Teen rivals face off, learn
Aim is to bring blacks, Latinos, Vietnamese closer in Dorchester
On the streets of Dorchester, this is what's real.
Black and Latino youths say they don't step in Fields Corner. Vietnamese youths say they never cross over to Geneva Avenue or Harbor Point. They stick to their own corners, hang with their own crews, and don't mess with anyone they don't know.
And, when one crew happens to run into another, it doesn't take much to set things off: A "grill," a look held just a moment too long. A stare perceived as a taunt. A face remembered, sometimes mistakenly, from a brawl last month.
Then it's on. Another brawl. Another rumble. Another clash pitting Vietnamese teenagers against black and Latino.
That's just the way it is, say the teenage boys who live in those neighborhoods and grapple with the reality that the potential for conflict lurks around every corner.
But that's not the way it has to be, say community activists working to defuse the long-simmering tension between teenagers growing up in the same Dorchester neighborhood, yet divided by cultural, racial, and ethnic misunderstanding.
"It's not as if these youth are fighting over something significant. They just don't know one another, and that lack of understanding spills out in antisocial behavior," said Ken Johnson, executive director of the Ella Baker House, which offers counseling and mentoring, mainly to Latino and black teenagers. "I don't sense any undercurrent of genuine race hatred, but much more a case of simple ignorance. And that can be overcome."
For the last year, outreach workers from the Baker House and Tieng Xanh-Voice, which works with Vietnamese youth, have been trying to heal the schism. The two nonprofit agencies offer educational workshops, counseling, and joint outings, which allow teenagers whose paths normally cross only in street conflict to come together in a neutral setting.
The idea is to show the warring factions that behind the differences they have much in common.
"We all have the same struggle," said Tri Phuong, 24, a program director at Tieng Xanh-Voice, which means "Fresh Voice." "Our families have the same struggles. They're working hard, two or three jobs. We all have to deal with the same problems."
The reconciliation effort, which the teenagers on both sides initially viewed with apprehension and mistrust, is beginning to sow seeds of change.
At a community meeting called in March 2003 to address racially charged youth violence, some black and Latino teens were reluctant to go inside the Vietnamese American Community Center. They feared they might be jumped by Vietnamese gang members, said the Rev. Matt Gibson of the Baker House.
This week, about a dozen teenagers -- black, Latino, and Vietnamese -- again gathered inside the community center. Some were members of opposing street gangs. Two were facing assault charges from previous scrapes. None wanted their names used or pictures taken. They were nervous, wary, and intent on playing it cool in front of one another.
Still, Gibson noted, they were there, sitting around a conference table in oversized down jackets and baggy pants, talking in the same urban street slang. At times, they even laughed, recounting some of the group activities staged by the Baker House and Tieng Xanh-Voice in their effort to create peace between the two sides.
Within the last year, the teenagers have worked together on a mural project, gone on a one-day camping trip, and attended a barbecue.
The barbecue last summer was the first time many of the teenagers had socialized with their adversaries. At first, black and Latino teenagers clustered in one corner, while Vietnamese teenagers huddled in another. Then, someone produced a cigarette, and a door opened.
"It was like, you got a square? Let's go outside and smoke a square," recalled Ed, 18, a Latino, using the slang term for cigarette. "We were just chillin', and now we're cool."
"We're crazy Latinos. They're crazy Vietnamese," added "D," 18, who is also Latino. "We all had some war scars. Something in common, you know."
Still, the walls separating Vietnamese, black, and Latino teenagers took time to build, and dismantling those walls will not be simple.
At the most basic level, Johnson said, the problems between the two groups stem from simple adolescent posturing: teenagers trying to prove their own toughness, bullies storming past anyone perceived as weak or different.
As the children of refugees, many Vietnamese youth must contend with parents who pressure them to obey traditional norms and a culture that ostracizes anyone who falls into trouble, said Phuong of Tieng Xanh-Voice. Alienated at home and picked on by schoolmates, they adopt a fierce, almost combative, Vietnamese pride and cling to street gangs for protection and emotional support.
"They try to represent a certain Vietnamese identity, but they don't really know what that is," said Phuong, a Harvard University graduate who came to this country as a refugee. "They think it means listening to Vietnamese rap, which was stolen from African-American hip-hop. It's an artificial pride that becomes very parochial."
On both sides, the young people are often mirroring attitudes gleaned from adults. Many older Vietnamese refugees developed their stereotypes about blacks and Latinos from their encounters with American soldiers during the Vietnam War, Phuong said.
At the same time, black and Latino youth say their parents often dissuade them from socializing with people outside their own community and their own ethnic groups.
Sometimes, they say, language barriers perpetuate the mutual suspicion.
"If we're chillin' with Vietnamese kids, how do I know they're not talking about robbing me in their own language?" asked Ed, who said he never wanders far from his street off Columbia Road. "That's why I only hang with Spanish and black kids."
But, in places where the groups intersect, such as at school or in subway stations, the mistrust and long-held grudges can easily spark a standoff.
"There's an assumption that something bad is going to happen, and that assumption breeds nervousness other people pick up on," Gibson said. "It's the scared dog syndrome: I'll bite you before you bite me."
Last May, police say, a group of 10 to 15 black teenagers beat and robbed three Vietnamese teenagers at the JFK-UMass T station. Two weeks ago, during a Vietnamese New Year's celebration, witnesses say a fight between black and Vietnamese teenagers erupted in front of the Grover Cleveland Middle School, across from the Fields Corner T station. The clash started when three Vietnamese youths, who said they had been robbed, pulled out metal batons and confronted a larger group of black teenagers. The Vietnamese teens were treated for minor injuries. "Some people just don't like you. You can't say anything about it, because they just think the way they think," added Dinh Tran, 16, an eighth-grader at Grover Cleveland, which has a predominantly African-American student body. At first, said Tran, he was nervous about attending the school. "I was afraid I was going to get jumped, but people just gave me weird looks," he said. "Now, they're cool with me."
The efforts to bring peace to the streets of Dorchester are not limited to the Baker House and Tieng Xanh-Voice. Both MBTA and Boston police have stepped up afterschool patrols and started outreach programs with schools and families affected by the violence.
At Dorchester Youth Collaborative, longtime community activist Emmett Folgert offers recreational activities and a safe place for a mixed group of young people. On one recent afternoon, the rooms at the center were filled with Latino, black, Cape Verdean, Vietnamese, and white teenagers, playing arcade games, munching on burgers, and competing on a Sony PlayStation dance game.
"Where are these kids going to get a chance to know each other? That's where we have to start -- with what's similar," said Folgert. "That's the basement of the house we're trying to build."
