{"id":5059428,"date":"2024-09-05T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-05T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malatinonews.com\/?p=5059428"},"modified":"2024-09-05T07:30:00","modified_gmt":"2024-09-05T11:30:00","slug":"little-saigons-vietnamese-community-feels-misrepresented-overlooked-by-mainstream-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/maln\/2024\/09\/05\/little-saigons-vietnamese-community-feels-misrepresented-overlooked-by-mainstream-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Little Saigon\u2019s Vietnamese Community Feels Misrepresented, Overlooked by Mainstream Media"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In partnership with Boston University students, Where Mainstream Media Fails is a four-part series highlighting critical issues in underserved communities across Boston that have gone underreported. This series comments on how mainstream media continues to ignore or misrepresent Boston\u2019s racially and ethnically diverse communities. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each piece is merely a starting point for MA Latino News\u2019 reporters, and hopefully other Boston-centered newsrooms, that inspires a deeper dive into complex issues that uniquely impact diverse and historically underrepresented communities across the city.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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PART 4:\u00a0<\/mark>FIELDS CORNER’S VIETNAMESE COMMUNITY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Vietnamese-American community has long been a thriving force in Fields Corner. They have raised families, built businesses, and transformed a busy Dorchester Avenue stretch into Little Saigon\u2014a diverse district, rich with cultural experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, aside from cuisine and a smattering of events, the city\u2019s Vietnamese community has been largely invisible in local news. Coverage has been lacking on pressing social issues and is often misrepresentative of the rich cultural experiences of the people who call the area home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, news reports center mostly on the food, with little depth on the Vietnamese-American people who have transformed that area, according to an analysis of media reports and interviews with Asian-American civic and political leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn terms of the day to day, I would probably say it\u2019s pretty rare to find any kind of coverage of the Vietnamese community,\u201d said Tri Tran, former co-chair of the board of the Vietnamese Community of Massachusetts. \u201cAnything specific to Fields Corner, anything specific to the Vietnamese community has been minimal, I would say, unless there\u2019s something extraordinary of note to mention.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, many Vietnamese immigrants found refuge in Fields Corner. They transformed the area\u2014building homes and new businesses\u2014and became an essential part of the community. Vietnamese-Americans are 75% of the Asian American population in Dorchester, according to Vietnamese American Initiative for Development, a nonprofit, community-building organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, the neighborhood is home to more than 13,000 Vietnamese residents. Fields Corner holds the fifth-largest Vietnamese population in the U.S. In 2021, the Little Saigon District was officially recognized as Boston\u2019s fourth-cultural district.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite this official recognition, media coverage has generally ignored key issues that affect the Vietnamese community in particular, such as housing, healthcare, and city policies that affect residents\u2019 daily lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Local news coverage of the neighborhood\u2014including in the Boston Globe and other prominent outlets\u2014is often incomplete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The neighborhood newspaper, the Dorchester Reporter, has provided adequate coverage of the Vietnamese community. However, local leaders have emphasized that there is a lack of Asian American journalists covering the community, which means their issues often don\u2019t get pushed to the forefront. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to a 2021 study<\/a> by the Asian American Journalists Association, Boston is one of 13 designated U.S. market areas that underrepresents AAPI people. The study also notes that Boston\u2019s WFXT\u2014a local news channel affiliated with FOX\u2014has no Asian American on-air staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A multipart series by WGBH, called The State of Race, is one example. While the project highlighted \u201cBlack and brown\u201d disparities, it only included one Asian American expert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The harm of such underrepresentation assumes that the Vietnamese community has few disparities worth reporting, local leaders say. News coverage impacts local studies\u2014if issues like adequate housing and civic services go uncovered, then policies will correspondingly neglect these issues, said UMass Boston Law Professor Andrew Leong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Larger media outlets are also often late in their reporting of Little Saigon. For instance, Khoa Pham was appointed to his position as a former city liaison to the Vietnamese community in 2016 but didn\u2019t receive coverage until a year and a half later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These oversights and delays suggest that \u201creporters wouldn\u2019t cover anything that wasn\u2019t hot off the press and didn\u2019t want to attend the civil meetings,\u201d said Pham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Suggested Article:\u00a0<\/mark><\/a><\/strong>Some Latinos in East Boston Feel Forgotten<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lack of Political Representation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minimal political representation is largely responsible for the lack of media coverage on Fields Corner\u2019s Vietnamese community, according to Tran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tran said other communities have been able to rally around Boston lawmakers\u2014such as City Councilors at-Large Ruthzee Louijeune, who is Haitian American, and Julia Mejia, who is from the Dominican Republic. But there has been no Vietnamese person elected to the council. In fact, Tram Nguyen, who was elected in 2018 to represent the 18th Essex District, was the first Vietnamese American woman elected to the state\u2019s House of Representatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Vietnamese community is the only major community in Boston that doesn\u2019t have political representation,\u201d Tran said. \u201cI\u2019d probably attribute the lack of coverage to that, as well. And that also attributes to the Vietnamese community\u2019s kind of unassuming, low-key role within the city.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This lack of Vietnamese representation may be a key reason for Fields Corner\u2019s low voting turnout, which has been a longstanding issue within the community, said Tran. She added that the community hasn\u2019t found a political candidate to unite around\u2014at least, not yet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Vietnamese community in Fields Corner hasn\u2019t really found someone yet to be that standard-bearer,\u201d said Tran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pham added that civic participation can be a challenge for many Vietnamese residents in Boston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cComing here, fighting gentrification, fighting cost of living, and just trying to make ends meet, and you don\u2019t get a chance to participate,\u201d said Pham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Signage for political candidates outside A.C. Farm Market, a Vietnamese grocery store in Fields Corner. None of the shown candidates are Vietnamese. Photo by Mitch Fink.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Lack of Disaggregated Data<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leong said a lack of sampling data on the community is responsible for underreporting in healthcare and other matters in the Vietnamese community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need to disaggregate much better in order to make sure that we serve our different communities in different ways,\u201d said Leong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He highlighted a 2022 study, Data from the 2020 Decennial Census and American Community Survey, from UMass Boston\u2019s Institute for Asian American Studies as an example of how researchers are still aggregating data on the Asian American population in Boston.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019re not teasing it out,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re not disaggregating for folks in Chinatown versus in Fields Corner.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leong said specificity is important to understand the unique needs of a particular community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said he would like to see more coverage on the effect of harmful chemicals on Vietnamese men who work in floor refinishing businesses and on Vietnamese women who run and work at nail salons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leong added that media coverage has commonly mentioned or focused on the local Vietnamese community when it is related to negative events. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leong mentioned an assault involving actor Mark Wahlberg that occurred in Dorchester in 1988. Wahlberg assaulted two Vietnamese men while trying to steal beer and explicitly insulted them with Asian slurs. This incident, which sent one of the men to the hospital and Walhberg to prison, is representative of some of the violence faced by the Vietnamese community in Fields Corner. At the time, hate-motivated crimes were closely connected to the refugee resettlement process, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI remember specifically going on one of these local television programs\u2026and talking about this particular incident,\u201d Leong said. \u201cBut that informs you, when do we actually have a voice? When shit hits the fan right, when violence happens, when hate happens.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Today, the neighborhood is home to more than 13,000 Vietnamese residents. Fields Corner holds the fifth-largest Vietnamese population in the U.S. Photo by Mitch Fink.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Life on the Line and the State of Race<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the past decade, three major stories on race and poverty documented key social justice issues in Boston. But they each lacked Asian American voices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2011, a Boston Globe team chronicled poverty in Boston that featured the struggles of George Hyunh, then in high school, and his brother as they dealt with poverty while being raised by a Vietnamese mother who did not speak English. But besides the brothers, there were no other voices explicitly from the Vietnamese community in the series or that highlighted the AAPI community directly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hyunh, who now leads the Vietnamese American Initiative for Development (VietAID), participated as a teenager and now looks back at the coverage with some discomfort\u2014although he and the reporter, Billy Baker, became friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure what to say about our representation there and how accurate it was,\u201d Hyunh said. He didn\u2019t understand why his story was important and had to be convinced to participate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another multi-part series of in-person and virtual forums about racial issues, \u201cThe State of Race\u201d was produced in a partnership between GBH News, the Boston Globe, and NAACP Boston. The project includes more than 10 subtopics, including \u201cEnvironmental Justice,\u201d \u201cThe Latino Housing Crisis,\u201d and \u201cEquity in Business Ownership.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But issues important to Asian American residents were not mentioned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leong said he feels \u201cThe State of Race\u201d highlights the \u201cerasure and invisibility of the Asian American communities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Leong, Boston Globe Reporter Shirley Leung is one of the only Asian American voices represented in the series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said he sees a circular relationship between the media and the data on Asian American communities. \u201cIf they\u2019re underreported, they\u2019re underserved,\u201d said Leong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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VietAID, a community non-profit in Fields Corner where George Huynh is Executive Director. Photo by Mitch Fink.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hope for Little Saigon<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Huynh and Annie Le are two new faces of Vietnamese leadership in Fields Corner. While certain coverage has improved in the area since May 2021 with the establishment of the Little Saigon Cultural District, both Huynh and Le have visions for future coverage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Passionate about preserving and promoting Vietnamese culture, Le is the board president of Boston Little Saigon. In the past, she noticed the media would cover the Vietnamese in Fields Corner when it was related to crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel like the media covering Dorchester as a whole focused more on the negativity than on the positive that was happening,\u201d said Le. \u201cThere used to be a lot more coverage about shootings and crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Le would prefer to see \u201cmore coverage around the policies that affect us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VietAID Executive Director Huynh said he has noticed more positive coverage of the community when Asian-American journalists report on the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Huynh highlighted a 2021 Boston Globe article by reporter Deanna Pan that covered a self-defense course at VietAID in response to recent attacks on AAPI elders. Huynh said the article accurately showed how Asian American students often feel overlooked and left out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Huynh said he would like to see coverage around youth activism in the community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt would be great to cover some of the actions that our community is taking to foster a new wave of young leaders whether in the community, youth development, and climate resilience work,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pham, Fields Corner\u2019s Former Vietnamese community liaison, hopes to see more consistent coverage of the community, such as local organizations\u2019 efforts to provide residents with food assistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvery day, I see people waiting in line for hours just to get some groceries, like basic needs for them, especially the elderly community. But you know, that is not something that you would see in the media,\u201d said Pham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This story was reported and written by Boston University students Mitch Fink, Frankie Puleo, Audrey Tumbarello, and Ella Willis. It was first published in Sampan.org. The students were participants in the Fall 2023 Race and Gender in the Media Class in the College of Communications. Photos are by Mitch Fink.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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