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About The Asian reporter. (Portland, Or.) 1991-current | View Entire Issue (July 21, 2014)
OPINION July 21, 2014 TALKING STORY IN ASIAN AMERICA n Polo Criss-crossing our city’s cultural streams ike most ethnic stream Port- landers, my workday requires swimming several rivers of reality. It’s often invigorating, even enlightening. It’s always exhausting. It’s a little like those Friday nights when my wife Nim and I retreat to the Century 16 at Eastport Plaza. Smack in the middle of immigrant and entrepreneurial S.E. 82nd Avenue, Hollywood is our hope for an hour-and-a-half escape. But after 20 min- utes into the life of a marvellous, if cul- turally meaningless action hero, we look at each other, she blinks twice, and we slip out and over to the blockbuster next door, into the world of a fantastic, if foreign (to us) romantic female lead — another Angli- to. Twenty minutes proves plenty again, so we’re up and out for another round. We really do want to slouch into a single narrative groove for our entire date, but settling in is a problem. That action movie may be a buzz, this love story’s leading lady may be beautiful, but the aesthetic and the ethos are not ours. Sitting and sorting through it, feels just like work. River City is like that. So many robust reality streams run through it. Through us. And yet so many of our narratives run so segregated. With no confluence in sight. Hati, teman saya — let me break it down. Last Saturday, my wife forgot to pack her work lunchbox. Her bento. Nonya manis are like that. They care well for others but neglect themselves. “Silahkan, Opa?” Nim asks over the phone. “Can you bring banh mi? One for me and one for M’Leesa” — her kind co-worker. “Can she eat meat?” I ask back. We’re used to Hindus. “Does she do pork?” Many of us are Muslim or Jewish. When Nim was a schoolgirl, His Royal Majesty Bhumibol Adulyadej asked his people to revere all of their Thai Kingdom’s faith traditions. Understanding others and including everyone, is what His Highness urged. So that’s how she is. My family sailed here from Indonesia, a nation of 700 languages. Cultivating family-style reciprocity, making communal harmony, is what we do. Daily. It’s what we have to do. Adhu’illah (OMG), imagine the chaos in such a complex society, if we don’t. L Who’s holding our city together Soon after Saturday noon, I was sitting with don Pepe on the very edge of adik Andrea’s vast living room couch. Andrea is a young policy advisor for Portland commissioner Steve Novick. Don Pepe is her gracious abuelo. Her grandpa. World Cup soccer was on TV. Hometown-host Brazil and cup-contender Netherlands were competing for third place. Andrea’s partner Huy was on their lanai, grilling ribs — city commissioner Novick was out there too, coaching that. Back on our couch, don Pepe and I agreed that Brasileiros gave up so much neighborhood development, so much national democracy, for the pride of hosting these international games. Still, Brazil lost. They lost so bad. Black and brown and blanco Brasileiros cried and we cried with them. Then we rushed to Huy’s smoky BBQ. Huy, anyone in Portland’s far east will tell you, is board president of the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO). To put this in River City perspective: APANO founder Thach Nguyen and Portland Public Schools superintendent Carole Smith recently toasted each other for elevating Vietnamese into a school district language immersion program. Stream-switching from American English to Tieng Viet is now just as cool as shifting from our majority language to Mandarin or into Spanish. Très cool. Rewind a little longer: During the bad old days right after Saigon’s Fall, soon after 20,000 deeply wounded Viet families settled into sodden parts of Portland, rib man Huy’s elders were central to our crew successfully extracting Southern and Central dissidents sentenced by Northern Communists to re-education by hard labor. From way back then to today — from fixing broken Viet Kieu bones and broken Ameri- can promises, to everyone celebrating Tieng Viet as a Portland language and eating Huy’s barbeque ribs — took almost 40 years. Forty enlightening and invigor- ating, but exhausting years. Imagine if we had better shared those burdens. The distance between our city’s main- q The impact of unaccompanied children crossing the border Continued from page 6 see people of color threatening to bring about what they refer to as “white genocide.” IRCO houses 16 programs that assist different communities at four locations in Portland. Services are available at the main IRCO building near the corner of N.E. 103rd Avenue and Glisan Street, Africa House on N.E. 102nd Avenue, the Asian Family Center on N.E. Sandy Boulevard, and the IRCO Senior Center on S.E. Cherry Blossom Drive. Malarkey said that in 2013, more than 2,300 refugees received services such as job training and employment placement through IRCO. More than 60 percent of the refugees were part of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and have since reduced or ended their dependence on the program. That’s in one year. Some former clients who completed IRCO’s job training and education classes have also become caseworkers at the organization to help recently arrived immigrants and refugees. Sadly, the recent wave of unaccom- panied children crossing the border could actually create more hardship for legal refugees, making it difficult for IRCO and the other organizations to effectively help those who have legally been granted sanctuary from persecution and violence in their home countries to become self- sufficient. I wonder if the $3.7 billion proposed to secure the border and detain the children would be better spent fighting drug lords in Central America and directly fuelling the countries’ economies. If these issues were addressed, perhaps the parents of these children would not feel their only option is to have their children illegally cross the border. Perhaps it’s naïve thinking, but let’s hope whatever the outcome, legal refugees in America will not suffer for it. stream and our 80 ethnic streams cannot take another four decades to narrow some more. Our city’s racial and ethnic demo- graphics have changed dramatically since the excess of our foreign policies started coming home in 1975. Today Portland is 1-in-5 foreign born; half of our public school kids go home to ethnic minority families; in 2010, 15,641 international arrivals unpacked their bags in our state; in 2013, Asian consumers put $6.1 billion into Oregon’s cash registers, Asian business added 26,779 jobs to Oregon’s economy, Latinos spent another $8.4 billion, and added 13,916 more jobs. And yet casual observers don’t notice a lot of this. Hip mainstreamers often sigh over “how white Portland is” — that’s how segregated our workaday reality streams are. No one patiently standing in S.E. 82nd and Holgate’s Starbucks morning coffee line would say such a silly thing. Imagine if they didn’t Another three miles east, another crew of best buds were huddling over slow- simmered goat, woody red wine, and fresh vegetables from abang Som’s mom’s tidy garden. Her Serrano peppers were straight from hell. Som’s proud parents, their hardworking sons, their Ford Foundation scholar little sister, Som’s lovely new wife, now own their first American home. Som owns his first Mustang, very red. Oregon’s Bhutanese households jumped straight from 21 listless years in refugee camps on the windy slopes of the Himalayas into highly-urbanized American living. Very different from our Friday night movie hopping. They unpack their little bags and big dreams next door to those 80 or so ethnic streams making up our city’s daily reality. All of them sharing some of Portland’s most neglected neighborhoods. Our Bhutanese families recently set up their own community elections commis- sion, and soon after they elected their own leaders, for the first time, ever. Anywhere. Then they sorted out practicing local de- mocracy — engaging neighborhood asso- ciations, police precincts, and community rec centers. All that, right here in River City. Imagine if these earnest New Americans didn’t take responsibility for civil society the way they do. Imagine Portland if Som’s mom’s tender veggies didn’t fill his soul; if his pop’s tasty goat didn’t fill his belly. Imagine our neglected neighborhoods if Som wasn’t dutifully managing his struggling community’s joys and their sorrows. The point of me talking story about all this eating and footballing, all this ethnic stream-skipping that our jazzed-up and tired-out community elders and activists daily do — is really just to say that River City’s division of labor needs to shift. Sure, it’s a labor of love. Civil society, livable neighborhoods, happy and healthy families are all produced by great heart. Better dividing the labor of love But what’s also true — skipping back to my wife caring so much for others that she forgets to fix her own lunch — is how easy it is for us beneficiaries of this unkind (and unsustainable) division of labor to not even notice the unfairness of it. The daily duties of integrating our city’s vigorous ethnic streams into our robust mainstream must be better shared. Better shared among all Portlanders. Imagine settled and confident Ameri- cans mixing every workday with doggedly determined and dreamily optimistic New Americans. Imagine the inspiration and innovation, at the confluence of our several ethno-cultural streams. Imagine the saved costs in treasury and misery if “ethnic stream” does not become synonymous with economic ghetto. With dammed back- water. Effective analogies, ones true to our Portland ethos, are all around us. We live THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 7 Imagine Portland if Som’s mom’s tender veggies didn’t fill his soul; if his pop’s tasty goat didn’t fill his belly. Imagine our neglected neighborhoods if Som wasn’t dutifully managing his struggling community’s joys and their sorrows. and love at the confluence of two grand river matriarchs, each swollen by both cascading and meandering tributaries, both carrying Oregon grains, minerals, and microchips out to that circulating sweep of Pacific waves and wind that brought Huy’s and Som’s families, Nim’s respectfulness and my krupuk udang, right here to River City. Swimming these many streams is invigorating and enlightening. Imagine it not exhausting. w The Asian Reporter’s Expanding American Lexicon Abang (Bahasa Passar): Brother. Affectionate address for someone you take care of, and who cares for you. Abuelo (Spanish): Grandpa. Respectful and affectionate address for community elder. Adik (Bahasa Malayu): Little sister. Affectionate address for a younger woman. Anglito (Spanglish): Used here, as an affectionate substitute for “white people.” An attempt to focus on ethno-cultural differences, rather than on the kind of racialized analyses that so paralyze us. Banh mi (Tieng Viet): Our Viet cousins improved on the French baguette, making theirs lighter and crunchier. Banh mi is a sandwich of many varieties packed with all kinds of delightful stuffings. Bento (Japanese): An individual meal packed for later. Probably originated, like all things, in Mother China and Mother India, with all our baby dragons downstream adapting their own versions. Brasileiros (Portuguese): What Brazilians call themselves. City commissioner Steve Novick: Acknowledged in this story as an expression of gratitude for his caring for his Latina staff, so that she can skip across our many ethnic streams, caring for all our familias. Don Pepe (Spanish): Master Pepe. Address for an esteemed man. Ethnic stream Portlanders: Used here as a substitute for “ethnic minorities” because effectively thinking about and acting on social diversity requires relaxing our grip on race, with all its paralyzing implications. Race talk gets us settled Americans stuck. New Americans are not thus stuck, they’re shamelessly ambitious overachievers. Hati, teman saya (Bahasa Malayu): Look, my brother. Krupuk udang (Bahasa Passar): Crunchy shrimp chips. Nonya manis (Bahasa Malayu): Sweet lady. Silahkan, Opa (Passar Bahasa): If you please, Grandpa. Tieng Viet: Viet language. Très cool (Frenglish): Very chic. 1975: The unforgettable year American warring ended in the Republic of South Viet Nam, the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, the Laos Kingdom, and the Kingdom of Cambodia. The year angry communist regimes took control, creating an international refugee crisis.
