My family in Vietnam has a coffee farm and when there was lots of work to do to take care of the coffees, my parents would hire some Ê Đê people to support them. These are black color people who are from a different ethnic group in my country. To me back then, these people look different than us, speaking a different language than what we use, mostly doing manual work to make a living, basically I considered them not equal to us so I did not and did not want to talk to them either. I understood they are poor and they had limited access to education but I can’t just have respect for them. Yes, during my course life, my primary school friends, my secondary school friends, my high school friends, most of them look like me and I did not have any interest in hanging out with people who are not. Until my second year in university, I joined a student run organization called AIESEC in which we empower leadership through exchange programs, by exchange I mean exchanging young professionals from one country to the other, that was when my point of view was truly widen, I could see the world, people from different countries (Australia, America, Hong Kong, Poland, Germany) with different culture and different language. Those fellows were cool. I love that idea of diversity, I enjoy learning about other culture, I thought I could choose to follow another culture even thought I was in Vietnam. That was when the comparison between Vietnam’s vs. other’s cultures started to cultivate in me. I was aware of the difference, the good and the bad. Also when I was working part time as a tour guide, I got to know foreigners who are from developed countries and I have to say that I admire them, I love their language — English, I love their open mindset and I consider them as a higher level to me, they just seems to have a better life with better education and more freedom. Part of this perspective also comes from media such as US-UK music and American movies. The curiosity of seeing more of the difference also led me to travel more, to foreign countries, starting from Singapore. Singapore is such a diverse hub gathering folks from different homelands to come her for trade and business. It has China town, Indian corner, Greek avenue if I remember correctly, alley and French style alley. It also embedded in it western culture which was shown through architecture. Singapore is a place for everything and so it’s unique for nothing. However, at that time, I still just saw things at a very surface level rather than any deep histories about race and color, I did not see them as white vs. color vs. black, I thought I were white too because many people have white skin in Vietnam too. Naively enough, I thought skin color is just simply constructed by your living environment, like when I was a little kid, I exposed myself under the sun too much so I had darker skin. And then when I came to America, attending a very diverse school, I started realizing there are people who are way more different than me, “these guys have beard, a lot”, “these guys eat curry, all the time”. I remembered the first Indian meal I was invited to, I had to manage myself not to react to the curry smell everywhere in my friend’s house, even in the bedroom. It was awkward and funny inside me for the exposure and acknowledgement to happen at a respectful level “Oh, I see”. As if I do not have a choice and I indeed enjoy learning the difference, I started feeling comfortable in team working with dudes who have beard, dudes who have dark skin, dudes who speak Spanish, blonde hair and blue-eyes girls and dudes who eat curry most of the days. There were lots of cultural events going on from Latino club, Indian club, Asian club too and there were all every exciting to me. I still remembered I was amazed to see how Indian female dressed so charmingly and colorfully in traditional Indian dress for Diwali festival. The moment I heard Spanish for the first time, I thought what a charming language, it reminded me of French which I learned for 3 years during high school and knew to speak none of them except Comment ca va? All the way going home or going to school I would see lots of white people doing their things. In my neighborhood, there were a bunch of white juniors, sophomore and senior students staying and going to Boston college near by. They hung out a lot and had parties over the weekend. They yelled pretty loud too, young, wild, and free. Not to mention, my house where I was staying , I was living with religious sisters from a missionary community. These sisters came and left the house after a period, they all seems very worldly and knowledgeable because they have been sent to different countries to fulfill their mission. My roommates were a Korean sister, a Vietnamese sister, 2 American sisters. I got to try a variety of foods cooked in Vietnamese, Korean and American ways. We celebrated American holidays, St. Patrick, Labor day, Independence day, Thanksgiving, Christmas plus Vietnamese Tet plus Korean first day of new year. Our conversations during the meal were very international too, we talked about what’s happening in the world and whom we should pray for. Not everyone if not many ones in America are truly American, there are Asian American, Mexican American, African American and immigrants as well. My trip to Tanzania, Egypt and Turkey was another eye-opening one to learn about African and Middle East culture. I had a chance to eat the food the local people eat, to talk to the local, to learn about their aspiration and suffering, to see where they live, to immerse a little bit into their daily life. Tanzania brought me back to 60s, 70s and reminded me of part of my hometown in Vietnam, everywhere is dirt. Cairo-Egypt demonstrated to me a bustling yet devastating and no-future city. Istanbul is a beautiful yet very Muslim dominated and religious land, not in a holy sense but toxic one. None of these places gave me a safe sensation as in Vietnam or America. One of my travel mate shared that she would love to start a life in Turkey but I would not, or at least not in Istanbul. Back to America, 2020 carries with it a crazy coronavirus, “Black lives matter” protest and president elections. Every day through the news and Twitter, I could hear people from different race and color fighting for justice and fairness. It was the first time I could feel the voice of people who have been discriminated by their race and color. All of those happening drew my attention to history of how black people used to be slaves and how white people have privilege of being white. At the same time, I was reading Born A Crime by Trevor Noah and learnt about brutal Apartheid as well as his very interesting journey of being born as a colored kid, struggling in growing up in black and white neighborhood and community and defining his stand in the crowd. I could never imagine discrimination could be that savage and cruel. It was definitely not human at all. I live with the belief that we can be born different and that cannot be changed but the way we live will make who we are so it’s really sad to see people judge others by where they are from, especially in this modern world. Michael Jackson called us over 10 years ago and time flies and we make the same mistake of making the world not a better place but a more divided one. Boil down to individuals, I could see how my view about diversity was false and limited, I now learn to see people as who they are and understand where they are from not to judge them but to have an understanding of what drives them to behave the way they behave. Let’s make the world be filled with more love, kindness and understanding.
