Abstract
On 25 May 2020, global social media platforms were flooded with news, videos, and images of the murder of George Floyd. To the Asian and Asian diaspora communities, the tragedy hit a little differently when the faces of the police officers assisting in the crime were revealed to include an Asian man. This has provoked conversations in the Asian communities to reflect on our own anti-Black racism, leading to overwhelming support for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. This essay unpacks some of the tensions seen during the period of heightened BLM activities and the strongly opinionated—yet fleeting—responses from the Vietnamese public to this movement. Against the backdrop of the cultural, political, and historical meanings through which Blackness is understood in Viet Nam, we dissect the responses to an awareness-raising campaign on social media and the representation of BLM in the media space, while including perspectives from Vietnamese activist groups and other social commentators.
Nguyen, Phuong Ha