What can we learn from the history of refugees in the state of Arkansas?

In April of 1975, Fort Chaffee, near Fort Smith, Arkansas, was announced along with three other locations across the US as one the processing centers for Southeast Asian refugees who were escaping the Vietnam and Cambodian wars, through the 1975 Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act, or as it was called at Fort Chaffee, “Operation New Life”. From 1975 to 1976, the center processed over 50,000 refugees of Vietnamese, Cambodian, Hmong, and Laos heritage. Coming to a region of Arkansas (and the South) which was largely white and Christian, the refugees and the community members came to face various facets of racialization, “otherness”, xenophobia, and religious justification as well as contradictions.

According to Perla M. Guerrero, when the Southeast Asian refugees came to Arkansas in 1975, they came at a point that was just beyond years of anti-Black terror, racial violence, and a region marked by racial complexity, fear, and anxieties. While many of the families that came to Fort Chaffee eventually resettled in other parts of the US, during their time in Arkansas, we see the formation of racial hierarchy and attitudes towards various groups of people. 

The refugees were met with “Christian hospitality” but also faced misunderstanding and racial bias. As Guerrero states, Arkansans had misconceptions of the Southeast Asian people and their incompatibility with the Arkansas community and most of all they were seen as competition for the labor market and a threat to “national culture”. This is a clear example of xenophobia and the prevalence of misconceptions of those with Asian heritage found in the south, particularly Arkansas. While there was this view that the Southeast Asian refugees were a threat to labor field, there was also the contradiction of them being seen as an exploitable workforce. Arkansas, a state faced with high unemployment rates, found in the refugees skilled laborers and educated professionals with training in fields the state was in shortage of.  

In examining the experiences of the Fort Chaffee Southeast Asian refugees, we can gain a better understanding of the racial and power dynamics in the American South as well as how notions of economic, political, and religious understanding influence social interactions and change. We can also begin to see how the model minority myth has played out in the South in order to move away from these ideas and the racial binary. Reflecting on the experience in comparison to the later Cuban and Latina/o refugees that would pass through Fort Chaffee and their vastly different experience can allow us to see these perceptions of different groups and narratives.

Check out the resources used for this post and more resources to keep learning:

Fort Smith Pho Minh Buddhist Temple Arkansas Story Vault project at The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History

Encyclopedia of Arkansas: Indochinese Resettlement Program

Yellow Peril in Arkansas: War, Christianity, and the Regional Racialization of Vietnamese Refugees by Perla M. Guerrero