Councilman’s Remarks Stir Big Trouble in Little Saigon

Years of cultural bridge-building collapsed earlier this month when Westminster City Councilman Frank Fry Jr. insulted the city’s growing Vietnamese community by advising a group wishing to parade in honor of its war dead, “If you want to be South Vietnamese, go back to South Vietnam.”

Vietnamese residents who fled here after the war now make up 15% of the city’s population of 75,000 and are destined to play a vital role in developing its economic future. The Little Saigon district of colorful Asian-style shopping malls has more than 700 businesses, many owned by Vietnamese, and city officials dream of the day it will become a tourist magnet similar to Los Angeles’ Chinatown.

But Fry’s remark may have pushed that progress a giant step back.

“Anyone living or working in Westminster knows that the subtle conflict between older residents and Vietnamese refugees is skin-deep,” said Van Thai Tran, a member of Little Saigon’s development committee. “Fry has destroyed the delicate fabric of harmony.”

New Division

Mayor Charles V. Smith agrees that there is now “a wedge between the Caucasian and the Vietnamese community, and also between the city (government) and the Vietnamese community.”

Officials acknowledge that Westminster--like other parts of Orange County--has a significant number of residents who share the view expressed by Lisa A. Owen, who wrote to City Hall during the Fry controversy to complain that immigration and an influx of Southeast Asian refugees has turned a sleepy, predominantly white suburb into an ethnically mixed community where buildings often bear signs that--in this case--are in Chinese characters. “It’s really frustrating to watch the city where you have lived all your life turn into not only a different city but a different country,” Owen wrote.

Officials say it is too early to tell if the wedge between the races in Westminster can be removed.

“We’ve worked so hard trying to foster understanding--and then this happens,” City Council member Lyn Gillespie said. “When people began defacing the Little Saigon signs, we first heard about the anti-Vietnamese sentiment. And we heard about it again during Tet (the Vietnamese New Year celebration in February). But we didn’t really know how bad it was until Frank (Fry) made these statements.”

The Fry controversy started April 11 when the South Vietnamese Armed Forces Day Committee asked the City Council for a permit to close Little Saigon’s Bolsa Avenue for a three-hour parade one Sunday in June. Fry joined a majority in voting 4 to 1 to turn the group down. He suggested that they instead recognize traditional American military holidays. Then Fry told the group to “be Americans” or go back to South Vietnam.

Apology Made

Within days, angry Vietnamese residents began circulating anti-Fry posters and planning a campaign to recall him. But Fry issued a written apology, then met with community representatives over lunch and apologized in person.

Racially charged incidents are not new to Westminster. Last summer, a police shooting of an 18-year-old Chicano youth drew angry responses from the Mexican-American community. A black family had a cross burned in its front yard. A Jewish synagogue and a Korean-owned store were vandalized with pro-Nazi slogans. And ever since last September’s unveiling of freeway and street signs directing motorists to “Little Saigon,” the signs have been stolen, vandalized and defaced with racial slurs.

To help ease tensions last fall, city officials joined with religious leaders and the Orange County Human Relations Commission to sponsor a daylong Harmony Festival featuring ethnic food and music. Last week, the City Council agreed to sponsor another festival this year.

But officials say racial attitudes in Westminster are no different from those in the rest of Orange County, which is home to more than 100,000 Vietnamese, 418,000 Latinos, 27,000 blacks and 1.6 million whites, according to current estimates. A Los Angeles Times poll in February found that blacks and Jews in Southern California believe there is more discrimination against them in Orange County than anywhere else in the Southland.

A separate Times Orange County poll of local Vietnamese found that nearly two-thirds of those questioned believed there was some prejudice here, although most said they had not experienced it personally. Those living in Westminster, Garden Grove and Santa Ana--where the Vietnamese population is concentrated--sensed less prejudice than their countrymen elsewhere in the county.

Rusty Kennedy, executive director of the county Human Relations Commission, says the perception that Orange County is a bigoted place “is not an accurate picture of what exists today.”

“It’s an increasingly diverse community,” Kennedy said, “where, more and more, bigotry and racism is frowned on. However, it has the same social ills as anywhere else where there are serious tensions between the races.”

Officials say there are many Westminster residents like Patricia L. Brown, who wrote to City Hall to express “outrage and embarrassment” at Fry’s statement.

Still, other county residents, such as Wendy Fuire of Garden Grove, refuse to fault Fry for saying “what needed to be said for some time.”

“Hooray for Councilman Fry,” Fuire wrote. “He is for the American people and the American way of life!”

A 63-year-old native of Grand Rapids, Mich., Fry moved to Westminster 32 years ago just as the city was incorporating. He is now retired after working as a grocery clerk. Throughout his 18-year council tenure, he has been unafraid to speak his mind. And there have been other times when he has publicly tripped over his tongue.

For example, at a glittering banquet hosted by Vietnamese business leaders last year to celebrate the designation of Little Saigon as a tourist zone, Fry matter-of-factly told the audience, “We’re all bastards”--later explaining that he was trying to say that most residents of this country are of different ancestry.

“Frank has got a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease,” said Murray Warden, a former Westminster city manager. “His remark (earlier this month) to the Vietnamese community was completely ill-advised and represented a lack of thinking before he said it.”

Fry says he “was shocked” by the immediate uproar his comments caused, both in the Vietnamese and white communities. His apology was genuine, he added, saying he should have chosen his words better. He also regrets how reaction to his comments polarized the community.

“Some of it (racial friction) may never be healed,” he said, adding that he will personally take a leadership role in future Vietnamese projects to encourage communication between Vietnamese leaders and established civic organizations.

“It will take time, and in time they (the Vietnamese) will learn to join the American organizations as part of the assimilation process,” he said.

Despite his detractors, Fry has managed to win a seat on the council five times during his political career. After being narrowly defeated four years go, he won back his office last November by overwhelming seven other candidates, including an incumbent.

For that race, Fry received heavy campaign support from the Vietnamese community and Southeast Asians in general, some of whom even now defend Fry.

“My opinion of Councilman Frank Fry hasn’t changed because (of his) remark,” said developer Frank Jao, an ethnic Chinese from Vietnam who, as one of Little Saigon’s major property owners, has been before the City Council on numerous occasions. “Frank Fry has done too many things that have helped us in the past to make a statement like his affect how we think of him.”

Although none of Fry’s council colleagues has sought to officially censure or rebuke him, all now criticize his comment.

But at the April 11 meeting, only Smith--who voted to grant the parade permit--said publicly that he was offended and thought the permit had been denied on “ethnic grounds.” Councilwomen Joy L. Neugebauer and Anita Huseth even echoed some of Fry’s concerns, according to a videotape of the council meeting.

“As Mayor Pro Tem Fry said, we have many traditional American holidays where we remember our fallen soldiers,” Neugebauer told the Vietnamese veterans. “One is Memorial Day, and Armed Forces Day, and I have very strong feelings that I would prefer (that) the South Vietnamese veterans join our established salute to our fallen heroes.”

Said Huseth, according to the videotape: “I too feel that we should all join hands and celebrate our Veterans Day together, for all veterans, and not have special ones for just some veterans. I feel we should all, as Americans, join together and celebrate together.”

Neugebauer and Huseth said their primary objection to the parade, however, was because it would have required closing busy Bolsa Avenue and clogging the surrounding neighborhood.

“It wasn’t against a group of people,” Neugebauer said last week of her vote.

Meanwhile, several major Vietnamese businessmen say Fry’s remark has already had an impact on Little Saigon: a few outside firms that have heard about the controversy say they will be reluctant to invest in the commercial district until community relations stabilize.

“It (racial friction) is going to remain there for the next 20 years,” said Phong Tran, a Cypress businessman and member of the Little Saigon development committee. “There’s nothing we can do about it. But we, as Vietnamese, have to remain here too, and we must learn about these things.”

What most non-Vietnamese overlook, Tran and others said, is that most Vietnamese have been here for only 14 years, since the fall of Saigon in 1975.

“In our minds, depression still exists,” Tran said. “I know you don’t understand it. But for us, Bolsa Avenue is like visiting a psychiatrist’s office. We see the signs in Vietnamese, we smell the food. It’s a reminder, yes, a little reminder, of what home used to be like for us.”

Others agree that changing attitudes takes time. But as one Vietnamese businessman said: “You have to understand that Vietnamese are very practical people. We know how to adapt. And if there’s anything we want Americans to know, it’s how thankful we are for living here.”