I’m not going to erase hundreds of years worth of my people’s history just to please your (largely discredited) tumblr view that only Westerners are capable of imperialism. I’m not going to pretend that the on going erasure and oppression of Khmer Surin and Khmer Krom people wasn’t something that has been happening since before European colonialism, just so a few American Asians can feed themselves the lie that they’ve never participated in oppressive power structures. Erasing history and sweeping away problem to build a false sense of unity isn’t radical. It’s been done, it’s tired, and it’s inane and the “radical” side of tumblr can kiss my Kmao Khmer ass if they think I’m going give up my people’s history for the sake of “decolonization”.

How can Magellan "discover" the Philippines when East and Southeast Asia knew about it and had economic and political relations with the Philippines for centuries prior? Which means by extension, Europe already had economic relations with the Philippines for centuries prior through the extensive trade routes that spans Eurasia-Africa.

This is how a Eurocentric history distorts proper history including proper European history.

What happens when Phở erases people

If you haven't been living under a rock in the past week, you have all heard about how white guy Tyler Akin gentrified Phở and tried to white-splain the dish on Bon Appetit. The concern there is real. A white man claims to be an expert on a dish that has sat in relative obscurity until white people “discovers” it and commercialize it. The nuances of ethnic and racial power plays involved in the faux pas have been a subject a scholarly discussion for many. I will not get into that here. Rather I'm going to suggest that Phở has a more distant ethnic problem to it that doesn't directly involve white folks in gentrified neighborhoods. 

For me, I'm use the word Phở pragmatically. If I use the word that I want to call it, most people who are not Khmer won't understand it. If you go a Vietnamese shop in Little Siagon, you will notice some Phở products packaged as “Phnom Penh Style”. For those of you who don't know (but you should since this is elementary geography), Phnom Penh isn't in Vietnam; It's in Cambodia.  For Khmer people, we have a noodle dish similar to Phở but with a distinct Khmer preparation. The name of this dish is Guiteow (my approximate transliteration). For me, being force (if only just to communicate with non-Khmer people) to use the word Phở to describe my people's dish is solemn reminder that people forget about imperialism and ethnic erasure if it doesn't directly involve Westerners vs. Easterners. 

Tumblr especially likes to pretend that the world only messed up when Europe decided to conquer the world. I will not discount that. The effects of European colonialism has been long lasting and current effects and needs to be addressed, but it should not be the only type of imperialism addressed. So I'm gonna give you a brief history lesson. The Khmer people are an indigenous people of Southeast Asia, who, through the influence of India, built an impressive empire. In the process they enslaved a large number of hill tribe to the point where one such hill tribe, the Pear people, now numbers less than 1000 and have lost their indigenous culture. Eventually, Thai people, who were displaced by Han Chinese imperialism, moved into the area and become a powerful state. They sacked the Khmer's capital at Angkor which marked the decline of the empire and the division of Khmer lands. Meanwhile, Viets, who are indigenous to the Tonkin region, began to settle further south in areas that in what is modernly known as Khmer Krom (southern Khmer), thus starting an era of Vietnamese cultural dominance. Most of this history happened without European influence. 

What is modern day Vietnam encompass lands inhabited by Khmer people (as well as a large number of other people groups). You wouldn't notice this though because this history is largely ignored, even by other Asians. Many things associated with Khmer people became associated with Viet people. Food is one such thing. Because food is part of culture, it is not immune to the political and social changes of the world. When people groups fight over who made what first, we need to understand the social context of the conflict. When I bemoan calling my dish Phở, it's because I bemoan the fact that my people continues to be erased in Vietnam. Likewise, when indigenous hill tribes bemoan having their food called Khmer, they are bemoaning their historical oppression by the dominate ethnic group. When I see Americans and other westerners flock over Phở, I ask myself “why not Guiteow”? When I see them praise Vietnamese dishes, I wonder why don't they look at the dishes Vietnam's indigenous minorities? Well the answer is clear: while Vietnamese people in America are not at the top of America's ethnic hierarchy, they are above Khmer people.  We've established a totem-pole of “whose the most impressive ethnic group” and even if we take the top down there's still a bunch of heads on the the put its weight on the bottom group.

When I see these Asian outrages over the gentrification of Asian food, I also, perhaps pessimistically, see the same outraged people willfully gentrifying smaller ethnic groups' culture. We Asians have hidden behind this West vs. East paradigm so long that we've become just like the thing we are fighting against; people who erase culture and who doesn't work to understand the nuances of society. We need to break the West vs. East paradigm all together because it limits our ability to exact long lasting social changes. And perhaps it starts with fellow Asian people reexamining their outrage over a bowl of noodles.

If you don't know what coal rollers are, they are a bunch of conservative idiots who rig their fugly trucks to blow black smoke to protest environmentalism. One of their things is to blow smoke on people driving Japanese and Korean cars. They call these people "ricers". Now I personal support the American car industry, and I think Hyundai suck as far as cars goes, but I can not treat these idiots' actions as harmless or innocuous. There was time where anti-Japanese car sentiments translated to anti-Asian sentiment and a person was killed by it. His name was Vincent Chin. And the system let his killers go. These idiots actions aren't just speech, they have violent context and implications.

Never ever let met me catch you using the Khmer Rouge or the Killing Fields as a rhetorical tool for your conservative Christian propaganda. It had nothing to do with "prolife", it had nothing to do with what would happen in a world without Jesus, but it did have something to do with a bunch of westerners who tried to "save" people and ended up fucking shit up. 

Smith-Hefner, N. J. (1999). Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community. Berkeley, California: University of California Press I want to discuss this in terms of people's desire to move to big cities/urban centers. For Khmer Americans it was a chance to move away from rural racism and meet other Khmer people. That's not to say they don't experience racism or pressure to assimilate in big cities too but in big cities they can get together in groups with shared experiences and protect themselves.  Unfortunately for many groups of people, it is a privilege to be able to move to these places. That's why I think we should take multicultural efforts out of the cities and into the countryside as well.