From: georgew@hspice.portal.com ()
Subject: Hate Crime in San Jose
Organization: Meta-Software Inc., Campbell, CA
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 17:58:33 GMT

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[ From the San Jose Mercury News, December 5, 1992.  Typos are mine. ]


             ASIAN FAMILY'S HOUSE VANDALIZED WITH RACIST EPITHETS

                              By Alan Gathright

    When Chi Nguyen's family awoke to find swastikas, "Die Asians," and the
chaled silhouettes of mock murder victims scrawled outside their home Friday
morning, the initial reaction was to wash it all away.

     But Nguyen, an electronics worker who once fought alongside U.S. forces
in South Vietnam, told his family they needed to report it to police because
"I don't want them to do it to another family."

     "I don't keep secrets about things like this," the 49-year-old father
said Friday afternoon as he cleaned up eggs and toilet paper that had been
tossed in his South San Jose yard.

     At first, his 17-year-old daughter Betty, the vandals' apparent target,
was wary about having the neighbors see how their house had been defiled.  But
then she agreed with her father.

     "We're standing up against discrimination and racism - once and for all,"
said Betty, a Gunderson High School senior.  "I think people should be aware
or racial tension in the community."

     Officer Veronica Damin, police spokeswoman, said the department is
investigating the incident as a hate crime, which carries a maximum punishment
of one year in county jail and a $5,000 fine.  Police we called to the Sugar
MapleDrive home after a neighbor saw a gray Datsun 200 SX drive away at 2:13
a.m. Friday.

     The vandals had written "Bitch" ion ketchup on Betty Nguyen's car and
chalked "Nip Bitch" and `KKK' on the sidewalk and driveway of the house.  The
outlines of the mock murder victims were splattered with blood-like ketchup.

     Betty said she didn't feel she had any enemies.

     "It's awful," she said, looking at the remnants of the obscenities that
couldn't be scrubbed off the sidewalk.  "Whoever did this definite has a
problem."

     She also found it ironic that the people who scrawled Asian slurs drove a
Japanese car.

     The Nguyens have always urged their children to respect different ethnic
cultures, said Betty, who was only three months old when her family fled South
Vietnam by boat in 1975.

     "We just saw `Malcolm X,'" Betty said, referring to Spike Lee's film about
the late black activist.  "We're interested in exploring different cultures and
learning about people - instead of just assuming things."

     Both police and neighbors say nothing like this has ever happened in Sugar
Maple Drive, a street of well-kept homes where Vietnamese and other Asian
families reside.

     But, given the mean-spiritedness of the slurs, "that's nothing to be taken
lightly," said neighbor Yolanda Sanchez as she and her husband, Mario, set up
their Christmas tree with the help of a neighbor, Manual Naku.

     "I hate to see that happen, but I'm just glad it wasn't anything worse,"
Mario Sanchez said.

     As for Chi Nguyen, he'll stay in the neighborhood where his family has
lived for three years.

     "They want to scare me," he said, "but I don't scare over things like
that."
-- 
----
George J Wu,  Superior Maker of Technical Snafus,  georgew@metasw.com
Meta-Software,  1300 White Oaks Road,  Campbell, CA 95008,  (408) 369-5400
Never be the first to believe.  Never be the last to deceive.  ---  Chess
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american