Ho Chi Minh and his relevance today: the legacy of Black-Vietnamese friendship and the war

by Hoàng An Trần.

September 2nd, 2020 marked 75 years of Vietnam’s independence. For this occasion we celebrate the life of Ho Chi Minh, communist revolutionary and anti-colonial freedom fighter, who led his country of Viet Nam against three major imperialist powers in over 70 years of war to eventually achieve freedom and national liberation for his people. Though Ho would not live to see the eventual victory of the Vietnam People’s Army over the US in 1975, it was said that “When they marched into Saigon yesterday, they were led by a man who wasn’t there.” What does a revolutionary figure like Ho Chi Minh mean to us today, especially those Asians who live within the US? Clearly central to the Vietnamese people, Ho also represents a link between the Black and Asian struggles as well as a symbol of principled unity between the two in the greater fight for collective liberation of all oppressed peoples.

Known affectionately as Bac Ho (uncle Ho) to admirers, Ho left Viet Nam as a young man to travel the world. While working various jobs such as a sailor, baker, factory worker, in France, the US, and Britain, he exposed himself to the different cultures and masses of peoples within the imperial cores of the time; his travels during this period would be formative in his political development. Ho attended various political forums and organizations during his travels, such as the Universal Negro Improvement Association during its early years, the Pan-African organization founded by black nationalist Marcus Garvey. It was during his time in New York as an undocumented dishwasher that Ho witnessed the brutal repression of the Black American peoples within the US. Especially since, having lived in Harlem, then the center and most dynamic of the Black communities in the United States, he was an observer to the widespread and cruel system of white supremacy that existed in every corner of the US in the form of the infamous Jim Crow laws and the Ku Klux Klan.

In a report to the Communist International in 1924, Ho identified that, “It is well-known that the Black race is the most oppressed and the most exploited of the human family. It is well-known that the spread of capitalism and the discovery of the New World had as an immediate result the rebirth of slavery. What everyone does not perhaps know is that after sixty-five years of so-called emancipation, American Negroes still endure atrocious moral and material sufferings, of which the most cruel and horrible is the custom of lynching.” Ho knew intimately the great setbacks that Black Americans faced in their struggle for freedom, and it was only natural that he aligned the Vietnamese struggle with theirs. In the faces of the people that he met in Harlem he also saw the faces of the Vietnamese people subjected to the cruelty of the French corvee system, a type of forced unpaid labor; death rates for the French rubber plantations in Viet Nam would approach as high as nearly half the indentured workforce. This colonialism developed under the thin veneer of “civilizing” the savage native Vietnamese, that there could be no hope that they could uplift themselves to the standard of Western civilization. 

Despite this, Ho still had the foresight to see what was positive in the ideals upon which both the US and France were founded – that is, the beliefs that all people are created equally, that the people deserve the rights to enjoy Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity – going so far as to include these explicit references in the Vietnamese Proclamation of Independence in 1945. This illustrates Ho’s faith and commitment that the imperialists, though they were opposed to his people’s freedom and independence, were not wrong to have been once guided by these lofty ideals. 

While the circumstances of our arrival to this continent differ wildly, there is the shared history of both oppression against our peoples and of the friendship between Black and Asian peoples. Afro-Vietnamese unity can be realized and built up again in our contemporary times, if we release ourselves from the empty promises of the West and the manufactured divisions that have been placed upon our communities. As young Asian activists and revolutionaries, we have a choice in who we align ourselves with – is it with the Western world and whiteness, or is it with the great masses of working people, the African American people primary among them? 

It is clear that many young Asian activists today suffer from a lack of clarity or vision for the future as they engage in political organizing or protest; we must resist the allure of action without a framework of morals to guide us, and especially we must resist calls to label or condemn past revolutionary figures as unworthy of contemporary study or reverence. Radicals today should pay heed to the values of the Black Radical Tradition, a rich history of struggle and revolutionary love for the most oppressed among an increasingly decadent society. Built upon by scholars, artists, preachers, and others grounded within the communities that they served, it is with this foundation supporting us that can give life to a truly revolutionary movement guided by a desire for liberation and justice.

Later, during the American War in Viet Nam, Ho would remark to peace delegations that he was “strongly moved by the plight of black people around the world because they had contributed generously to the [Vietnamese] movement.” Black American boxing icon Muhammad Ali would echo this principled stance by resisting his draft into the US armed forces, proudly proclaiming that his quarrel was not with other brown people fighting for their freedom. It is on this example that we can develop the shared recognition of the friendship between the Black and Asian peoples in our times. With the renewed vigor of anti-racism appearing in response to the continued police repression of the poor and Black communities within the US, we can look to Ho’s understanding of the special circumstance of Black Americans to guide a more principled foundation between the Asian community and theirs.  

Whether or not we are conscious of it, within every people there is a yearning for love – a love for one another, a love for oneself, a love for life itself. Bac Ho embodied a revolutionary love to see freedom not just for his own people but for all of the most downtrodden peoples of the world, and principally the Black peoples in the US. To recognize the unity of all struggles is to engage in a truly complete sense of love that is in partnership with achieving our collective freedom.

We share with you all Bac Ho’s recounting of his journey to Leninism and the international communist movement here, as well as an article recounting the experience of Black soldiers in Vietnam here. Best regards to the people of Viet Nam on the anniversary of their independence from France.