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.