U.S. can be safe for all: Teach compassion

Ihad posted this on my Facebook page and had so many people request that I share it. Thank you to all who have reached out to us this week to check in on us because of the recent events that have led to surges of violence against Asian Americans.

It is hard to ignore and dismiss all the devastating incidents COVID-19 has brought upon us. It is even harder to grasp the devastation brought upon the Asian American community due to the mockery and dehumanizing slander that has been thrust upon us in the past year, instilling fear and frustration in our daily lives.

My parents emigrated from Vietnam after the war with literally nothing and had to start over in a foreign country where they knew no one and didn’t speak a word of English. Life was hard for them with three little children and very little help from the community.

Thus, they were just grateful they were given the opportunity to start anew and perhaps live the American dream through assimilating and adopting a new culture. Little did they know racism, discrimination and social inequality are also a part of their American dream.

I was brought up in a suburb of Texas and was made aware daily of my unusual features as well as my refugee status. I was constantly bullied for looking different. At the time, we were the sole Vietnamese family in the community, and the only exposure people had to us was what was going on through the media about the war and fleeing refugees.

It didn’t matter how hard I tried to fit in. I was never going to look, speak or be American enough to be accepted among the other kids. I remember in grade school I was cornered in the restroom and held in a headlock by a redheaded girl who was twice my size. No one stood up for me, not even the school principal.

My parents were called in and told that I must have provoked the girl. It made me so ashamed for wasting my parents’ time. I didn’t want to take the time away from my parents while they were working to put food on the table and clothes on our backs. After many similar incidents, I came to realize that

staying silent and making myself invisible would make me less of a target — thus, not bringing shame to my family for getting called to school.

Being Vietnamese immigrants in a foreign country, we did not want to ru±e anyone’s feathers and just wanted to blend into our community.

Never in a million years could I imagine reliving all the horrible things I endured as an immigrant child. I’ve had over 47 years to navigate the struggles of being Asian American and have come to embrace my ethnicity.

My children, on the other hand, struggle day to day with being “different.” My son works at Starbucks and was told by a customer that he “didn’t want the Chinese boy to make his coffee,” as if he could catch COVID-19 from a barista through coffee. My other son wears hoodies and hides behind sunglasses so he doesn’t expose his “Asian” features. I hope and pray that someday they will have the confidence to be Asian and prideful enough to embrace their ethnicity. As a parent, I am frustrated and even more intolerant of the racism, discrimination and injustices that have made their way into our daily lives. This is our reality. This is the cruel world we live in.

As painful as it is to see all the racial injustice and inequality that still exists today as it did then, I am still hopeful of a brighter and better future for my children. By raising awareness, we are not only teaching our future generations the importance of kindness toward Asian Americans, but kindness, respect and compassion toward all people. We have to show our children how critical it is to come together to make our community and the United States more inclusive, equitable and safe for all. Please take the time to be kind and empathetic toward each other and not pass judgment before we know someone’s story, someone’s pain and someone’s hardship.

Barbara Nguyen-Tran, a Vietnamese refugee who came to the U.S. in 1978, has lived in Dallas, Los Angeles and now resides in Albuquerque. She has owned and operated a nail salon in Santa Fe for over 25 years.