Let's bring back "separate but equal'

1997-08-20 04:00:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- RACIAL incidents this summer against Vietnamese Americans in San Francisco public housing projects bring to mind troubling questions.

Is forced integration doing more harm than good?

Could it be that neither the San Francisco police nor residents have much control over the situation?

This is not to suggest that a more forceful, proactive involvement of the Police Department isn't preferable to its current blase attitude. And tension can be defused by organizing residents - victims and perpetrators - in tenant groups for sessions in conflict resolution.

Surely, City Hall can enlist some help from the different community-based organizations, notably the Asian Law Caucus, the Vietnamese-American Coalition for Civil Rights and other ethnic groups, in attempting to arrive at some solution.

The problem is not new. I remember 1985. A Lao family had been firebombed. A Southeast Asian teen had been gang raped. A Cambodian newspaper delivery youth had been robbed and murdered. As members of the Southeast Asian Refugee Management Team, we worked with the Oakland Community Organization, whose members are primarily African Americans residing in East Oakland, to conduct some town hall meetings and air our differences. We also worked closely with the Oakland Police Department to help recruit minority officers and staff the 911 phones with qualified bilingual persons.

President Clinton suggests an open and honest national dialogue between different ethnic groups. This is not a novel idea. Other civil rights groups have asked for this approach. Some of us remember the Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition.

We all have tried, but in the mosaic of America, the forced mixing of races never has seemed to achieve true harmony. Cultural differences can be accepted as diversity, but at other levels they too often result in conflict.

The passage of state Propositions 187 (denial of benefits to illegal immigrants) and 209 (anti-affirmative action) brought this debate to the national level.

Perhaps desegregation has outlived its usefulness. In a different era, white America was trying to hang on to the

"separate but equal" doctrine. Now, it may be useful as a protection for some minority groups.

Today, the federal Department of Housing and Development obviously has not learned the lesson of the past. It cannot expect to achieve a harmonious racial mix by throwing these few Vietnamese American families into the Alice Griffith housing complex, a predominantly African American project in San Francisco's Bayview-Hunters Point.

HUD has failed to give clear directives to the Housing Authority to prepare a "safe, welcoming environment" for new tenants of different races.

At this juncture in America's quest for racial harmony, perhaps only partial solutions can be had. The government should not attempt to cure all the social ills in America, but it should be wise enough to realize that, in the words of Prof. Chung Chuong of San Francisco State University,

"Forced integration will not work."

Separate but equal may be desirable at this point in our journey. Integration of newer immigrants should be attempted only after acculturation.

Examiner contributor Thai A. Nguyen-Khoa teaches U.S. history in the San Francisco Unified School District. He lives in Oakland.<