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Community Essay : ‘Asians Are Automatically Labeled Gang Members’ : Critics say cultural bias figures into the case against a Vietnamese student. Propositions 187 and 184 could exacerbate the problem.

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<i> Daniel C. Tsang, a social sciences lecturer at UC Irvine, co-founded the Alliance Working for Asian Rights and Empowerment in Orange County. He also hosts "Subversity," a weekly interview show, on KUCI, 88.9 FM</i>

The bobbing shaved heads in a sea of orange, for one fleeting moment, brought me back to Southeast Asia, reminding me of Buddhist monks going about their routine in their saffron robes. But reality struck: I am in the waiting room at Orange County Men’s Jail.

I am here to see Tu Anh Tran, 22, who legally immigrated from Vietnam in 1988. He is charged him with murder, attempted murder and robbery. His public defender, Jeff Lund, says Tu is a victim of being in the “wrong place at the wrong time.” Tu says tattoos and cigarette burns on his arm and hand, inflicted years ago as a memorial to his dead mother, have caused police to label him a gangbanger. Others, including Li Ren Fong, Tu’s math instructor at Rancho Santiago College and his mentor, firmly believe police are mistaken. Lund believes that without the gang assumption, Tu, who was shot in the back during the incident, would not have been charged.

On April 2, Tu was a student at Rancho Santiago College in Santa Ana. It was spring break. Tu and a friend ate at a Little Saigon restaurant in Westminster. As Tu was paying the bill, a fight broke out, he says. As Tu tried to break up the fight, he says, an off-duty security guard shot and killed his friend, and wounded Tu. The next thing Tu knew, he was taken from the hospital to jail.

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Even though he has no prior convictions, Tu faces a possible life sentence if convicted. The man who did the shooting is free, claiming self-defense, that he was attacked by a group of people in the crowded cafe.

Tu believes his predicament is due to cultural misinterpretation of his tattoos and cigarette burns. Tu has a tattoo of an eagle on his arm and the words, in Vietnamese, “bird without its flock.” He says it speaks to his loneliness after his mother’s death when he was 17 and living in Iowa. According to Tu, the police told him the tattoo is proof he is in a Chinese gang, even though he is Vietnamese.

Tu says the faded burns on his hands were also to show his pain at his mother’s passing. Dr. Hoang Van Duc, who teaches pathology at USC, says Tu’s actions may have been an adaptation of old Vietnamese religious tradition--when monks are initiated into Buddhism, their skulls are seared with burning incense to prove they can handle pain through meditation. But the 1993 Southeast Asian Gangs manual from the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training states that cigarette burn marks are “without a doubt” the “most common form of marking found on Asian gang members.”

John Song, an associate professor of criminal justice at Buffalo State who wrote his dissertation on the conflict between law enforcement and Southern Californians of Vietnamese and Chinese descent, disputes that view. Police are incorrectly generalizing from a small sample of arrestees with body markings, says Song. He believes that such flawed gang profiles perpetuate stereotypes of Asians as criminals.

Many in the Orange County Asian American community fear that too many youths are automatically labeled gang members, based on little evidence. They note that even though the 1990 census put Westminster’s population at less than 23% Asian Pacific, 72% of those stopped by police as part of the Tri-Agency Resource Gang Enforcement Team program crackdown on gangs have been Asian, according to the program’s 1993 year-end report.

Tu’s fate will be decided at his trial in Santa Ana Superior Court, scheduled to begin this week. But his case raises questions about the future of recent immigrants. Passage of Proposition 187 and “three-strikes” Proposition 184 will exacerbate an already bad situation in which immigrants are singled out for discriminatory treatment, further dividing our society. If so, we are condemning them--especially our youth--to bui doi, or “a life like dust.”

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