Montagnards/Degar Peoples and Racism Beyond Whiteness

When I went to visit Việt Nam last winter, I was taken to visit a Montagnard village by the Catholic Bishop with whom I was staying with in Đà Lạt. It was the first time I've ever heard of the Montagnard peoples and it wasn't ever made clear to me that the Montagnard people were not Vietnamese, but rather, a separate indigenous population (I would later find out that Vietnamese is not even their native tongue). .

It is important to note that the Montagnard are not Vietnamese, but rather, are a recognized indigenous peoples. In fact, they never had contact with foreigners (Vietnamese included) until the 1800s when the French missionaries came to Việt Nam (which wasn't Việt Nam back then). The Montagnard's first contact with Vietnamese people came later when the French brought their Vietnamese servants with them to the highlands where the Montagnards lived. Also, the term Montagnard didn't exist before the French. The population refers to themselves as the Degar people. Montagnard means 'mountain people' in French and it was the term used by the French to identify the Degar people.

This complicates the narrative of Vietnamese independence and Vietnamese refugees because while Degar people are lumped into the category of Vietnamese in America, they are considered an ethnic minority in Việt Nam. In fact, Degar people do not speak Vietnamese and don't share cultural practices with the Vietnamese people. The Degar people have been trying to liberate themselves and establish a self-autonomous state recognizing Degar peoples as independent from the Vietnamese people (BAJARAKA and FULRO movements).

This brings up an important point to illustrate: Minority-Majority narratives always involve a disparity and unequal balance of power. This highlights the need to move away from glorified democracy to an actual working consensus model that takes into account all narratives and eliminates the rule of majority over minority. For example, in Việt Nam, we currently see a movement to modernize Vietnamese culture, however, this is in reference strictly to Vietnamese culture, which is the majority culture while leaving out and threatening minority narratives such as that of the Degar people. Also, the idea of Vietnamese as the national language once again leaves out Degar people who are indigenous to the Central Highlands of Việt Nam and who don't speak Vietnamese. As we can see, the minority-majority narrative extends itself beyond whiteness, just as racism extends itself beyond whiteness as well. Racism often involves the minority-majority narrative because it is often those who are the majority who have the most institutional and systematic power to oppress minorities. It is the majority that are also able to achieve hegemonic power as well. The key thing to note, however, that the majority-minority narrative that I was referring to, especially in regards to racism, applies strictly to nation-states. In the global scene, racism is still predominantly a white supremacist structure because we now live in a system of globalized capitalism where imperialism no longer limits itself to physical colonization, but also to colonization of the mind. We see examples of this through a spread of the Western standard of beauty to almost every corner of the world.