Carol Huynh's gold medal is good news for Vietnamese Canadians

For too many years, the Vietnamese Canadian community has gotten a raw deal in Canadian media coverage.

I recall in 2005 when a local human-rights campaigner, Raymond Liens, told the Georgia Straight that the media often cover negative stories, but rarely say anything positive about the contributions of Vietnamese Canadians.

This came after some racist trash about Vietnamese people was published on the Discover Vancouver Web site.

Liens's comment stuck with me, and the next year I asked Carlito Pablo to write a story about the Vietnamese Canadian community.

Pablo came back and told me that people in the community weren't willing to talk because they had always been treated badly by the news media.

Eventually, Pablo wrote about community efforts to bring Vietnamese refugees to Canada. Later, food editor Carolyn Ali wrote an article about the Tet Festival in the Georgia Straight.

Now that B.C. wrestler Carol Huynh has won Canada's first Olympic gold medal in Beijing, we'll likely start seeing more positive stories about Vietnamese Canadians in the media. And young Vietnamese Canadians will get to see a positive image of themselves being reflected back to them on national newscasts.

Huynh, the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, won in the 48-kilogram class.

Comments

2 Comments

rickymooston

Aug 16, 2008 at 8:45pm

This article seems well meaning but the Vietnamese community is ALREADY pretty well respected. I'm sure racist idiots exist everywhere but ...

Lets be honest, asians in General in Canada tend to be the MOST educated and successful.

Alot of those refugees you speak of were well educated but did their "time" in menial jobs. No longer.

The Vietnamese community did NOT need "Carol" to get a gold to be "respected".

The WHOLE country NEEDED Carol to get a gold, for our self respect.

Cheers.

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