Guest Post: Ross Meador, Operation Babylift, And Cab Rides To The Hotel

Sunday, February 26, 2012

I got this sent in via e-mail and wanted to make sure and post it on up.

Guest Post By vietK

I was in a cab one night years ago with Ross Meador, one of the "famed individuals" from that ill conceived wreckage of a plan called Operation Babylift which some people still see as being innocuous. We had all come back from a bar and I had done shot for shot with the people there, which some may say dilute my recollections, but those people only want to see what is edited for sound bites and pull quotes, believing, or standing up, even though they may not realize it, for a White Washed, Colonized, and Systematic way of stepping over People Of Color, never wanting them to go Against The Grain -- all of which remind me that in years past, I wouldn't have been allowed to testify against a White Man in a court of law.

When it was only Ross Meador and I in the cab, the subject (and I don't recall how) of Vietnamese women came up: Meador telling me how beautiful they were and that I should experience two Vietnamese women at the same time because there was nothing in the world like it, not directly speaking to me, but distant, back in his memories, the look on his face I can't quite describe, but I remember feeling uneasy and agitated, even though I should have been half asleep, sinking carelessly into the backseat of the cab.

I wondered why someone I had just met would share that with me. Why someone who was considered a caregiver, a watchful eye of Vietnamese orphans, someone who would later speak at the Smithsonian's Asian Pacific American Program would be so brash as to think I would care to hear that -- a White Man fetishizing women of Vietnamese descent, his tone and look that of a conqueror who felt entitled to all that was around him.

In the coming months, I would later hear through the grapevine that Meador was accused of being inappropriate with a Vietnamese adoptee -- drunken passes and light touches -- all apparently denied by Meador who apologized for any misunderstandings, everyone around those events trying to sweep it under the rug for what was called the greater good.

Except for the Vietnamese adoptee who made the accusation.

I'm writing this because I think you should know about it. Because you put on your blog a film that highlighted these people from Operation Babylift, Meador included, who are exalted and put on a pedestal, sometimes their voices the only ones you hear.

The din of the aftermath still ringing.