Viet Thanh Nguyen: Even as one branch of Asian American culture goes corporate & representational, another branch follows Edward Said’s insights and connects East/Southeast Asian “Orientals” to Arab “Orientals.” Hence, to be Asian American is also to decolonize & align with the Palestinian cause.
Said himself, in ORIENTALISM’s conclusion, connects the Vietnam War to American Orientalism & dissects western media’s representations of Muslims in a way that shows a complete parallel to how the Vietnamese are represented. Gooks then, Muslims now, fulfilling the same function.
Impossible to watch the IDF bombing and shelling Gaza and not think about American war strategies in Viet Nam, carried out in utter disregard of Vietnamese life and not caring to distinguish between combatants and civilians.
And blaming the Vietnamese for the conditions that the Americans created, as Israel is blaming the Palestinians for making the IDF bomb and shell them, a ludicrous argument that a lot of western media is just repeating.
In sum, one cannot be anti-racist without being anti-colonial and decolonizing. For Asian Americans not to see our common cause with other oppressed peoples means that we are not genuinely anti-racist. We’re just self-interested.