Coast’s Vietnamese community rallies for Trump in Biloxi. ‘We don’t like communism.’
More than 100 Vietnamese Americans, some from the Coast and others from across the United States, stood together in Biloxi on Wednesday for a rally to support President Donald Trump.
Waving U.S. and the Republic of Vietnam flags, the men and women wore Trump hats and bright red T-shirts. Some wore face masks with the stars and stripes of the American flag and the yellow and red stripes of the RVN flag.
“Four more years,” they chanted before parading in their cars down U.S. 90.
The rally, held at the Latimer Community Center, was the Biloxi pit stop where Coast supporters joined dozens of people in a caravan from California to Washington, D.C., to support the president.
Many of rally attendees, some wearing a shirts that said “Vietnamese Americas for Trump against communist,” said they believe Trump understands dangers of communism like they do. Many of them fled to the U.S. as refugees after the communist government of North Vietnam wiped the Republic of Vietnam off the map during the Vietnam War.
“One thing we learned from the war, never trust the communist regime,” said Thomas Vu, an Ocean Springs resident and one of the coordinators of the rally. “We’re refugees. We don’t like communism. That’s why we support President Trump.”
Recent polling suggests that a plurality of Vietnamese Americans plan to support Trump in the upcoming election. The 2020 Asian American Voter Survey found that 48% of Vietnamese registered voters planned to choose Trump, compared to just 36% for Biden. Vietnamese Americans were the only national origin group surveyed that didn’t prefer Biden — Asian Americans surveyed overall preferred Biden by nearly a 25-point margin.
Rally attendees said they feel Trump stands up to China when it comes to trade and territorial aggression. One sign read “End communist China expansion in china sea,” a reference to China’s construction of military outposts on islets in the contested and oil-rich waters of the South China Sea.
Thinh Vu, a senior engineer at the Federal Aviation Agency in Seattle, had joined the caravan in San Jose, California. He feels members of the Black Lives Matter movement were allowed to occupy his city, where Seattle police effectively cleared out of a neighborhood of the city in June after stand-offs with demonstrators against racial injustice.
Vu told the crowd he was “jealous” of the Mississippians because of their Republican leadership.
“We need a leader to put law and order,” he told the Sun Herald.
Political divide in the Vietnamese community
Less visible at Wednesday’s rally was the generational divide that runs through the Vietnamese community when it comes to politics: among Asian Americans ages 18-34, respondents preferred Biden 66 to 20. Most of the attendees were middle-aged or older.
Gina Nguyen, a freshman at the University of Southern California who grew up in D’Iberville and did not attend Wednesday’s rally, plans to vote for Biden. Her mother and father support Trump. Nguyen dislikes what she sees as Trump’s lack of professionalism and his stances on abortion and separation of church and state. Her mother feels that Trump will stand up to China. Talking politics is difficult.
“It gets nowhere,” she said. “I’ve stopped trying. I don’t like when my mom brings it up.”
Nguyen said her mother’s English isn’t fluent, and Nguyen’s Vietnamese isn’t perfect, either. Finding shared language to talk about complicated political issues is nearly impossible.
“A lot of things get lost in translation,” she said. “Whenever we try to talk to them about our views, we’re kind of at a crossway. We don’t know how to help them understand without saying it in English. And they don’t understand.”
Thinh Vu said that his daughter has some more liberal tendencies; he feels that American public schools have “brainwashed” children raised in the United States.
Trump vs. Biden
On Facebook, Vietnamese Americans have formed groups for Trump supporters and for Biden supporters. While Wednesday’s rally deployed the RVN flag in a show of support for Trump, other Vietnamese Americans have created profile picture banners that combine the colors of the RVN flag with the Biden-Harris logo.
A comedian and military veteran who performs under the name Golden Rice has lived in Jackson for most of the last 30 years and submitted a contribution to a video collecting the testimonies of 100 Vietnamese men explaining why they support Biden.
“I support Vice President Biden on the progress of humanity,” he said.
But most of the Vietnamese he knows in the small community in Jackson, many of whom are small business owners, are supporting Trump, he said in an interview.
“We’re conservative people,” he said. “We believe in work hard for your money, we believe in things like no freebies.”
In Biloxi, organizers got the call from the Trump caravan about two weeks ago. Community members donated whatever they could to support the travelers. Roger Nguyen, who owns a Comfort Suites hotel, offered the group five rooms for free. Linh Nguyen cooked lunch for after the rally, and Kim Long Restaurant donated noodles and fried rice.
After the rally, the caravan members rolled up their flags and climbed back into their cars. They planned to drive past the casinos in Biloxi and then keep heading east, with stops in Orlando, Atlanta and the Carolinas before arriving in D.C. for a big rally outside the White House.
Gina Nguyen said she thinks this election has led more Vietnamese Americans to pay attention to politics, on both sides. Her mother, who moved to the U.S. in 1995, will be voting for the first time.
“In the Vietnamese community, I think there’s going to be a bigger voter turnout,” she said. “People feel really strongly about one side or really strongly about the other. I think it’s a big motivator for people to go out and vote.”
This story was originally published October 7, 2020 at 4:35 PM.
