As we reflect on the major news events of 2006, one of the most prominent headlines were the recalls of a multitude of Chinese-made consumer products and stories that questioned the overall safety and quality of goods made in China. With these events in mind, should American consumer boycott all products made in China to force Chinese companies to improve and clean up their act?

Undoubtedly, many Americans from all kinds of racial/ethnic, cultural, and political backgrounds are already doing that. However, a recent editorial in the Christian Science Monitor describes one family’s reason why they stopped boycotting Chinese-made products:

Our boycott wasn’t about politics or product safety. It was an experiment to measure the connections between my little family and China’s booming export economy. We wanted to know if we could shake free of China in our lives as consumers – and whether we even wanted to.

The boycott upended our lives. Our son pined for Chinese-made light sabers and monster trucks. We placated him with Danish Legos. Broken appliances could not be repaired or replaced. Our son’s sneakers cost nearly $70 when our only alternative was tennis shoes from Italy. . . .

But in 2005 I had learned that . . . self-reliance, at the level of the family and the nation, is a thing of the past. Nobody relinquishes independence without a fight. But that is what we have done, quietly and irreversibly, in turning to China and the rest of the world for so much of what we want and need at the bargain prices we have come to expect.

The boycott taught me something else: that I did not want to turn my back on China. I’m not minimizing its huma rights record or abuse of the environment, but I believe the solutions to those concerns and others lie in turning toward China, rather than away. . . .

I will keep reading recall notices, but I won’t toss China from the house completely. And when I watch my son step onto his new skateboard and take his first tentative glide, I will imagine him sailing toward the rest of the world, rather than away from it.

As I said, many Americans have very valid and passionate reasons for boycotting things made in China and I am not here to denounce or criticize their choices. However, as I’ve written before on promoting democracy and human rights in communist and/or totalitarian regimes around the world, I believe the most effective strategy is not to boycott and isolate those nations, but to engage them, just like the editorial describes.

Engagement does not mean that we ignore their abuses or failures and just pretend that everything is business as usual. Rather, engaging a totalitarian regime means keeping their abuses and failures in the spotlight, pressing them to improve their record, and integrating them into the international community where public pressure will likely lead to gradual, not overnight, improvements.

As an example, I’ve railed against capitalism many times in the past for the evil social consequences it brings, like rising social inequality. However, as many academics have pointed out, capitalism has also helped to facilitate popular democracy movements throughout history as well.

In other words, the world is rarely a cut-and-dry, black-or-white, moral-or-immoral proposition. There are lots of gray areas and lots of nuanced aspects that can produce positive and negative outcomes for certain groups. Whether it relates to capitalism or to China as a whole, we need to accentuate the positives and use them to gradually reduce the negatives.

That is why I support engagement over boycotting China.

How has recent news and media coverage about China’s economic rise combined with negative publicity about its unsafe consumer goods affected its overall image around the world? To shed light on that question, the well-respected Pew Research Center says that in most countries, China actually has a better public image than the U.S., although there is a general downward trend of China’s image over the years:

In 27 of the 46 nations plus the Palestinian Territories, opinion regarding China is decidedly favorable; in just five countries are views of China significantly more negative than positive. By comparison, opinion about the United States is favorable in 25 of the 47 countries; but decidedly negative in many more countries – half or more of the publics in 18 countries express disapproving views of the United States.

China’s fans are most prevalent in the neighboring Asian countries of Malaysia (83% favorable), Pakistan (79%), Bangladesh (74%), Indonesia (65%), as well as in most African countries. . . . While global opinion of China remains mostly positive, it has soured somewhat in recent years – though not as widely as have attitudes toward the United States. . . .

The largest declines are observed among of China’s Asian neighbors (Japan, South Korea, and India), but significant slippage is also seen in Western Europe (Britain, France, Germany, Spain). . . . In 32 of 46 countries surveyed, China’s increasing military muscle is viewed with alarm.

Ironically, in addition to some of China’s biggest admirers being other Asian countries, other Asian countries are also its biggest detractors — Japan, India, South Korea, and Indonesia in particular (although for the last three, more of its citizens still have a positive attitude about China than a negative one).

What seems to be more troubling for China is that its image is clearly experiencing a downward trend — in 10 of 19 countries with longitudinal data, China’s image has fallen since 2002, with Nigeria being the only country in which China’s image has improved since 2002.

What I find most interesting is that the fears that many around the world have about China is not its growing economic power, growing thirst for oil, concerns over the quality of its consumer goods, nor its environmental record. Instead, the biggest fear is its rising military strength.

Granted that China has a million-man army and nuclear weapons, but unless I’m completely missing something, China has not been throwing its military weight around by threatening countries left and right, or by invading sovereign nations and overthrowing their governments, correct?

So I guess what I’m saying is that I’m slightly confused why people around the world, especially those who are not China’s regional neighbors, say their biggest fear about China is its military strength. If somebody can elaborate on that for me, please feel free.

The recent troubles concerning the quality of Chinese products has undoubtedly hurt the reputation of all Chinese companies. But what about India? In many ways, India lags behind China in terms of economic development and still experiences high-profile incidents of bad publicity, but should these shortcomings suggest that all Indian companies are inferior?

This question is at the heart of an emerging controversy in the corporate world. First, Ford Motor Co. is selling off one of its most prized and prestigious subsidiary units — Jaguar luxury cars. Two of the most serious potential buyers are Indian corporations. As Time magazine reports, the possibility that Jaguar will be owned by Indian companies has many people predicting doom and gloom for the brand:

A group of U.S. Jaguar dealers said they opposed the possibility that Ford, Jaguar’s owner, might sell the British luxury car brand to an Indian firm. . . . The dealers said that the sale to an Indian company would hurt Jaguar’s image.

“I don’t believe the U.S. public is ready for ownership out of India of a luxury car make,” Ken Gorin, chairman of the Jaguar Business Operations Council, told the Wall Street Journal. “And I believe it would severely throw a tremendous cast of doubt over the viability of the brand.”. . .

A few days later Indian Hotels, which owns the luxury Taj hotel chain and is itself a branch of the Tata empire, was told its overtures to New York Stock Exchange-listed luxury hotel and cruise firm Orient-Express were unwelcome — and potentially damaging. . . .

Many Indians shared Kumar’s sense of outrage. Commerce and industry minister Kamal Nath warned that, “There cannot be any discrimination against outward investment from India.” In an era of globalization, he said, “trade and investment [is] a two-way street.”. . .

Both Orient-Express and Jaguar’s Gorin emphasize that their judgments were based on business strategy alone. . . . “My concern is perception,” [Gorin] said. “And perception is reality.”

If people like Gorin want to talk about perceptions, by all means, let’s do so — the perception that Jaguar or any other “luxury” brand will be damaged if bought by an Indian company is about as blatantly ignorant, prejudiced, and racist as you can get.

It is nothing less than another ugly form of racial profiling — prejudging someone, some group, or an entire country based on biased perceptions and broad generalizations.

I find it rather ironic that “White corporate supremacists” like Gorin and Orient Hotels CEO Paul White (what an appropriate name) conveniently ignore the fact that Indian companies such as Tata, Mahindra & Mahindra, Indian Hotels, United Breweries Group/Kingfisher and others have become so successful and powerful despite their alleged “inferior” brand image, especially considering an “all-American” owner like Ford basically ran Jaguar into the ground under their ownership.

Ultimately, blaming one’s racist views on “consumer perception” is just a cop-out. It would have been better if people like Gorin and White would have just come out and said “Whites should not have to work for a bunch of third-world Indians” — at least that would have been more straightforward and honest on their part.

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Update: On January 3, 2008, Ford Motor Company picked Tata Motors (one of the two Indian companies bidding) as its top pick to buy its Jaguar and Land Rover subsidiaries.

Second Update: On march 36, 2008, Tata Motors’ purchase of Jaguar and Land Rover for $2.3 billion was finalized and officially announced.

I’m not exactly sure how many CEOs in the Fortune 500 there are, but I’m pretty sure it’s rather small, with just one Asian American female among that list. Whatever that number is, it just grew by one as Indian American Vikram Pandit was recently named as CEO of CitiGroup, one of the largest and most powerful financial services corporations in the world:

Citigroup Inc. named Vikram Pandit, the head of its investment banking business, as chief executive Tuesday, after searching five weeks for someone to restore the bank’s profitability and reputation. . . .

Pandit faces multiple challenges. He must not only attract more cash to offset Citi’s debt and bulk up the bank’s risk management, but he also needs to strengthen Citi’s lackluster consumer-oriented businesses and clean up its reputation. . . .

Rubin said after Prince’s resignation that the search committee was looking for someone to focus on Citigroup’s “multiplicity of businesses” and with “a strong international focus.”

Pandit, though he spent his childhood in India, has little experience with banking abroad. His strengths are his decades on Wall Street and his analytical mind. . . .

Some see [Pandit’s] lack of flash and pizazz as a drawback, though to others, a cool, quiet demeanor in the top spot could be just what is needed at a company often criticized as arrogant.

I’m not a Wall Street analyst, so I can’t really speculate on how well Pandit is likely to do as CitiGroup’s new CEO. However, as an Asian American, I am glad and encouraged to see that the corporate world is apparently becoming more open to promoting Asian Americans into top executive positions.

It will take many more executives like Pandit to break through the glass ceiling barriers that in many ways, still limit the advancement of many Asian Americans into the often opaque realm of corporate leadership. Nonetheless, this is a very positive step in that direction and I wish Pandit the best.

This post does not relate specifically to Asian Americans per se, but nonetheless it centers on an issue that is certainly important to me and can have implications for all kinds of racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious groups.

One of my core principles as a sociologist and a social scientist is that I want my academic research to have some kind of relevance and application to the “real world.”

That is, instead of just conducting research and publishing it in obscure academic journals that few people outside academia read, I want to disseminate my academic knowledge to a wider, more popular audience and to use it to help address real world issues and problems. That is one of the reasons why I started this blog in the first place.

In fact and encouragingly, more and more social scientists feel the same way. But as Time magazine reports, one particular program of “applied social science research” is creating quite a controversy inside and outside of academia — using social scientists to help the U.S. fight terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq:

Two years ago, the CIA quietly started recruiting social scientists, advertising in academic journals and offering princely salaries of up to $400,000. But . . . in September, Washington turned a pilot project called Human Terrain Teams into a full-fledged, $40 million program to embed four- or five-person groups of scholars — including anthropologists, sociologists and social psychologists — with all 26 U.S. combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[S]ome preliminary reports are encouraging. From Afghanistan, the 4th brigade (82nd Airborne Division) reported a 60-70% drop in attacks — and a dramatic spike in capture of [suspected terrorists] after anthropological advisers recommended redirecting outreach from village elders to focus on the local mullahs. One mullah was reportedly so moved after being invited to bless a restored mosque on the nearby U.S. base that he quickly agreed to record an anti-Taliban radio ad. . . .

In the wake of the colossal mishandling of the Iraq occupation, this new partnership manifests the military’s renewed appreciation of the importance of culture. . . . Montgomery McFate, a Navy anthropologist, [was an] early advocate of what she says is best described as anthropologizing the military, not militarizing anthropology.

Yet many in the profession contend that any collaboration of this nature compromises their field’s integrity. Anthropology deployed under such circumstances will become “just another weapon…not a tool for building bridges between peoples,” argues Roberto Gonzalez, an anthropologist at San Jose State University and member of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists.

I spent some time thinking about programs like this and trying to decide whether I think they are a good thing or a bad thing for the academic disciplines involved and for American society in general.

On the one hand, I would say that it’s beneficial for social scientists to get involved in these efforts because they can fulfill the fundamental professional mission I mentioned above — using their expertise to address an important social issue and to produce the most benefits for the most people possible.

On the other hand, it would be a negative thing for social scientists to engage in if their efforts basically amount to a “more effective method of killing people,” to put it bluntly. That is, depending on how you choose to see it, their knowledge can basically be used for the purpose of perpetuating war and the taking of human lives.

So ultimately, when it comes to the question of whether programs like this are good or bad, I think my answer is that just like life in general, the final answer is not a simple binary of good/bad, yes/no, or moral/immoral. At the risk of sounding like a cop-out, there are both positive and negative aspects to it, like the rationales I just mentioned.

But if I had to pick one side of the argument over the other to support, at this point, I would agree with Prof. McFate’s position that I quoted above, that programs like this are about “anthropologizing the military, not militarizing anthropology.”

In other words, if used effectively and properly, the expertise of social scientists can indeed help people who may initially be on different sides of the war — U.S. troops and Afghan or Iraqi civilians or tribal/religious leaders.

The U.S. would get culturally competent knowledge about how to best relate to the native population in order to effectively communicate and build interpersonal connections with them. The native population could also feel that their needs, issues, and concerns are genuinely being heard, understood, and incorporated into the actions of the U.S. military operating in their neighborhoods.

Of course, like I mentioned above, critics would point out that the assistance of social scientists is ultimately just being used to promote war and killing. I respect that opinion, but I choose to see a more nuanced point — that terrorists who target the U.S. military, generally speaking, are likely not to have much concern for the native population civilians as well.

Therefore, if the terrorists see both of these groups as enemies or at least expendable casualties of war, the native population has a right to join efforts to oppose such terrorists. With that in mind, the U.S. military and the native population can work as allies, not in opposition or suspicion of each other.

After all, if sociologists say that we should use our expertise to help solve social issues, we have two very important social issues in front of us in this particular situation: (1) terrorism against the U.S. military and against Iraqi and Afghan civilians and (2) the U.S.’s tragedy of miscalculations in invading Iraq in the first place and multitude of failures in actually making life better for Iraqis thereafter.

If we as sociologists can lend our expertise to help address these two very real problems, I would say that it would be an appropriate opportunity to do so.

In the end, I know that people will have strong opinions on both sides of the issue, and I am not here to condemn anybody for what they feel or believe. At the same time, I hope people can respect my opinion that there are different ways in which social scientists can apply their expertise to help solve social issues.

Even if that means that some people will inevitably die, I would rather have those people be terrorists who indiscriminately target everybody who disagrees with them and who distort the doctrines of a just and honorable religion to suit their extremist views.

I might have generally liberal views but that doesn’t mean that I should overlook the fact that the question of whether terrorists have legitimate grievances needs to be separated from the manner in which they try to address those grievances. In other words, the ends do not justify the means.

That’s where sociologists and other social scientists can be useful — in helping different groups of people recognize that not everything is cut-and-dry, black-and-white. Instead, every question and every goal have their own subtle and specific points that need to be addressed respectfully, thoughtfully, and competently.

As China continues to industrialize, the BBC News reports that rates of juvenile crime have been on the increase as well:

Juvenile crime is increasing rapidly in China and becoming a serious problem, Chinese experts have warned. The number of young offenders had more than doubled in 10 years, officials told a Beijing seminar. The offenders were getting younger, forming larger gangs and committing a greater variety of crimes, one academic said.

Social change, China’s one-child policy and the internet were all partly to blame for the rise, the experts said. . . . These included theft, assault and rape, but also 22 new categories of crime linked to fraud and the internet.

Part of the problem was the breakdown of families caused by migration, Mr Liu said. In hundreds of thousands of rural families, children are left with elderly relatives or friends while their parents travel to cities in search of work.

Shang Xiuyun, a Beijing judge specialising in juvenile crime, suggested China’s one-child policy could also be to blame. With most families having only one child, the children were under greater pressure than in the past, China Daily quoted the judge as saying.

I don’t specialize in China or criminology, but my take on this issue is that yes, migration and pressures to succeed are probably part of the problem, but the underlying cause of both of these factors is capitalism and the incessant drive to become rich, which has apparently enveloped much of Chinese society.

In all fairness, many Chinese who leave their rural villages to find work in urban factories are doing it for economic survival, not necessarily because they expect to get rich. But my point is that since the Chinese government basically opened the floodgates to capitalism, this fundamental change has led to greater economic inequality, and as any criminologist will tell you, to more crime.

I’m not necessarily saying that China should go back to an entirely communist economic system, but I am saying that within a communist government system, China’s leaders have the power to control or at least limit economic inequality — and as such, juvenile crime — if they actually want to do so.

But that wouldn’t be capitalistic, would it?

One theme that I’ve written about, and that I think is very likely to become more common and prominent in the coming years, is how Asian Americans are increasingly using their cross-national social and professional networks to facilitate cultural or economic endeavors in Asian countries, most likely their country of origin (or that of their ancestors). As one example of this, the Los Angeles Times reports on the growth of a U.S.-style college in China that was created by a Chinese American:

Nine years ago, [Shawn] Chen launched SIAS International University with less than $2 million, 250 students and a healthy dose of gumption. Today, the school has more than 16,000 students and nearly 50 buildings — including a Roman amphitheater, French and Italian restaurants and an administration hall with a domed Capitol-like facade on one side and a Forbidden City tableau on the other. A swimming stadium, with an Olympic-size pool, is rising amid lotus and wheat fields.

The school’s faculty of about 700 includes 119 foreign instructors, mainly from the U.S. They teach English, history and literature and help students with debate club, cheerleading and marching band — things unheard of in this country. . . .

Chen went to the United States in 1985 and got a master’s degree in education at Linfield College in Oregon. After attending a typical no-frills, monochrome college in China, he basked in campus life in the Pacific Northwest. . . . Chen was so taken by American culture he named his children Brandon and Brenda, after the two characters in the early 1990s TV hit “Beverly Hills, 90210.”

In California, Chen made money trading lighters, shampoos and steel doors from China. With two partners, he paid $2.7 million for the four-story Best Western in 1996. Chen says the idea for SIAS came naturally as he traveled between China and the U.S., making contacts and building relationships. . . .

Chen saw the need — and the business opportunity — while serving on the board at three Chinese high schools in the early 1990s and organizing exchange visits between students in Chongqing and San Gabriel. He went on to arrange similar trips for government officials from China and California.

In 1996, he called a few friends and they put together a 20-page business plan. Chen took it to Henan, one of China’s poorest provinces and the most populous. Henan officials were hungry for investment.

This story is a great example of the kind of new Asian American identity that I’m talking about — Asian Americans using their cross-national cultural ties to achieve success for both sides of their identity — Asia and America. In the process, and for once, their “foreignness” is an asset, rather than a liability.

I predict that examples of this will only become more common as the world and American society both continue to become more diverse, globalized, and transnational, with Asian Americans leading the way in connecting Asia with America.

As we all know by now, China has been in the news recently mainly because of a rash of consumer recalls involving products made in China that were unsafe and potentially toxic. However, before these particular concerns became front page news, you might remember that China had been in the news because of recurring allegations of spying and espionage. Well, as CBS News notes, a new report recently brought this issue back into the spotlight:

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission also said in its annual report to Congress that small and medium manufacturers, which represent more than half the manufacturing jobs in America, “face the full brunt of China’s unfair trade practices, including currency manipulation and illegal subsidies for Chinese exports.”. . .

The report comes about a year before U.S. presidential and congressional elections, and candidates have been critical of what they see as China’s failure to live up to its responsibilities as an emerging superpower. China often is singled out for its flood of goods into the United States; for building a massive, secretive military; for abusing its citizens’ rights; and for befriending rogue nations to secure sources of energy.

U.S. officials also recognize that the U.S. needs China, a veto-holding member of the U.N. Security Council, to secure punishment for Iran’s nuclear program and to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. . . .

The commission also faulted China for keeping its currency artificially low. American manufacturers have long complained that Beijing’s low currency makes Chinese goods cheaper in the United States and American products more expensive in China. . . .

The report also described what it said was China’s tight control over information distribution, not only to manipulate its own people but to influence its perception in the U.S. That could endanger U.S. citizens if reports on food and product safety and disease outbreaks are affected.

It looks like China-bashers have another reason to cry foul and to blast China.

As I’ve said in the past, it is certainly true that in many ways, China needs to clean up its act, literally and figuratively. Its record of human rights abuses is well known, as are its continuing difficulties and issues in regard to censorship, environmental protection, and trade practices — all of which the new report confirms. Therefore, I am not necessarily disputing the specific points of contention in this report.

Instead, as a sociologist, I would like point to the larger socio-cultural context of reports and criticisms like this. Specifically, as other observers will probably tell you, China is not the only country in the world in the world who artificially undervalues its currency, or has problems addressing its environmental impact (we don’t need to look any further than our own country for that), or engages in human rights abuses.

China’s distinction, and the reason why it gets disproportionately more criticism than other countries, is because the U.S. increasingly sees China as a threat — politically, militarily, and economically. And whenever anyone, or any country, feels threatened, instinctively they lash out at the perceived threat. So what happens on the individual level can also happen on the international level.

We should all expect these kinds of criticisms and tensions between China and the U.S. to get worse before they get better.

One common theme in many of my posts is the fact that as we move forward into the 21st century, the U.S. is becoming more and more diverse — demographically and culturally. As proof, New American Media points out that Asian surnames, particularly the Vietnamese name Nguyen, are becoming increasingly common:

Smith is still the number one family name in America. Yet 29 of the top 1000 family names (2.9 percent), according to the Census Bureau, are Asian-derived names. You can see on the list the major impact that APA immigration and birth rates have had on family names in America.

For the first time that anyone can remember, a non-Anglo Saxon name made it to the top ten. Garcia and Rodriguez are in the top ten, and Martinez almost edged out Wilson for tenth place.

The Lee family name, ranked 22 on the list, was split between 37 percent Asian Pacific Americans (mostly Chinese and Korean Americans) and 63 percent non-APAs. With 605,860 total Lees in America when the count was taken, there must be 224,168 APA Lees amongst us.

Almost three percent of Youngs were listed as APAs, but the most predominant APA surname was Nguyen, which was 57 on the list (310,125 Americans have this last name, or 225 of every 100,000 Americans). . . .

Yes, it is still true that about one in 25 Americans is a Jones, Johnson, Smith, Miller, Williams, Brown or Davis. But if current trends continue, they may soon be trying to keep up with the Lees, Kims and Nguyens.

This updated Census data provides pretty convincing proof that American society in indeed becoming much more diverse. There shouldn’t be any disagreement there. The debate comes in regarding the question of whether these demographic and cultural changes are beneficial for American society.

Earlier I posted about a comprehensive study from a Harvard professor that argued that contrary to most liberal beliefs, increasing levels of racial/ethnic diversity is associated with less civic engagement and social trust.

However, I also posted about ways in which particular communities around the country, rather than denying or running away from such changes, have addressed these demographic and cultural changes going on around them directly, in one prominent example, using religious similarities as the “social glue” to integrate newcomers into their community.

As I wrote in that second post, “traditionalists” who decry such demographic and cultural changes can only run and hide from them for so long. Sooner or later, unless they decide to retreat permanently into the woods or some other environment that involves being completely isolated from other humans, they will come face-to-face with the effects of this social evolution.

With that in mind, it may be more difficult in the short term to try to address such changes constructively, but as the example of the church in Georgia shows in my post mentioned above, the benefits are much more direct and tangible, both for the particular community in question, and for American society in general.

One of the recurring themes within Asian American Studies and from Asian American scholars is the notion that, perhaps ironically, in order to truly understand the entire Asian American category, one must first recognize and understand each of the unique ethnic groups that are included within that larger category. As an example of this, Diverse Education reports that the University of California system is expanding the selection of Asian ethnic groups that students can choose in order to better identify the characteristics of each group:

The University of California is expanding the categories undergraduate applicants use to self-report their ethnicity as part of an effort to collect and better report the “complexities” of its Asian American and Pacific Islander students. It will become the first public institution of higher education in California to collect and report data specifically on Hmong, Filipino and other Asian subgroups.

“The data UC collects are a reflection of how well we are serving the diverse people of California,” said Dr. Judy Sakaki, UC’s vice president for student affairs. “My goal is for improved data reporting to spur greater accountability regarding overlooked populations in our student body.” Next year’s undergraduate application will include 23 Asian American and Pacific Islander categories, up from the eight that are currently recorded.

The “Count Me In” campaign, a student-led crusade to get the University of California system and the state to disaggregate data so that the needs and challenges of the various Asian subgroups aren’t overlooked, played a role in UC’s decision as did calls from UC faculty for richer research data and state legislative interest.

Through aggregated data, Asians are often portrayed as academically, socially and economically successful. But in a report released last summer, the federal Government Accountability Office warned that the “Asian” umbrella masks the underperformance of some Asian subgroups, like Vietnamese and Native Hawaiians.

As UC noted in its announcement Friday, a closer look at the Hmong community in California shows that 66 percent have less than a high school degree, compared to 23 percent of all California adults.

This is definitely a positive step in the right direction and I applaud the University of California system for implementing this change, and everyone associated with the “Count Me In” campaign for working to make this important change a reality.

As many media organizations report, the FBI has released their data on hate crimes reported in 2006 and the official statistics indicate that all hate crimes are up 8% from 2005. However, as this article at CBS News mentions, the real numbers of hate crimes committed is almost guaranteed to be much higher:

“It’s unfortunate that the numbers went up by almost 8 percent, but the truth is the FBI Hate Crimes statistics severely undercounts the number of hate crimes that we have in the United States every year,” [Heidi Beirick of the Southern Poverty Law Center] told CBS News. That’s because only 12,600 of the nation’s more than 17,000 local, county, state and federal police agencies – roughly three-quarters – participated in the hate crime reporting program in 2006.

In addition to only about two-thirds of law enforcement agencies reporting their data, as any criminologist will also tell you, another big reason why the true number of hate crimes committed is actually much higher is because only about a third of violent crimes and 40% of property crimes are ever reported to law enforcement by their victims.

Therefore, taken altogether, the real number of hate crimes actually committed (as opposed to reported to law enforcement agencies) is likely to be over 30,000 incidents a year. Overall, it’s not an encouraging picture or trend.

The Vietnamese American community is one of the fastest-growing Asian ethnic groups in the U.S. Many scholars would also say that based upon their refugee experiences and their relative recent arrival into the U.S., Vietnamese Americans also have one of the highest levels of ethnic solidarity of all Asian groups as well.

Much of their social cohesion centers around their ethnic enclaves in the two largest metropolitan areas with the largest Vietnamese American populations: Orange County and San Jose. As articles from the Los Angeles Times and San Jose Mercury News describe, both these Vietnamese American enclaves are poised for some upcoming changes: the Orange County one is debating plans to add New York City-style high rises while the San Jose one adopts a controversial official name:

About the Orange County Little Saigon:

Imagine what would happen if New York City-style development came to the heart of Orange County’s Little Saigon, now a jumble of mom-and-pop shops in mostly old strip malls. Lofts would sit atop high-end stores. People would lounge at outdoor restaurants and sidewalk cafes. The area would have hotels and a sculpture garden.

And the street of old newspaper and TV offices would become the “Vietnamese American Times Square,” complete with plasma screens and electronic headline news signs. That’s the ambitious vision put forth by a group of land-use experts to transform the area, home to the largest concentration of Vietnamese Americans in the country. Little Saigon has not lived up to its potential as a tourist spot, the group says, and it’s going to take a lot of money, cooperation and faith to get it to the next level. . . .

Community leaders have long worried that the three square miles that make up the district would slowly decline as the second and third generations of Vietnamese families moved away.

And regarding San Jose’s Vietnamese American enclave:

In a dynamic and dramatic scene before one of the largest crowds to ever gather at City Hall, the San Jose City Council on Tuesday designated a busy hub of Vietnamese-owned businesses “Saigon Business District,” enraging several hundred people who stormed City Hall demanding the name “Little Saigon.”

Throughout the night the boisterous crowd of mostly “Little Saigon” supporters shouted and booed, forcing Mayor Chuck Reed to repeatedly tell the crowd to “calm down, calm, down,” and council members to defend colleague Madison Nguyen, who proposed the name “Saigon Business District.” . . .

Nguyen, the first Vietnamese woman elected to office in California, proposed the name “Saigon Business District” as a compromise, she said, for dueling factions in the Vietnamese community who wanted either Little Saigon or New Saigon. . . . Nguyen’s proposal infuriated many of her constituents. “We will not forget those who break our hearts and we will remember those who honor the Vietnamese-American community,” said Van Le, a “Little Saigon” supporter. . . .

Nguyen said the area should have its own identity – separate from other Little Saigons. And business owners prefer that the name have “business district” in it. “Little Saigon” is opposed by the Story Road Business Association and the San Jose Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which has members in the area.

As you can see, there are certainly elements of controversy regarding both of these proposed changes, particularly debate between Vietnamese Americans as different sides tout their own vision of what their community should look like, or even be named.

As a Vietnamese American myself, I know better than to choose sides in either debate at this point. For now, as a sociologist, I will point out that issues surrounding land use actually play a very vital part in terms of maintaining social solidarity among a particular cultural group. In other words, for any group to maintain cohesion, it helps to have a physical space that can serve as a central focal point.

Within this physical space, more concrete mechanisms serve to maintain ethnic identity — social organizations, churches, political offices, businesses, residences, an official name, etc. These elements form the basis for any strong ethnic enclave and the “Little Saigons” in Orange County and San Jose are no different.

In addition and in the case of a refugee group such as Vietnamese Americans, their original homeland was “taken away” from them by the communists at the end of the Viet Nam War, so the physical spaces of these ethnic enclaves also serve as a “temporary” (in the eyes of some Vietnamese refugees) or even a more permanent replacement for their original homeland.

With this in mind, when there are proposals to change any of these elements, not only is the physical characteristic of such enclaves subject to change, but so too is the nature and strength of the existing ethnic solidarity placed at risk as well.

That is why you already see a lot of contention surrounding the different questions in each of these Vietnamese American ethnic enclaves — not only is the nature of their physical space subjected to change, but so too is the fundamental nature of their ethnic identity.