What's In A Name
By David Steffen
The news was grim this week. Time stopped. Not for all, and not (necessarily) here on the coast, but once again time stopped. Tuesday was expected to be, well, Tuesday. We all had things to do, places to go, people to speak with, letters to write, meals to prepare, calls to make. Check our texts, emails, see what’s going on. And yet, Tuesday changed. There was a headline, but perhaps not the one you’re thinking of.
Mike Nguyen is undergoing treatment for lymphoma, his second bout with cancer. I don’t know him but I wish I did. Mr. Nguyen owns the Noodle Tree restaurant which sits across the road from the San Antonio campus of the University of Texas. In early March Mr. Nguyen was interviewed on CNN about Texas Governor Greg Abbot’s decision to lift the mask mandate in the Lone Star State.
As a restaurant owner concerned about the spread of the Covid virus, Mr. Nguyen wasn’t pleased. So he spoke his mind. Publicly. Let’s see, he’s a cancer survivor, a restaurant owner, and a concerned person. His name suggests he or his family emigrated to America from Asia. I don’t know if he was born in Bangkok or Baltimore, and I don’t care. Yet I must admit he was a victim of the crime, perpetrated by those following the teachings of the former president, known professionally as #45. Mr. Nguyen objected to the Texas governor’s callous disregard for simple, sound principles during a pandemic. And that’s when the shit hit the fan. Members of the cult of those who follow the teachings of their dear leader, #45, decided to attack Mr. Nguyen by trying to destroy his business.
The story by Andrea Salcedo appeared in the Washington Post on Tuesday, March 16:
On the day after Mike Nguyen found the racist slurs covering his restaurant’s windows and patio tables, he saw the best and the worst of his community at once. People came out to help clean up after his San Antonio ramen shop was vandalized on Sunday, following his national TV appearance last week in which he condemned Gov. Greg Abbott (R) for lifting Texas’s mask mandate. In response to the interview, the Asian American chef and owner was flooded with death threats, one-star online reviews and harassing messages.
For the moment I’ll choose to not assume that every single one of #45’s followers are racist, xenophobic, ethnocentric, nationalistic, jingoistic, isolationist, prejudiced, intolerant, parochial, insular bigots. That being said, I’m afraid I am inclined to believe that the majority of them embrace one or more of those descriptives. Consider the words painted on the windows and the outdoor countertops of the Noodle Tree restaurant: “Kung Flu.” “Commie.” “Hope you die.” “Ramen noodle flu.” “Go back 2 China.”
The cult of 45’s racist activists should bother all of us. We don’t all live in San Antonio, and it’s unlikely most of us can drop what we’re doing and head to Texas to show some support. The Post story continued, “But after his business was targeted, college students, neighbors, patrons, fellow business owners and local officials told the 33-year-old restaurant owner they were not going to tolerate ignorance and hate. . . . 'Yesterday started off very negative, but the positive is that it showed the unity'” Nguyen told The Washington Post on Monday. “Even though we have a division in Texas, I’ve had people on both sides of the stance say, ‘This isn’t right.’”
In May, 1977, my wife Dolly and I were sort of fortunate that we happened to be staying at a hotel in Century City, California. For those who are not certain just where this ‘community’ is let’s just say that, in large part, it sits on what once was the Twentieth Century Fox film studio. After dinner, a friend of mine, Barry Gross, took us on a quick drive-through tour of the remaining Fox studio backlot. He stopped the car in an area among Fox’s sound-stages, and invited us to get out of the car for a moment. He pointed north and told us, “Do you see the cars on the road up there? During the filming of ‘Spartacus’, thousands of slaves came charging down from that road—Santa Monica Boulevard—toward where we’re standing right now.” They were actors of course, and I’m not certain if Barry was absolutely correct, but one could actually visualize the slaves coming right down the hill to conquer Barry’s Mercedes sedan. In any case, across the street from our hotel was a movie theater, and it was showing the premier of a new film. The next day we bought two tickets and sat down in a nearly-empty theater and watched “Star Wars”. As almost everyone knows, the film opens with the “floating” narrative: “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.”
I tell you the tale of “Star Wars” meets “Spartacus” because as I’m writing this, my thoughts returned to our daughter. Dolly and I went through a number of ‘journeys’ on our way to parenthood, and our years of perseverance were rewarded with the birth of our daughter (pictured here). We didn’t actually know about her at the exact moment of her birth. For all we knew she might be coming to us from a galaxy, far far away, but in March of 1988 we learned she had arrived. Sort of. Caitie was born in Korea and we were thrilled she was going to be ours. Six months later we flew to Seoul, spent four days there, and returned home on a Korean Air flight to Los Angeles as a family. About 10 months later our adoption was legally complete. Fast forward, Caitie graduated from USF and is creating a successful life for herself in the Bay Area. Honestly, while I think of her every day, I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about her. And yet . . . .
. . . . Here we are in 2021 and we find that #45, a proven racist, misogynist and xenophobe, has given license to so many formerly-closeted racists, misogynists and xenophobes everywhere, encouraging them to let it all out. Obviously none of them have dared to look into their own family lineages to discover they’re from Poland, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Germany, France, Greece, Britain, Mexico and elsewhere. Unless your family can trace its roots to one of the many true native Americans, the indigenous Americans from New York and New England, from the Trail of Tears to the Dakotas, or Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Utah, California or from other states, then you and your family, too, are ‘imports’, the progeny of immigrants. Transplants. Foreigners. Settlers.
For those who also may have read about Mr. Nguyen on the 16th, when you woke up on the 17th you were greeted with another atrocity, another massacre. With three separate stops a supposedly sentient-being drove to three Atlanta-area businesses and killed eight people, six of them with Asian-sounding surnames like Tan, Feng, Yue, Yaun, Park and Kim. These last two names struck closer to home with me than the others. Both Kim and Park are common family names in Korea.
The bigotry and worse unleashed by #45 cannot be tolerated. We must all resist the natural instinct for self-preservation. We cannot remain quiet. No one is safe with a former president who has proven his anti-women, anti-immigrant, all white agenda. As Maya Angelou reminded us years ago, “When someone tells you who they are, believe them”. We know what he is.
Somewhat ironically this week, on the same day as the massacre in Atlanta, 172 Republicans in the House of Representatives, voted against a simple reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. Perhaps they just didn’t connect the massacre as an example of violence against women. The bill, with all of the Democrats (supported by 29—perhaps enlightened Republicans), passed the reauthorization, but when it gets to the senate the Republicans there will undoubtedly also vote against reauthorization, or they may decide to filibuster.
Spread the word. From San Antonio, to Atlanta and beyond, racism, misogyny and xenophobia exist here in the land of e pluribus unum. It is unlikely that we can eradicate these biases in our lifetimes, but we can at least help begin the journey to a more perfect union.
