

So they are caught in the middle with no place they can truly call
home. "Children of the dust" turned out to be a cruel truth.

For those who are black, sometimes called Afro-Amerasians, it is the
worst. They got the least education in Vietnam, experienced the most
racism and learned all the Vietnamese stereotypes about blacks, so
much so that self-hatred and self-doubt is common.

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