The Dead-Eyed Expat
Conversations & Reflections on BLM & American Higher Ed from Vietnam
What follows is a personal reflection.
I live in the city of Da Nang, a beachy haven on Vietnam’s central coast.
Since the news got out about Da Nang, it’s rapidly become a bite-sized cosmopolis. Faces from around the world —though particularly Korea, Europe, and North America — streamed freely into the city until, well… you know.
Some have stayed for days or weeks, some for months. Many, like myself, have been here for years.
Internationalization of the city’s denizens has brought the expected upsides and drawbacks: surges of foreign investment (shout out to you, driver of the gold-plated BMW), international spectacles (the IFF, Trump), cultural grievances, Facebook vitriol, motorbike mishaps, scowls and smiles.
Here, I interact with people of almost all varieties, though continentally speaking, South America and Africa are not as well-represented as they could be.
And yet the term, “diversity,” which has sadly become so effortless in the mouths of many, seems to take on a very different meaning here than it does in the USA.
When, for example, a young American man posted about organizing a BLM solidarity demonstration on a large online ex-pats group, he was straightaway shouted down.
Most commenters reminded him that in communist Vietnam such gatherings are strictly illegal without the consent of authorities.
One ambiguous white person, less diplomatically inclined, said only, “Keep your shit in your own country.”
For another lens on Da Nangian diversity, take Mr. Bosco, a middle-aged Keralan friend of mine who manages an Indian restaurant here in town.
Bosco and I often pause to chat when I visit his place, or when he delivers food in the middle of a hectic workday. He’s a mellow man with an easy smile.
A few weeks ago, during one such visit, Bosco grew impassioned about the Black Lives Matter movement.
He told me that, in his online circles, other Indian people were outraged by the implication that black lives were the only important ones. He was appalled that any group would create such antagonism.
All Lives Matter, he said expectantly, awaiting my commiseration. Didn’t I agree?
I didn’t.
I chose my words carefully, sifting through the metaphors I’d osmosed over hours spent reading op-eds.
I suggested that BLM’s name was not designed to exclude other groups, but to highlight the countless injustices perpetrated against black people in the USA.
I noted that I could never truly understand the Black American experience. What I could do was listen, and read, and learn from those wiser and more directly affected, and try earnestly to cut myself and my communities no undeserved slack.
Bosco listened and asked questions. As he departed he said he would read and think more about this notion.
I was glad for Bosco’s characteristically amiable reaction. But his original vehemence surprised me. I had just witnessed overt, even aggressive disengagement from this same topic.
That American turmoil can, from across the world, so deeply stir the hearts and minds of some, yet be flatly shut out by others, is a fact I am still processing.
Beyond those in my immediate community, like Bosco, I work each day with ambitious High Schoolers from across the country.
I’m consistently awed by these kickass young people. They’re going to reinvent plastic, transform the mental health landscape, and revitalize decaying artforms. I’m lucky to be one small step in their path toward awesomeness.
And recently, these kids have been asking the hard questions — the right questions. Questions that mirror those on my mind each day.
Questions like:
How can we engage with struggles for overdue justice from across the world?
What does the West’s haphazard trajectory mean for those of us who’ve dreamed of Western futures?
I, like most in the peripheral Higher Education industry, have only vague and unsatisfying answers to these questions.
And in answering them, it’s impossible to ignore my own biases.
Recently I’ve become disillusioned by American Higher Education, for instance — mainly because of its hilarious cost and sagacious role in systemic inequality.
By now you’ve also guessed that politically, I’m fairly leftward.
The questions I can answer more assertively are those sparked by misguided — though understandable — notions about safety and aggression.
Questions like: will I be safe at college in America?
Safety. Before 2020, these questions tended to revolve around guns and shootings. Bluntly and vividly scary stuff. But fairly dispellable via statistics.
Now they have to do with “riots” and a pandemic.
And it’s my job to give the honest, uncomfortable truth: yes, you, nuzzled against the bosom of your secluded college campus, will almost surely feel safe.
Many, many others may not even feel safe within the confines of their own homes.
What I want to say is: care about them, too.
But how can I say this convincingly to an 18-year-old Vietnamese student who’s hardly left their country? Is it possible to find a person farther removed from what a well-intentioned American might call “diversity”?
What most kids really want is to hear that they’ll be safe.
That they’ll have abundant opportunities to learn and excel.
That they’ll get a good job and make their family proud.
And given that my students tend to be downright excellent people, I’m confident that these promises hold water.
But do they need America in order to live that truth?
I’m not so sure.
And this uncertainty pecks away at me. Because, as much as our current administration may believe otherwise, America could use more bright, caring, and receptive people like these kids.
Yet I wonder how much longer I can endorse this latest phase in the American dream.
The inflammation of internal divisions is an American pastime more enduring than baseball.
I believe deeply in the core values of American education. I believe in exploration, and encouragement, and individuality. I wouldn’t give up my own college years — borne along, no doubt, by my privilege — for anything.
But the inflammation of internal divisions is an American pastime more enduring than baseball. The politicization of mask-wearing is just the latest example: free speech touted most vocally by those who think freedom capable of whimsically redefining itself by the minute.
My students may well be insulated from the stickiest bullshit, as I was. And insulation is likely to numb the senses.
Political numbness is, anyway, a preexisting Vietnamese perk.
Still, I am no longer comfortably numb. I’m growing increasingly uncomfortable with numbness — perhaps even uncomfortable with my Americanness itself.
Though I’m a lifelong Patriots fan, I’ve never had an appetite for patriotism. But these days, I’m working harder and harder just to keep from becoming a dead-eyed cynic. And that scares me.
Because I don’t want to disengage or run away.
I should be proactive in advocating for and creating change. I should use confrontation to exercise empathy and refine my convictions.
I know this.
Yet from the outside, looking in, America’s vagaries are growing into a warning sign larger and more daunting than any virus.
