Week 6: Inter-ethnic and Intra-ethnic Conflicts

The presentation about Donut shops is really entertaining. Before, I did not know that about 75% of Donut shops in California are owned by Cambodians. Many people may think that running a donut shop is an easy way to make money. Comparing to other businesses, such as restaurant, a donuts shop requires a starting cost. Donut shop owner do not have to speak fluently English. Also, fewer skills are required because making donuts is easier than making different types of food of a restaurant.  Therefore, many Cambodians open Donut shops to fulfill their American dreams. They want to create a safe finance for their children to go to college. Also, I think opening donut shops is an intelligent way to attract customer because many Americans love donuts. Thanks to “Donut King” Ted Ngoy for opening a large chain of donut shop to help other Cambodian refugees to escape poverty.

            Yet Jason said that running this business is not easy because they have to get ready at 4am to serve customer. Jason is right, but I think that is how businesses suppose to be. Cambodian donut shops are familiar with Lee’s Sandwiches. Lee Sandwiches is a Vietnamese chain fast food store, is a place where most new immigrant Vietnamese look for jobs. However, I can see that most donut shops are run by family relatives; on the other hand, Lee’s Sandwiches stores are run by “outside” people, thus, employees have to do all the hard work. I have some friends, who work at Lee’s Sandwiches, always complain about how exhausted they are after work.   But in the end, I understand the idea of Jason that donut shops are just an illusion to hide the reality of the Cambodian refugees’ struggle because comparing to other Asians, Cambodians have a higher percent of poverty.

The article “Where Do We Stand?” by Peter N. Kian and Jenny Kaplan is outdated but it still applies to me. Allow me to share my experience that I did not want to speak in class. When I was a sophomore in Oak Grove High School, I was in JV soccer team.  The season started. The JV coach put me on the bench for the whole first game. For the second game, he let me play for the last twenty minutes. I made a contribution by assisting two goals. Assisting is passing the ball to help a teammate score. I helped the team to win. But then he still put me on the bench for the next several games. For the last game, he put me in the last twenty minutes again, and I made another assist. I felt so frustrated that I was not able to play more because of my white coach. He preferred a white dude over me. Honestly, he was not better than me. He made a lot of mistakes that make a lot of my teammates told the coach to put me in instead of him. However, the coach did not listen to those advises. Thus, I would conclude that he keep me down, this time, I really feel invisible.

I was the only Asian with three white guys and a lot of Mexicans in my teams. Mexicans seemed truly friendly and helped me out so much. They usually gave me advices to help me to improve. On the other hand, the white guys seemed to team up with the coach to put me on the bench. They usually told me that I was really good. But I knew that they did not mean what they spoke. After this sophomore year, I quit the school soccer team. My experience is an example of a systematic racism because I know that I am not the only victim. Lastly, thanks to this week presenters, I have an opportunity to express this story.

Question: Nowadays, with more and more competitions, do you think that donut shops will survive? ( Many Vietnamese nail salons have gone out of business.)  

Trieu Nguyen