U.S.-Born Son of Refugees Tests San Jose’s Appetite for Next-Gen Viet Leaders
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By Sharon Simonson
April 6, EAST SAN JOSE — In college, Lan Diep told people to call him Ethan. He is probably the whitest Vietnamese man I had ever met, or would meet, he tells me. He dresses in khaki pants, brown loafers and a Tattersall button-down collared shirt, tucked in, with belt. In the morning, he includes a dark sports coat.
In his “real” life, Diep is a legal-aid attorney whose fluency in Vietnamese took him to Biloxi, Miss., after the April 2010 BP oil spill as a legal fellow at the Mississippi Center for Justice. (“I detest the billable hour,” he says.) A third of the fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico states — Texas, L...