{"id":193104,"date":"2019-08-12T10:54:13","date_gmt":"2019-08-12T10:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=193104"},"modified":"2019-08-17T05:46:40","modified_gmt":"2019-08-17T05:46:40","slug":"selling-whiteness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=193104","title":{"rendered":"Selling Whiteness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Linh Dinh \u2013 The Unz Review Aug 12, 2019<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Aeon mall in Saigon 2019. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

My last three years in high school, I was in Northern Virginia. I hung out at Springfield Mall and Wakefield Recreation Center. Though I had lame handles and an erratic shot, I still managed to get into pickup games, and each time I hoisted up a brick, my buddy, Kelvin Nash, would holler, \u201cRiceman!\u201d I was supposed to fill it up, you see, but rarely did. Son of a lawyer, Kelvin is now a real estate agent in Dallas. He married his college sweetheart, with whom he lost his virginity. So much for black sexual precocity.<\/h5>\n
I worked at McDonald\u2019s. After I got a Mustang II, I ventured further afield. I\u2019d go to DC to scrutinize the National Gallery and Hirschhorn, and snoop around Georgetown a bit. I checked out Old Town Alexandria, and even drove to Baltimore to catch Orioles games against my eternally shipwrecked Mariners. With its chewed up turf and view obstructing poles, Memorial Stadium was a gritty, well-tattooed sweetheart who called everyone hon. Once, an M\u2019s outfielder just stared in disbelief at my screaming self, with my trident cap and pennant, all marooned in an empty section. That year the M\u2019s were only, I don\u2019t know, a hundred games below .500.<\/h5>\n
Excursions to any city remained rare. I was a suburban kid, so shopping malls like Springfield, Tyson Corner and Seven Corners were my main hangouts, where I encountered my community, outside school. There was no Main Street in Springfield or Annandale.<\/h5>\n
Appearing in the mid 1950\u2019s, the shopping mall became a quintessential American institution, and emulated worldwide. Ironically, it\u2019s still thriving just about everywhere else, but the USA. I\u2019ve seen packed malls in Leipzig, Dresden, Prague, Budapest, Tarragona, Norwich, London, Peterborough, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Johor Bahru, Batam, Osaka, Tokyo, Kawasaki, Mexico City, Istanbul and, now, in Vietnamese cities. In Kiev, the shopping malls are not doing so great<\/a><\/span>, but that\u2019s understandable.<\/h5>\n
Andrew Yang, \u201cMalls used to be a hub for socialization and commerce in many American communities. They were where families would go shopping for school supplies before grabbing dinner and catching a movie. Teens would have their first jobs working retail there and spend their Friday nights with friends. A local mall was an economic boon.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Hundreds have closed, with the rest barely surviving, so if elected president, Yang will try to convert these dead malls into offices, churches and recreational centers, \u201cWe should provide incentives and funds to help more developers reinvent these buildings and spaces. I\u2019ve been in one giant office that used to be a mall and it was great, with tons of parking.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Maybe they should become apartments or even homeless shelters, but there won\u2019t be hardly any sidewalk dwellers, you see, because Yang plans on giving every American $1,000 a month, but the glitch in this plan is that the country itself is worse than bankrupt, a fact that will become increasingly stark, stinking and messy well before the next Puppet-in-Chief is installed. With its manufacturing gone, the US could still hope to become a nation of wheat, corn and soybean peasants, but even that modest aim has been battered by unprecedented storms, droughts and an unblinking China.<\/h5>\n
A recent headline in the New Republic, \u201cI Work With Suicidal Farmers. It\u2019s Becoming Too Much to Bear.\u201d In Menomonie, Iowa, there\u2019s a corn maze with \u201cYour life MATTERS\u201d and a suicide number hotline carved into it.<\/h5>\n
\"\"<\/a>In Saigon this week, I spent a couple of hours each day in a shopping mall, Aeon<\/span><\/a>, that\u2019s miles from downtown. As soon as its vast, well stocked supermarket<\/span><\/a> and adjacent food stands open at 8AM, people flood in, and they can\u2019t wait until the rest of the shops, on four levels, start their business day. Since Aeon is Japanese owned, all store employees must bow deeply<\/a><\/span> to greet this first rush of patrons.<\/h5>\n
I was in Saigon in 2000 when Vietnam\u2019s first shopping mall, Thu\u1eadn Ki\u1ec1u Plaza, opened, but back then, people simply trooped in to see what is was all about, without buying hardly anything. They winced at the prices. Now, shopping centers have sprouted all over Vietnam, and their main attraction is a taste of the West. They\u2019re selling whiteness, and Vietnamese are buying, since they have much more cash than two decades ago.<\/h5>\n
At Aeon<\/span><\/a>, most of the advertising models are white<\/span><\/a>, mannequins have blonde or brown hair<\/span><\/a>, and English is ubiquitous, not to be understood so much as to lend cachet. Even Vietnamese businesses have English names, My Kingdom, Smoothie Town or Ocean Coffee, etc. On a bowling alley poster, three white faces are smiling so earnestly, they look insane. Frozen joy, or joy in rigor mortis. In Aeon\u2019s theaters, four of the six featured movies are American, with the remainders from Hong Kong and Korea.<\/h5>\n
\"\"<\/a>At iBasic, a Vietnamese chain, there\u2019s a promotion, \u201cUSA UNDERWEAR DAY<\/span><\/a>.\u201d On the poster<\/span><\/a> is a man, a woman, a boy and a girl, all white, of course, though the boy appears biracial, so maybe he\u2019s the adoptee in this fictional family. An American flag is draped on a chair.<\/h5>\n
Many shoppers wear clothes with English<\/span><\/a> writing<\/a><\/span>. An intense woman in her early 20\u2019s has this on her breasts, \u201cWARNING: YOU MUST FALL IN LOVE WITH ME.\u201d A sumotori<\/span><\/a>-proportioned four-year-old boy is emblazoned, \u201cROUGH \/ LIVE LIKE IT.\u201d A six-year-old girl clearly has no clue what\u2019s on her black T-shirt, \u201cTO HELL<\/span><\/a> WITH EVERYTHING.\u201d A chunky woman flaunts this on her brown denim jacket, \u201cNEWYORK ANGERS<\/span><\/a>.\u201d<\/h5>\n
A seven-year-old is tricked out like an American cop, with an oversized toy gun awkwardly shoved into his pant pocket. On the back of his blue uniform, \u201cPOLICE<\/span><\/a>\u201d is proudly displayed. The Stars and Stripes, Captain America<\/span><\/a>, Mickey Mouse and Minnie<\/span><\/a> regularly appear. It\u2019s almost cosplay, each trip to a Vietnamese mall.<\/h5>\n
I pause to examine a baby blue tank top on a hanger. Beneath \u201cGAME TO EAT<\/a><\/span> \/ LET ME BECOME MORE POWERFUL\u201d are four depictions of an alligator elongating as he devours a frog, turtle and ostrich. \u201cJUNGLETTIGER \/ LIVING FOR YOURSELF\u201d is the final message at the bottom.<\/h5>\n
As for American food, Aeon Mall has KFC, Texas Chicken, Baskin Robbins and Pizza Hut<\/a>, not to mention the burgers and fried chicken from Lotteria, the Japanese chain, or the burgers, ribs, wings, pizzas and American styled pastas at Al Fresco\u2019s, based in Hanoi.<\/h5>\n
\"\"<\/a>At Vietnamese<\/span><\/a> KFC<\/span>\u2019s<\/span><\/a>, you can get a piece of fried chicken, cucumber, carrot and lettuce wrapped in seaweed, or you can try the legendary Chizza<\/span><\/a>. Available only in Oriental countries, the Vietnamese version has onion and seaweed-embedded mozzarella, and no marinara sauce, on top of the chicken. Though critics have tried to outdo each other in poo pooing it, the Chizza is a hit. Singaporean Rahil Bhagat laments in cnet, \u201cEach bite of the Chizza showed me regret does indeed have a taste.\u201d<\/h5>\n
At Aeon<\/a><\/span>, US businesses are limited to these few fast food joints, with the rest belonging to Japanese, Vietnamese, Koreans<\/a><\/span>, Singaporeans<\/span><\/a>, Taiwanese and even a Spaniard, with his Mango<\/a><\/span> clothing boutique.<\/h5>\n
There\u2019s a play area, Molly Fantasy, that has a miniature burger joint, ice cream parlor, flower shop, cake bakery and fire station, with everything cute and idyllic. A child\u2019s fantasy<\/a><\/span> of an American Main Street, it\u2019s a bizarre contrast to the more typical thrift stores, pawn shops, down and out bars, tattoo parlors, boarded up windows and sun-bleached FOR SALE signs.<\/h5>\n
In an Aeon elevator, there\u2019s a travel ad<\/a><\/span>, \u201cGREET AUTUMN IN THE US \/ \u201cBEAUTIFUL\u201d PRICE \/ YOU DON\u2019T HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT.\u201d Although there\u2019s an image of the Statue of Liberty and Golden Gate Bridge, you\u2019ll only visit Los Angeles, Hollywood, Las Vegas and Hoover Dam on this $1,295.79 \u201cAMERICAN WEST COAST\u201d tour of seven-days, two of which you\u2019ll spend on a plane. Since Hollywood is an LA neighborhood, and Hoover Dam is just outside Vegas, you\u2019ll go home with only the briefest glimpses of two American cities.<\/h5>\n
Ah, but the four-hour bus ride between them will leave a deep impression of how vast and empty America is, which means it can certainly absorb many more immigrants, such as you and your entire extended family, for example. With its endless freeways filled with huge cars and trucks, and all its homes seemingly vast and boasting a front lawn and back, America is indeed that golden beckoning sign on a Benjamin-carpeted hill.<\/h5>\n
What you won\u2019t see are the many thousands of homeless Americans living in squalor on Skid Row sidewalks, or sprawled around Union Station, up Main Street to City Hall, and onto Broadway. Nor will you see the beat up luggage, ratty mattresses, shopping carts, tents and garbage along the Strand in Venice Beach. LA\u2019s roofless are everywhere, really, in Duarte, El Monte, Carson, Marina del Rey, Citrus and San Dimas, on and on. They\u2019re just not visible in the handful of spots you\u2019re chaperoned to.<\/h5>\n
Millions of Americans with homes and jobs are also not coping that well, judging by the out of control opioid crisis, but of course, you\u2019ll have no inklings of that either, for most of the Americans you\u2019ll encounter at Huntington Beach, The Strip or Premium Outlets Mall seem quite content and, well, huge, so these people must have no problems stuffing themselves. You\u2019ll go home without any idea of how lonely, hopeless and angry the US has become.<\/h5>\n
Vietnamese who can\u2019t make it to America must settle for trips to places like the Aeon<\/span><\/a> Mall, for it\u2019s really a theme park, featuring the USA and whiteness. This is how white people live, supposedly.<\/h5>\n
\"\"<\/a>In Philadelphia, my wife worked for a decade in a rundown mall, The Gallery<\/span><\/a>. It was a magnet for dollar store browsers, broke assed idlers, the filthy homeless<\/a><\/span> and often unruly high schoolers. Since fights would break out and arrests made, it was hardly a family destination. My wife witnessed quite a bit, but you don\u2019t have to be an urban mall employee to know that mall disturbances, including shoplifting flash mobs and even riots, are no longer unusual in America.<\/h5>\n
Normally oblivious, even the New York Times couldn\u2019t ignore this trend, \u201cChaos Strikes More Than a Dozen Malls, Disrupting Post-Christmas Shopping\u201d [12-27-2016]. Of course, your \u201cnewspaper of record\u201d couldn\u2019t acknowledge that nearly all the \u201cfeuding teenagers\u201d were black.<\/h5>\n
Last year, I gushed about Jonathan\u2019s, a Japanese restaurant chain that\u2019s \u201can evocation of a much gentler and cheesier America,\u201d with many of its offerings Japanese spins on American comfort food. As the brick and mortar United States is increasingly looted, dismantled or even burnt down, its mythic version will survive, in tiny bits, across the globe, until that, too, fades away.<\/h5>\n
Linh Dinh\u2019s<\/em><\/strong> latest book is <\/em>Postcards from the End of America<\/span><\/em><\/a>. He maintains a regularly updated photo blog<\/span><\/a>.<\/em><\/h5>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the brick and mortar US is increasingly looted, dismantled or even burnt down, its mythic version will survive, in tiny bits, across the globe, until that, too, fades away<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=193104"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":193112,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193104\/revisions\/193112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=193104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=193104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=193104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}