Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 471 - How Is Life In Vietnam Healthier For A Black American? - Whitney Da'Gail Pt.2

Transcript

471 - How Is Life In Vietnam Healthier For A Black American? - Whitney Da'Gail Pt.2 · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

0:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Welcome back to the Vietnamese podcast.
0:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Today we have Whitney to go back on the gale back on and
0:10
[SPEAKER_04]: need to go.
0:11
[SPEAKER_04]: We recorded a few weeks back, and I actually got to meet up with you in Saigon, and we didn't really get to finish.
0:19
[SPEAKER_04]: We got caught out for not really getting to address the title that we put up.
0:27
[SPEAKER_04]: And we had it as a topic, which is, you know, what are the similarities between the Vietnamese culture and the black culture?
0:34
[SPEAKER_04]: And we really never got to touch upon it.
0:36
[SPEAKER_04]: We went
0:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Today, I think we want to we are going to probably start with this whole bad bunny thing because it's it's so You know in the news and I think it's fascinating to really get into it Yes, let's do it.
0:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm glad to be back.
0:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for having me again Yeah, it was fun last time.
0:59
[SPEAKER_04]: I was fun meeting you in person as well.
1:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, oh, we're full.
1:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Southern fun
1:07
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I just found out that Jay-Z is responsible was brought into the NFL brought Jay-Z into curate all the performers.
1:19
[SPEAKER_04]: So Kendrick Lamar was brought in last year.
1:21
[SPEAKER_04]: So Jay-Z,
1:25
[SPEAKER_04]: I think is the person responsible for saying, okay, I think the Super Bowl didn't feel black enough.
1:32
[SPEAKER_04]: It didn't feel whatever enough.
1:34
[SPEAKER_04]: So they had to bring Jay-Z and to do this.
1:37
[SPEAKER_04]: And this year, Jay-Z went through the protocol of bringing in bad money.
1:44
[SPEAKER_04]: And so that's how we had.
1:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Which I think was a genius move.
1:48
[SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, it was a genius move, but I think there's a lot of people in America at this point in time who cannot handle the fact that there is a Spanish speaking halftime that had no English in it.
2:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
2:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
2:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I think one.
2:08
[SPEAKER_01]: The NFL is a business at the end of the day.
2:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know there's talks of like, are they trying to go global?
2:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Are they trying to reach broader audiences that typically haven't been reached?
2:22
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's probably definitely a business decision rooted somewhere in that.
2:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there's like,
2:32
[SPEAKER_01]: three camps, most people sit in, um, really two, but in one of the camps, there's like two reasons of why.
2:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, there's the people who really loved it, which I'm in, and I'm going to say I'm in today, like Whitney probably five or 10 years ago would have been in the other camp of
2:58
[SPEAKER_01]: a wise there of full performance in a language that is not hours.
3:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And in that camp, you have people who are just ignorant, like really don't understand the magnitude of America and the cultures that
3:24
[SPEAKER_01]: English as a language and Americanized culture and they are also of the minority.
3:32
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like the oppressed is also deciding with the oppressors.
3:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's those who fall in the camp of you know, maybe you want to call them Magaland or like this is America we speak English.
3:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think
3:52
[SPEAKER_01]: The Super Bowl show just represented fully truly are as America.
4:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll talk a little bit about why I was in the other camp because it was rooted in ignorance.
4:08
[SPEAKER_01]: There's always this thought that I used to have around
4:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Black people got here first, outside of the indigenous people, right?
4:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Like black people got here first, everybody else needs to wait in line, right?
4:27
[SPEAKER_01]: We are still fighting for our freedoms, our ability to have the same and the systemic injustices that exist.
4:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, yes, I understand, but everybody else get in line.
4:47
[SPEAKER_01]: versus now I understand that we are all fighting for and should be united in the fight against all people who are in power and want to oppress marginalized voices.
5:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And we need to hold America accountable to who she says,
5:11
[SPEAKER_01]: she is.
5:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you can't be the land of the free, the home with the brains, like free speech, and then say that free speech needs to be in English, right?
5:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we are, we brand ourselves as a melting pot.
5:26
[SPEAKER_01]: We brand ourselves for people to come and immigrate here to be a part of the American dream.
5:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that is what you get when you don't live in a monolithic culture is everybody gets a turn.
5:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And even if you don't understand it, you need to understand the reason why it's happening.
5:48
[SPEAKER_01]: But I do get that there's like still this population of people who are ignorant, and I've only removed ignorance because I've traveled, and I put myself in these uncomfortable situations to be able to think and to reflect.
6:06
[SPEAKER_01]: and a lot of people haven't had that privilege.
6:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think it's this balance.
6:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm always like a balanced girl like me, people where they are and try to bring them alone.
6:17
[SPEAKER_01]: But then there's just people who fundamentally believe that America is white.
6:25
[SPEAKER_01]: This is our country, they erase the history of the indigenous people that were here before us because they're not acts the question.
6:40
[SPEAKER_01]: What if there was a performance by an indigenous group of people, will we say that's not American, right?
6:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, and they were the people who were here when whoever came first over to colonize the lands, right?
6:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just it's time to have these conversations.
6:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, it's time to really put who America is on this stage to force people to think a little deeper.
7:11
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the things that I was excited about is one of my best friends.
7:16
[SPEAKER_01]: who rarely have a thrill and a want to travel was like, I'm going to Puerto Rico, right?
7:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And she was like, I may have not understood one word, but I know vibes and I know energy.
7:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, that's the same reason why I even learned Spanish was because I was in Colombia and I'm like,
7:37
[SPEAKER_01]: mess with this guy like we cool like I mess with her like she's cool like we have an energy without a shared language and then it made me want to share a language so we can go deeper and that being able to like do that on a global stage
7:53
[SPEAKER_01]: while someone doesn't even have to travel and they can just watch it on TV and see and feel the music, the rhythm, the culture in it and say, hey, I want to go and participate.
8:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's powerful.
8:10
[SPEAKER_04]: All right.
8:11
[SPEAKER_04]: I agree with everything you just said and I think that do
8:20
[SPEAKER_04]: we are still experimenting and I think that the people on both sides are still learning how to debate and to fight each other.
8:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Internally we have these struggles and I think that's what makes this country the United States such a powerful country is this openness to here
8:46
[SPEAKER_04]: the performance of that bunny.
8:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Nobody really, I mean, they did a separate halftime show, which turned out to be a disaster with us another episode, right?
8:56
[SPEAKER_04]: But nobody really picked it within the Super Bowl.
8:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Nobody made a scene, it was,
9:04
[SPEAKER_04]: you know, it was tolerated and people tuned in and people had a really nice conversation, you know, at the water cooler the next day, I did a thing the next day that that that ran viral and I love talking about it.
9:18
[SPEAKER_04]: But we're in a country that we can do this.
9:20
[SPEAKER_04]: We can debate this and I think the beauty of the United States is the fact that we have identity crisis issues, but we are
9:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's what makes it beautiful, um, and it's, but I think the thing is, like everybody, we have our definition of beauty, and until you're able to expand your definition of what is beautiful, um, we want to see the thing that we believe is beautiful in the center.
9:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And until we can get more of people to stop centering themselves and their communities only and truly
10:08
[SPEAKER_01]: diversify, not just in population, but in experience in culture and your data dating.
10:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's where we struggle in America.
10:19
[SPEAKER_01]: We are not a monolithic society, but we still function,
10:33
[SPEAKER_04]: It's hard to come together too because of the different positions of the way the cities are set up, you know, yes, I think that the way the United States is set up is for ever going to be somehow segregated and I don't and I'm not even talking about color, I'm talking about, you know, education class money, you know, those are the things that really.
11:01
[SPEAKER_04]: It's separating, it's separating the United States.
11:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Even geography, like I know when I went to business school, I made people, I was like, I've never been below the Mason because then I would never, and I'm like, wait, what?
11:13
[SPEAKER_01]: What all?
11:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, yeah, and it's like, because again, I mean, one of the similarities, I know we're gonna get there, but what then I just thought about, is the same similar,
11:29
[SPEAKER_01]: very like smaller but in comparison to maybe Vietnamese Americans who don't want to return to Vietnam and then those stories are passed down as the same stories about the South.
11:41
[SPEAKER_01]: So like when their grandparents moved north through the Great Migration and they brought those stories of pain and trauma from the South and that's just been carried down to the point
11:58
[SPEAKER_04]: and then media continue to perpetuate the same stereotypes and I'm like, okay, but you know, I think the similarities, okay, I mean, if we get into the similarities of these two cultures, the black cultures and the Vietnamese culture, you know, I think that there is this, okay, let's start with one thing, which is colorism.
12:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we have that.
12:26
[SPEAKER_04]: We have it.
12:28
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think both in black culture in America, maybe black culture in Africa and black culture, dark skin culture in Vietnam, all share the same thing.
12:38
[SPEAKER_04]: If you're in the fields and you're working in the fields and you get darker as a result of being in the fields, you're just a different class, right?
12:46
[SPEAKER_04]: And if you're inside the house and you're
12:54
[SPEAKER_04]: centuries, your skin gets lighter progressively because you're not exposed to working conditions.
13:01
[SPEAKER_04]: There is a huge, there's a huge implication to that.
13:05
[SPEAKER_04]: And I don't know if that's ever going to go away.
13:08
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I've been alive for 50 years now and I'm like, it's still the same if not worse in some some some cases.
13:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think so in the black community, it's similar but different.
13:22
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you are dark, it will still the same reasons around that meant you weren't in the fields.
13:31
[SPEAKER_01]: You were less educated.
13:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, you know, we call them like the the house lays versus the field slays, but typically the house lays was probably not probably more than likely a result of rate.
13:46
[SPEAKER_01]: You were lighter because your or raped somebody was right and had a lighter's colored baby and they wanted to educate that kid and so then they did more house duties and house work and then that turn to education but the same reason they just had first level access to education.
14:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and there are two different types of schools like way back in the day.
14:20
[SPEAKER_01]: There were schools where you went to college for a trade.
14:23
[SPEAKER_01]: You went to maybe do welding or understand agriculture or you could be a teacher a nurse so you can serve the black community, but there was really like no.
14:38
[SPEAKER_01]: this thing that they were, you just go up to college and pick a major like that didn't exist.
14:42
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're a black, there was only two types of schools you can go to and there was only certain things you can major in and it was really to feel the role of support to the black community because everything was still separate, right?
14:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And even within college, right, you know,
15:04
[SPEAKER_01]: the lighter or darker than a brown paper bag, determines county or success or which path you would go.
15:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And in that transition to even mating and dating, right?
15:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I remember even me growing up, and I'm 13 years younger than you, it was like, oh Whitney, you should marry someone like skin.
15:32
[SPEAKER_01]: with good hair.
15:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So your baby could at least be like caramel color when a better texture of hair.
15:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And those things still exist the talk about hair the talk of dark skin.
15:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I think with hip hop and pop culture, some of that evolves seasonally.
15:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, like if the rappers are talking about a dark skin girl, chocolate girls are in, men, red bones are out like in it, it goes in ways,
16:11
[SPEAKER_01]: the black community coming to Asia, you know, you come with the same mindset around colorism, but then you learn, it's more about class than it is about true racism, but it, the same thoughts exist of, it's a way to separate people and it's a way to put them in a box and
16:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the Americans coming, we believe that it's rooted in Eurocentric standards and then you have to learn that these thoughts and kind of separations was way before even colonization
17:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, in human form, like we have to accept that because it wasn't just this one ideal from one country that's read, um, people like to naturally find ways to separate or separate or become more popular or better, um, than others.
17:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it is found in so many countries in the world.
17:37
[SPEAKER_04]: It's this is not just going on in Africa, this or America.
17:41
[SPEAKER_04]: This is going on in all over Asia, in Japan, Vietnam, Korea, you know, you don't have whitening cream industries that are billions of dollars for no reason.
17:51
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, this is current, all a real thing.
17:55
[SPEAKER_04]: And you know, the craziest thing is that we have to live amongst this and like mitigate and figure out how to navigate around these sort of conditions.
18:06
[SPEAKER_04]: And the more I think about it, the more I think about how basic we really are.
18:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm kind of so basic.
18:16
[SPEAKER_01]: We're so basic.
18:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I, I got a glimpse of that when I taught for a little bit in the classroom.
18:23
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, yes, by the time like 6, 7, 8, they still have some influence from outside factors, but they still are.
18:33
[SPEAKER_01]: pretty much a little more untouched, right?
18:36
[SPEAKER_01]: But you can still see the self-segregation, even in like a fully, like these are already Vietnamese privileged kids, right?
18:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Because this isn't even just an English center.
18:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I will teach in presentation and debates, right?
18:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's like next level of education as like you're already privileged kids.
18:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Most of you already speak two to three languages
19:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And they still find ways to self-segregate of who's cooler, who's not.
19:08
[SPEAKER_01]: So then you have to ask yourself, what is just a part of the human experience?
19:16
[SPEAKER_01]: But in either case, they don't have wealth.
19:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not money, right?
19:20
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's, are you funny, are you cool, are you cute?
19:26
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, are you weird?
19:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Because then we don't want to talk to you, right?
19:33
[SPEAKER_01]: find some way to say and prove I am better than even at the age of six or seven years old.
19:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think some of that exists, the biggest question is to what extent is it okay?
19:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Like some level of separation okay, we can accept that.
19:59
[SPEAKER_01]: But do you do it by any means necessary where you then put people at harm or you deprive them of basic fundamentals that they also need to be successful?
20:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Like not sending them to college or not allowing them to work certain jobs or, and I think that's when it becomes
20:29
[SPEAKER_01]: a bigger problem.
20:31
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's what we see today.
20:33
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
20:34
[SPEAKER_04]: And that is, um, that those are big questions to address.
20:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, yeah.
20:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Very American problems.
20:42
[SPEAKER_04]: I have a lot of friends in Vietnam was like, why do you always follow up on identity?
20:47
[SPEAKER_04]: It is like the primary question and when you exist as an American, this is like the one thing you're always obsessed about.
21:00
[SPEAKER_04]: And it doesn't matter if you're white, Asian, black, Mexican, Latino, you're always thinking about, where do I stand in this whole structure?
21:17
[SPEAKER_01]: but I think it's all societies forced you to do what society does.
21:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Like there is a standard and you follow it.
21:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, back to our earlier point,
21:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I call America like a science fair project and I'm not sure if we're failing or succeeded, but it's definitely an experiment because I'm in Japan right now and even just walking the street, it's like everybody's in a single file line, like everybody follows this rules on the subway, it's quiet and it's like that is the type of social conditioning.
22:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Where's like me, I'm here and I'm like, dude is wearing like, really me.
22:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't walk to the Vietnam, I can just crawl this street.
22:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, but it's like, I didn't grow up in this conditioning.
22:20
[SPEAKER_01]: In America or my day to day now in Vietnam, is it this conditioning?
22:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And, but you see it so much in monolithic cultures where no one really pushes against.
22:33
[SPEAKER_01]: the narrative.
22:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody, like no one argues about fitting in, you just fit in.
22:41
[SPEAKER_01]: But then you start to talk to them and they're like, I don't really like that.
22:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that is not how I naturally would want to do, but I never fought against it or it was instilled in me in a very
23:00
[SPEAKER_01]: even when people come to Vietnam and they're like, think about smacking.
23:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Like everybody, a lot of people smack in Vietnam.
23:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, like, that's just like one of the things I noticed.
23:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I asked myself, well, why don't we smack?
23:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, and it's because at some point, there was something called like etiquette and what is proper, which came from England and like the royal court.
23:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And that had been imposed on us.
23:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Humans, I believe, naturally smack.
23:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Why?
23:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I remember being, yeah, like my mom like chew with your mouth closed or, you know, like you had to be trained to do this, but the training came because there was a standard of if you do something different than you're acting,
23:52
[SPEAKER_01]: different from the pack.
23:54
[SPEAKER_01]: But what makes America different and like why we would never be able to have one identity is because our make up of who we are culturally, how we operate in America, where we live, all of these things are defined.
24:11
[SPEAKER_01]: by all of it.
24:12
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a sum of all of it.
24:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not enough oneness to like create one box for everyone, but yet we try.
24:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we compare ourselves to whatever we believe the box should be, which is typically rooted in whiteness to some degree.
24:32
[SPEAKER_04]: You're I'm a make a lane change here without, um,
24:42
[SPEAKER_04]: It happened to me last weekend, I was with my daughter, but I got to give a little context to the story.
24:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
24:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Many, many years ago, before I got married and before, I really started my family life.
24:56
[SPEAKER_04]: I lived in a neighborhood, I grew up in a neighborhood that was all black and my neighbors were all black and eventually I had a factory, a family factory that was
25:10
[SPEAKER_04]: New Crenshaw and Jefferson and L.A.
25:14
[SPEAKER_04]: The biggest church, the biggest mega church that exists in the city of L.A. is West Angeles.
25:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
25:22
[SPEAKER_04]: And West Angeles has 17 choirs.
25:25
[SPEAKER_04]: And I went to school for music after USC after my undergrad.
25:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I went to school for vocal.
25:31
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm like, I really, really wanted to sing in a gospel choir.
25:36
[UNKNOWN]: Mm.
25:36
[SPEAKER_04]: And Wes Angeles makes you go to four orientation sessions, like every Thursdays for like four times to finally get to become a member of the church.
25:47
[SPEAKER_04]: So I actually went through with this.
25:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Although I didn't believe in Jesus Christ at the time, I was not a practicing Christian in my heart or any of that.
25:55
[SPEAKER_04]: I was just like, I just want to be close to the black community, so I get, and you know, truth be told, you know,
26:04
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, you got John Legend playing there.
26:06
[SPEAKER_04]: You got, you know, Steven one.
26:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
26:11
[SPEAKER_04]: This is a heart of LA, right?
26:12
[SPEAKER_04]: The elite of the elite churches.
26:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
26:15
[SPEAKER_04]: And we churches, you know.
26:18
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the way it happened and I'm this person who's really trying to be mindful of transactional kind of behaviors and I'm very ginger about where I'm showing up in physical life now because I just want to be like very aware of my body, where I'm placing it and so I had to move
26:48
[SPEAKER_04]: the minute I've finished my fourth orientation session the week after I got the news that I have to tear down the factory and I had to move to like a further south of LA, 50 minutes outside of downtown, which is far from the neighborhood that my factory isn't.
27:05
[SPEAKER_04]: So then I lost that opportunity to go to that church, but many, many, many, many, many years now.
27:10
[SPEAKER_04]: I've been really wanting to go to the church, but now I have a daughter who loves this thing like I do.
27:16
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm like, you need to go to that church because I am kind of back in this Christian laying, and this Buddhist laying.
27:24
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm living in both these beautiful lanes.
27:27
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm enjoying that part of my life.
27:29
[SPEAKER_04]: But I want to be closer to a Christian kind of like a body of people.
27:35
[SPEAKER_04]: But if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it with the black community, not the Vietnamese community.
27:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Because that's just sort of where I want to be.
27:41
[SPEAKER_04]: And then, you know, I keep talking to my daughter about it for the last two years.
27:45
[SPEAKER_04]: And then finally, last week, I was like, all right, we're going to go.
27:49
[SPEAKER_04]: And one of my friends agreed to go another Vietnamese guy.
27:52
[SPEAKER_04]: He loves this thing.
27:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Agreed to go with me to the West Angeles black chart.
27:56
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I told my daughter, I was like, Uncle Win said he's going to go with us and my daughter said, do you think that the church will let us be there?
28:06
[SPEAKER_04]: She's not, she's eight years old.
28:09
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I wanted to talk to you about that.
28:12
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like, is it wrong?
28:15
[SPEAKER_04]: that I want to be amongst a black church.
28:20
[SPEAKER_04]: And I want to sing in one of the 17 choirs at that church.
28:25
[SPEAKER_04]: And I have a lot of reasons, a lot of crazy strange reasons why I want to be there.
28:30
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, probably being close to God is the last part of that right.
28:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just kidding.
28:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just kidding.
28:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, maybe it is TV.
28:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't try to get my vibrato again there.
28:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, what a learn harmony from like the greats.
28:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no, I'm a little taller response.
28:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, that's another similarity.
29:01
[SPEAKER_04]: That's another similarity that the Vietnamese and the black culture share is a call in response.
29:05
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, because we do that in fields too in the North.
29:07
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it's something.
29:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Why?
29:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, it's huge.
29:11
[SPEAKER_04]: It's huge.
29:12
[SPEAKER_04]: It's huge.
29:14
[SPEAKER_01]: It's huge.
29:14
[SPEAKER_04]: This call in response business.
29:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's a big thing.
29:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
29:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
29:19
[SPEAKER_04]: What is that all about?
29:20
[SPEAKER_04]: But anyway, so I wanted to get your opinion and put it out there.
29:25
[SPEAKER_04]: I've been really strangely scared of doing it because now I have a daughter and it just seems I bring my entourage in and I just want to make sure.
29:35
[SPEAKER_04]: But there might be a lot of Asian people there too.
29:37
[SPEAKER_04]: A lot of Mexican people have this journey too.
29:39
[SPEAKER_04]: It's in the heart of LA.
29:40
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think one,
29:44
[SPEAKER_01]: This is something that's always interesting to me about church in general, right?
29:50
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, why is this even a question?
29:53
[SPEAKER_01]: But everything is rooted in history is like, if you're coming to church or choir to feel whatever to learn to be connected, like that's the purpose of church, like, it shouldn't matter.
30:11
[SPEAKER_01]: what the audience is who's there, but it does because that's just America, it always matters.
30:21
[SPEAKER_01]: For me, everything is, it depends if you're going in, authentic to who you are, you're not trying to like make money or profit, all of them in a disrespectful manner.
30:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, and then the truth of the matter is black church is very different than any other kind of church.
30:51
[SPEAKER_01]: period full stop.
30:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I know black people would never step foot in any other kind of church because they're like, they don't sing the songs we sing.
31:03
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't they don't feel the way we feel the preaching isn't a full on drama show that happens.
31:13
[SPEAKER_01]: 4 to 2 hours.
31:15
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no fellowship hall with a fish plate after church service.
31:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I, why would I go for donuts and coffee?
31:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, thank you.
31:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I, um, like, it's funny because I recently saw the skit and it literally said, you know, why people don't our God and
31:39
[SPEAKER_01]: like what was this so like what a friend we have in Jesus like Jesus and I for it like we we go to Jesus like lower safe us help us and the interesting part can if I went on I saw that skit and I went on this deep dive on TikTok for oh so again my mom grew up in the 50s we went to a very old school black church when I was growing up.
32:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and I'm like, I don't even know that those churches like that exist anymore.
32:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and I'd listen to the difference of the black church songs from way back in the day versus like commercial Christian music.
32:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think about black songs back in the day is nothing was
32:37
[SPEAKER_01]: It was about, we live in, I know the other side of heaven.
32:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm gonna get my reward in heaven.
32:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm gonna do good here because my reward is in heaven because I already know, like, already know it's not gonna happen in this lifetime.
32:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like, and that was one of, it was like such a deep reflection for me
33:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Black church isn't about, like you said, like, God is the, God is the, like, it's not really the last thing is rooted in it, but it's not the same.
33:14
[SPEAKER_01]: It was about survival, it was about I need to be resilient and I need to lean on something to keep me going for tomorrow and that something is heaven, like I may not see good days here.
33:35
[SPEAKER_01]: but you promise me good days later.
33:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that that's what makes
33:43
[SPEAKER_01]: church like black church music cell spiritual.
33:46
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a feeling like that is something your daughters like going to love because it's deeper than just everything is deeper than just what it is on the surface, right?
33:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that is why black choirs feel so different than any
34:11
[SPEAKER_01]: It's survival wrapped up in lyrics and a church service.
34:16
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's more than just that.
34:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh-oh.
34:29
[SPEAKER_04]: You there?
34:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm saying you said the history is a survival.
34:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
34:36
[SPEAKER_04]: You said the history is survival.
34:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
34:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Yep.
34:40
[SPEAKER_04]: And you know, my brother and I talk about this quite a bit, because we used to watch black creatures on TV, a lot when we were kids, we were just on weekends, fascinating.
34:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we were just glued to the TV, don't we just watch?
34:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know why black?
34:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Will this charge in black?
34:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Creators are so theatrical, do you know why?
35:02
[SPEAKER_01]: No, no, I don't know the reason.
35:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll be on the reason why I went look this up and I'm like, why is Black Church 3?
35:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, I just be wanting to go get my little word and leave like why we're so long, and long story short Black people couldn't read, and so
35:27
[SPEAKER_01]: they would get whatever message from like their slave masters or friends, and they had to make it entertaining.
35:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, Sunday was the only day black people could legally commune together outside of being watched.
35:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why church is so long because you come is for fellowship.
35:50
[SPEAKER_01]: It's to feel, it's like if there's as your, your weekend night out, your blessing that you need to get you through the week a catchup of what's going on in the community and nobody ever stop to say we don't live live like this anymore like we could.
36:13
[SPEAKER_01]: instead we just made programs with the now's like this is everybody on the stick and sure that list let me give you all the announcements and who's in the hospital this week and I'm like we can't email that out right but it's rooted in this history of yeah black people couldn't read you have to find a way to make it
36:31
[SPEAKER_01]: theatrical that typically only preached one sermon and that was like Jesus on the cross.
36:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why that part of the sermon is always like he died, right?
36:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's like there's always this Climactic scene is because of that.
36:48
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, that makes me want to go watch sinners all over again, you know, it gives it a whole new meaning now, I mean, I kind of always suspected that, but I mean, now just, you know, officially wanting to kind of re-context like a movie like sinners, you know, that's why.
37:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Somebody tonight actually right before dinner sent me this thing who's like we're talking we're debating about money and he's like did you watch did you like that movie centers?
37:18
[SPEAKER_04]: I said I loved it and he said not me and he's this conservative you know a friend of mine who's a conservative and he
37:27
[SPEAKER_04]: probably didn't get it.
37:28
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think I need to sit him down and, you know, maybe break break down what Ryan Kubler had in mind.
37:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, what's happening there, you know, because it's a, it really is, you know, you need to, the context to understand what makes that movie so powerful.
37:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, yes.
37:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and, and I think that when I think about you being in Vietnam and living in Vietnam indefinitely and spending a year in Hanoi now in Saigon, you know, it's so fascinating to me.
37:59
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, first of all, I'm like really envious and jealous of you that you get to do it and I don't get to do it.
38:06
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, what is going on here?
38:11
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, but I can't imagine what you think about in your daily life as you're contending with these eyeballs that have never seen or really never understood, like they can't understand the context of like this black American woman being in Vietnam amongst them.
38:31
[SPEAKER_04]: They have no idea what this, you know, what it even means.
38:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
38:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Some people don't even, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends on the, it depends
39:08
[SPEAKER_01]: already.
39:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And I like, and I never thought of it that way.
39:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, there's definitely a difference between Hanoi and Saigon.
39:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to get to talk to him.
39:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, tell me about that from your perspective.
39:23
[SPEAKER_04]: What is like the difference between Hanoi and Saigonese people?
39:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Hanoiants are
39:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I will call them observing before they let you in.
39:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And some people like to use the word cold and mean, I call it, they just watch very careful.
39:47
[SPEAKER_01]: They're slow to trust.
39:49
[SPEAKER_01]: But once you show that you're consistent, they, and it takes a good 90 to 120 days.
40:03
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're gonna be slow, okay?
40:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Where is my self when I'm dating up?
40:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Somebody from the North.
40:12
[SPEAKER_03]: I gotta remember this was 90 to 120 days back then.
40:14
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's not legit.
40:17
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a way back in manufacturing before you had been a fifth kickier.
40:21
[SPEAKER_01]: You shot good fish.
40:24
[SPEAKER_03]: about 180 days is for the benefit of the state.
40:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, great.
40:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Great.
40:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and then inside on, there's just a more fringeliness and openness from the surface and they read energy quickly.
40:39
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you have good energy, it's received and then reciprocated right away.
40:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So it right away.
40:50
[SPEAKER_01]: right away and it's no matter they're older, younger, there's these security guards in front of my Airbnb that I stayed in for one month and immediately the uncle would like see me in way and then every day it was a wave, then it was a high five one day he asked me that I want to
41:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I left, like, to go to Hanoi for two weeks, I came back the day that I actually met you.
41:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I stated that Airbnb and all of his friends got so excited to see me again.
41:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I was leaving, they all walked all of them.
41:29
[SPEAKER_01]: All four of them walked me to the Uber, one loaded, the luggage, one was waving.
41:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, but then Hanoi that would happen just in 120 days.
41:47
[SPEAKER_04]: What's funny, you caught a fight, is you need a hundred and twenty days, you really do, but you know what, that's very similar to the North and the South and America, you know, I'm not talking about South America, I'm talking about the South of the South of the right, correct, correct, yeah, it's just two different systems, you know, people in the North east are very different than people in the South, it's just the way it goes.
42:20
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's very, it's all as very similar to people in New York, you know, they won't.
42:24
[SPEAKER_04]: They don't trust you right away.
42:25
[SPEAKER_04]: It takes quite a bit of time, but you know the people in New York.
42:30
[SPEAKER_04]: The people in New York and the people in Hanoi actually look at the south, like, I feel like they look at the south and they're like, okay, we like being here, we like being in California, we like being in Saigon, you know, they do like it.
42:44
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that, but it's harder for like Californians or people in South Vietnam to exist more comfortably in Hanoi or for California to exist comfortably in New York.
42:56
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a lot harder.
42:57
[UNKNOWN]: Correct.
42:58
[SPEAKER_01]: It is, and I think it's one thing that stuff, but it's harder for this talk to go north yet.
43:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think one thing that always, I'm very cautious on how I answer, because everybody is so confused of why lived in Hanoi and the automatic assumption is like, oh, you move to Saigon to escape Hanoi and I have to make it very clear, I love Hanoi.
43:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And, um, I don't want anybody to ever like assume that narrative for me and I want to create a different narrative for other people that annoying isn't what you think it is.
43:47
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just different than what you
43:52
[SPEAKER_01]: think SIGON is a how you experience SIGON.
43:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And I try to make that very, very clear.
44:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's so interesting because when I go North, they talk about the people in the South.
44:05
[SPEAKER_01]: South, they talk about the people in the North.
44:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like I'm in both group chats, and I should be in neither.
44:10
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm like, since I'm both, I'm a correct say for me.
44:17
[SPEAKER_04]: That's so funny that we're talking about this right now.
44:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I feel the same way you do about the North.
44:25
[SPEAKER_04]: I actually feel not at home, but I like it more than being a second.
44:33
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think I've just been going to second on my, you know, last 25 years of my life.
44:37
[SPEAKER_04]: And I, I never felt.
44:41
[SPEAKER_04]: I never felt at home in Vietnam because I'm born in the U.S.
44:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I've never felt at home in the U.S.
44:49
[SPEAKER_04]: But I feel a certain connection with Hanoi though.
44:52
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, there's a mystery to it that feels like,
44:56
[SPEAKER_04]: There's, there's love for you there, but, but the love is on reserve, right?
45:01
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just, there's, there's a reservation about the love, but it's there.
45:04
[SPEAKER_04]: You know it.
45:05
[SPEAKER_04]: And there's this deep mystery to, like, uncovering it and, and digging it up.
45:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Whereas when you're in Saigon, it's just so welcoming that you're like, oh, I'm just coming over my uncle's house and there's like 20 uncles and ants there and we're just chilling and it's, it's good.
45:20
[SPEAKER_04]: It's comfortable.
45:21
[SPEAKER_04]: My brother lives in Saigon.
45:23
[SPEAKER_04]: When I go to the north, it's,
45:25
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, the land of where my mother and her family side, they're from Bucknan.
45:30
[SPEAKER_04]: So I have a certain connection to the North and I enjoy the culture.
45:38
[SPEAKER_04]: But it is, it's like a place that takes a long time to give back, but when it starts giving back, there's a richness to the giving back of, as a whole.
45:50
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a rich place.
45:51
[SPEAKER_00]: That's rich place.
45:53
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
45:55
[SPEAKER_04]: it's a rich place.
45:57
[SPEAKER_04]: But it's almost like, you know, I'm going to do another transition on you here with the whole with the whole bad bunny thing.
46:02
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, when you're listening to all that stuff in Spanish, you know that there's something here, there's like a lot of like.
46:10
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a lot of treasures to be kind of checked out here.
46:14
[SPEAKER_04]: And there's imagery and symbolism and, you know, I mean, basic thing is he gave that Grammy to this kid, that five-year-old kid that got locked up by ICE, you know.
46:23
[SPEAKER_04]: And if you start breaking down the, all the things of that show, you start to see all the symbolism of, you know, the way we live in LA, you know, Mexicans and Latinos and nightnicker, or Aguins and Guatemalaans,
46:39
[SPEAKER_04]: amongst each other with black folks and Asian folks and Korean folks and there's a beauty to that whole bad bunny thing that it's like well you might not understand it because it's in Spanish but but that is the beauty of the United States and the NFL thing is in a fellow experience.
46:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that the beauty of like when you can fit and observe from the lens of
47:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's, that's what Vietnam does for me.
47:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I get to sit and I'm like, oh, y'all allow, we allow too.
47:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you're yelling at that kid.
47:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what you say, but I know that tone of voice, right?
47:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I know what that means.
47:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, oh, you call your cousins like basically your early best friends and little sisters and brothers
47:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So do we, right?
47:39
[SPEAKER_01]: The village raids you, late.
47:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember growing up the neighbor, got me off the bus, right, gave me a snack before my mom got home from work.
47:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, like I see those similarities are I hear it in stories when my Vietnamese friends share their stories from when they grow when they grew up and I'm like, oh, these things are very, very similar to like black American Southern culture and I would say maybe when I was growing up in the 90s because
48:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's black America evolves.
48:21
[SPEAKER_01]: It evolves towards whiteness.
48:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what scares me, because there's no more like you can't just discipline people's kids anymore.
48:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't tell a kid stop.
48:35
[SPEAKER_01]: because then I might get punched in the face or like some of those things are going away.
48:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And I tell my mom, because she loves to tell some kid, pull your pants up, boy, or you know, you're not coming out this house looking and I'm like, you can't tell these kids that these days, right?
48:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, they, we are evolving to fit into mainstream America and being in Vietnam,
49:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Just reminds me of what we've lost and the thing that I hope we continue to like hold on to, but it's getting really hard.
49:16
[SPEAKER_04]: speaking of holding on to certain things, you know, a lot of Vietnamese people grew up in the south or black neighborhoods and they speak with a black affect.
49:30
[SPEAKER_04]: They, what is it the A, V, E, A, A, V, E, F, A, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E
49:45
[SPEAKER_01]: know with A, A, B, but I don't know, can.
49:49
[SPEAKER_04]: English vernacular in English, maybe, and maybe in American vernacular English, sure, right?
49:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and, you know, we are not shaking that way of speaking because some of us feel like that is our right to speak that way and I used to think that too, you know, but at some point,
50:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, there is a, a beauty to, uh, the people, the Vietnamese people that are, you know, on Instagram that, you know, like we, we just talked about somebody from Baton Rouge, um, so young girl, she's got six kids, uh, Nina, right, bad Nina, yeah, that is Nina.
50:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that is Nina, and you cannot, if you close your eyes, you cannot, there would never be a way that you guess that that person was Vietnamese, but here we are, here we are with somebody who's like, really into this, um, and sometimes I'm like,
50:59
[SPEAKER_04]: How is that even possible now, a day is that we can still stay within that way of speaking, but there's a lot of people that do it and have no shame, and I mean, yeah, it's no different than so Louisiana had his own unique accent in general, right?
51:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's start there.
51:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Like New Orleans, I have a different accent than Baton Rouge, I have a different accent than Lafayette, and our accents, as a collective, is different than the Southern accent.
51:32
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of that is rooted in just history and AAV and the other influences on how we speak.
51:43
[SPEAKER_01]: You speak, however, whatever environment you grew up in.
51:49
[SPEAKER_01]: With Nina or anyone else, I don't think they are,
51:52
[SPEAKER_01]: forcing it.
51:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It is just what they sound like.
51:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
51:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And for me, my speaking has evolved because I put myself in different spaces that has forced me to evolve because nobody understood what I was saying.
52:12
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not even a black or wiping.
52:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I literally went to an HBCU right next door in Texas and I showed up in my very thick
52:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, because we say different words like instead of soda, we say cold drink, we say could that light off and it like you want to get said there's like what I'm not understanding what you're talking about right like just little
52:53
[SPEAKER_01]: When we hear that our first instinct is to say, are they trying to act black or the audience sound like that?
53:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do you sound ignorant?
53:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, nothing is ever as it seems on the surface.
53:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything is nuanced.
53:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes it's not even that deep, right?
53:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just that grew up in the neighborhood.
53:16
[SPEAKER_01]: This is how they sound.
53:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And they never left that neighborhood.
53:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is how everybody else around them speaks.
53:23
[SPEAKER_01]: and that's the ends right for me I still hold on to it because for me that's the language of my ancestors right my ancestors didn't sit in formal English class and learned grammar and not using double negatives because I feel like we we we we love a lot of
53:51
[SPEAKER_01]: structurally so incorrect, but it's like no one sat them down to teach them a language that wasn't theirs in the first place and I'm going to still speak that too and I also know I need to speak this other
54:12
[SPEAKER_01]: who told in accent to and it's not, is not co-switching for me because co-switching means like, I'm going to try to change who I am or lead parts of me outside.
54:25
[SPEAKER_01]: know it's about communication and effective communication is about how do you clearly articulate and whatever best way possible to get your message across to the other person, the other person is the audience.
54:39
[SPEAKER_01]: So that other person need me to speak a little more one way from me to tell my other point, then that's what I'm going to do because I maneuver through different worlds and different
54:51
[SPEAKER_01]: spaces and Vietnam I speak way slower and people like you speak really slow we understand it's like I'm speaking like this because I know English is not your first language I know it is like to learn another language and when people speak Spanish to me at a hundred words per hour I don't understand nothing they say
55:10
[SPEAKER_01]: right and i'm like so i do the same thing because i know your processing time maybe a little more lag because it's not your first language and i'm doing that out of courtesy and so we can have a productive conversation i don't normally speak this slow
55:27
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, my daughter and I were driving in the car with my son, the three of us were in the car the other day and I think it could have been the the episode with you and me, but the word acts came on and then my daughter asked me,
55:42
[SPEAKER_04]: What does Ax mean?
55:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, why did that?
55:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Why did that?
55:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Why was it pronounced that way?
55:47
[SPEAKER_04]: And we turned off the episode.
55:49
[SPEAKER_04]: We went straight to chat to BT and we typed in, why is it come out Ax?
55:56
[SPEAKER_04]: And you know what was really surprising?
55:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Ax was the original ask of the British old school hundreds of years ago.
56:04
[SPEAKER_04]: It was
56:06
[SPEAKER_04]: actually a vestige, a surviving word that got trickled down, and
56:13
[SPEAKER_04]: for some reason, the black Americans kept it, and it was actually the proper English.
56:20
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's, wow, mind blowing to like, here this kind of self, right?
56:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Because we look, we took the time to look it up and that's what, I mean, it could be wrong, Chad, you'd be the gorilla, but they broke it down.
56:33
[SPEAKER_04]: It was like really detailed, you know, intricate door acts was the original ask.
56:40
[SPEAKER_04]: because it was much, I don't know why it changed, but it was different.
56:44
[SPEAKER_01]: What you can argue that amongst all the dialects of Vietnamese, right?
56:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
56:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Like there's always some history behind why like, why is it z's in the north then use in the south or I like, I don't know what I'm sure.
57:03
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a story.
57:05
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a
57:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And just like people have a very, I think that's the interesting part, like when you get to own your own history, people in Vietnam fight against which dialect is right or wrong, but there's a pride in it versus in America and black people their shame is speaking a certain way and I'm like, no, there's I'm still going to hold this with pride, right, again, because this is the language of my ancestors.
57:37
[SPEAKER_01]: same way a southern tongue versus northern tongue or is which dialect people choose to learn is because I learned this cuz it's my mom so I learned this because it was my grandma's and no one changed it but it's because if Vietnam is all just Vietnamese and no one even though
58:05
[SPEAKER_01]: which one is proper versus nuts?
58:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody owns their own.
58:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the Southern people, they're proud to be Southern.
58:14
[SPEAKER_01]: They'll correct your northernness.
58:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Vietnamese.
58:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas in America, there's just like narrative around what is proper English and there's just one type of proper English and everybody should fit the proper English.
58:28
[SPEAKER_01]: But you talked to a person from Boston.
58:29
[SPEAKER_01]: They sound different to somebody from Chicago or somebody deep from the Bronx in New York.
58:35
[SPEAKER_01]: It's definitely different to somebody from Louisiana and all of that exists but none of it gets labeled.
58:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of it gets labeled as shame.
58:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of it gets labeled as all that's your regional accent and it again goes back to who controls the narrative.
58:51
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
58:51
[SPEAKER_04]: And then when you think about the Vietnamese American diaspora, when they look at Obama, and they think about Michelle and Barack Obama, the nuances of having a black man with a Kenyan father growing up in Hawaii or growing up in Indonesia,
59:12
[SPEAKER_04]: complicated.
59:14
[SPEAKER_04]: But we don't see that in the Vietnamese American diaspora.
59:16
[SPEAKER_04]: We don't think about these nuances and we know Michelle comes from Chicago and working class and you put these two together.
59:24
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, okay, they look like black Americans, but clearly, Barack is not part of this whole experience.
59:34
[SPEAKER_04]: He's not like, that's not who he is.
59:38
[SPEAKER_04]: And you know, I think that this is the deep problem I have sometimes in my community is that, you know, we don't get down to the nuances, the essence of like what we're looking at sometimes.
59:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And you know, I think.
1:00:05
[SPEAKER_04]: these primate bodies and with their face.
1:00:10
[SPEAKER_04]: And I, you know, it just, my heart sank.
1:00:13
[SPEAKER_04]: And I wanted to really talk about that because what?
1:00:18
[SPEAKER_04]: is that about, if we put a white face on a lion, if we put a white face on a gorilla's body, like what is the difference in that sort of suggestive imagery or that symbolism?
1:00:35
[SPEAKER_04]: What are we talking about here?
1:00:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think probably my thought would be if you put a white face on a,
1:00:46
[SPEAKER_01]: animals body no one would care right yeah because there is no history there of white people being called animals or being treated as less than humans there is no constitutional rule where we were only even considered one
1:01:08
[SPEAKER_01]: with eighth one, I don't even remember the number anymore of a person, right?
1:01:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we weren't even considered fully human, right?
1:01:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Because there was a part of this narrative of us being animal-listic and strong people and we were for the field, then that carried on to produce thoughts around, we should fear black people and sell the results of
1:01:35
[SPEAKER_01]: the image, even if it's the same, you know, black person on a body of an eight or a white person of body of an eight, when you look at those images, it evokes two different emotions.
1:01:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's because of, it's because of history.
1:01:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and I think when I,
1:02:01
[SPEAKER_01]: One, you know, I fully accept that living Vietnam and I've tried my best to unsubscribe for most of whatever is happening in America because it's too much and it makes you, it makes you wanna lose hope.
1:02:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, the season where my hope is for humanity is restored and my hope for humanity doesn't lie in the hands of America anymore.
1:02:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I think in America, I gave up hope.
1:02:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's why these things, this image didn't surprise me.
1:02:41
[SPEAKER_01]: It just was, oh, it's another day.
1:02:44
[SPEAKER_01]: It is disappointing that there is a sitting president, no matter if he created it or not, shared it or not, he put it out there.
1:02:54
[SPEAKER_01]: and it sparked this outrage and then I saw all of these posts of like, is Black History Month.
1:03:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Why would you do this to another president and it just, I think really what it may mean to think about is the the invisible weight that any
1:03:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Probably personal color, but definitely black people carry once you reach a certain level of success that's been defined by American standards.
1:03:32
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also this falseness of people who maybe haven't reached it or don't understand that once you get there it goes away and really once you get there is magnified and I learned that fortunately or unfortunately, I don't know which one it is at a very young age I was 23.
1:03:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was living in Panama City, Florida.
1:03:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It was my first full-time job as an engineer at a plant.
1:04:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Panama City is very white.
1:04:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was on a beach side, which is even lighter.
1:04:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And you get these vacationers, therefore spring break.
1:04:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And at this time, there was maybe a few incidents
1:04:27
[SPEAKER_01]: men boys went and like dirty like through thing that through a fit and like a burger king or like these restaurants right like trash to store.
1:04:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I went to CC's with my family.
1:04:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I was with my mom, my aunt, my niece, nephew, and baby because then they came to visit me.
1:04:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And they, I was so excited because of the first time I'm like, I'll pay for the bill.
1:04:56
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why we went to CC's because that was all I was going to pay.
1:04:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, I got this, I work now, like, I get to pay the bill and I pay the bill and I even show them my badge because we get a discount there and I go to sit down to eat and there's like a bug in my satellite and I go and I like look for the manager to tell them and the guys like, oh, he's on his smoke break, he'll come back and so I'm standing there waiting.
1:05:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And time goes by, I'm like, well, where, when is he coming?
1:05:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And now I'm getting like a no way and a long story short at the manager comes and he's like, well, what do you want me to do?
1:05:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's like, because I'm not giving it to you for free.
1:05:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, that's the, that's the least you can do of like, there's a book crawling like an I just got here.
1:05:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's like, no, you can just leave.
1:05:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, what?
1:05:53
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, I'm going to call the police.
1:05:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, excuse me, and he calls the police and four police officers show up to escort me out of six these pizza.
1:06:06
[SPEAKER_03]: God.
1:06:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was the day I mourned and I agreed the fact that it and like I had two engineering degree that this point I'm working this job, I'm in this leadership development program, the only black person in it.
1:06:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And because there is this thing of like, oh, you make it here, your life gets better or you don't deal with these things.
1:06:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, I want the CC's piece of pay.
1:06:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, 50 bucks from my family to eat.
1:06:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And for police officers, four, four showed up to escort me out of CC's pizza.
1:06:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, we need, like you don't have engineered degree or status, like tattooed on your forehead, none of this matters.
1:06:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And all the days like I just had to like remember none of it matters and it makes me think of like when Michelle Obama says things like when they go low you go high It's because we're all in trend like we're trying to just say I work in our impact and being in these spaces is bigger than the aggression of our their micro our macro
1:07:21
[SPEAKER_01]: that is gonna show up and we have to train ourselves to build this armor to say, okay, it's just another day.
1:07:31
[SPEAKER_01]: This shouldn't surprise me, but what can I do to keep going?
1:07:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think when I saw that, it's just like just another reminder of we haven't.
1:07:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if we will, right?
1:07:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even call it a struggling anymore.
1:07:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I've fully accepted that, and we talked about the church early at our group, Christian deep in the church.
1:08:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And one thing the Bible even talks about is like the purpose of foundations, right?
1:08:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And the importance of having a solid foundation.
1:08:12
[SPEAKER_01]: The foundation of America was built on hate, rape, slavery, stolen land,
1:08:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we put artwork over it, instead of rectifying what actually happened, and we called it like the EI or we, you know, develop these like a firm in it.
1:08:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Whatever we decided to call it to kind of rectify, we haven't even had a country.
1:08:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's a band-day.
1:08:47
[SPEAKER_01]: No one speaks the foundation.
1:08:51
[SPEAKER_01]: went into repair that.
1:08:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're just building on top of it.
1:08:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's why this whole, we're now here to talk about Donald Trump, but like, his following, because they had just been silence.
1:09:05
[SPEAKER_01]: They had been hidden behind the artwork.
1:09:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And Donald Trump just came down and took down our work.
1:09:12
[SPEAKER_01]: It said, I'm going to expose us for who we really are.
1:09:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think our eyes got adjusted to the paint and the cosmetic work that was done.
1:09:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it just all came down at one time.
1:09:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And now we're surprised when really I'm like, I'm not.
1:09:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and I think that's why living in Vietnam is healthy for me because it gives me hope in all of humanity and an unsenther's my hope from America, um, and then you realize you start to normalize certain things.
1:09:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
1:09:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Like every country got their own stuff, right?
1:10:02
[SPEAKER_01]: America just looked way different for a lot of reasons.
1:10:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe if I can understand how it works here, I can do my little part of giving back to America.
1:10:16
[SPEAKER_01]: But sometimes you've got to step away.
1:10:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I had to step away from it.
1:10:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's why we see these news things.
1:10:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, well, I can't not today.
1:10:25
[SPEAKER_01]: But you see it, right?
1:10:26
[SPEAKER_01]: No matter if I go look forward or not,
1:10:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It's always on my timeline is always right there for me to scroll and witness and it's just another reminder of
1:10:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we thought that this is in who we are, but it's just who we are.
1:10:44
[SPEAKER_04]: It's really who we are.
1:10:46
[SPEAKER_04]: It's really who we are.
1:10:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Whitney, I always appreciate spending time with you.
1:10:52
[SPEAKER_04]: This is the third time we've spent time.
1:10:55
[SPEAKER_04]: And I want to continue this ongoing conversation with you, check in every few months, having
1:11:03
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I know that your perspective will start to kind of like transform as you stay in country longer.
1:11:09
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm here for, you know, a second year, and you're going to be in Saigon for the next year.
1:11:15
[SPEAKER_04]: So I want to hear all about your experience and your growth in Saigon.
1:11:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Kenneth, that truly appreciate it all, Ace.
1:11:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
1:11:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you for listening to The Vietnamese with Kenneth Wynne.
1:11:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Wynne, Catherine Wynne, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie, and Crystal Tran.
1:11:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at The Vietnamese Podcast.