Members of the Vietnamese American community fear remarks from California Governor Gavin Newsom could lead to an increase of violence against Asian Americans, reports the OC Register.
Newsom casually mentioned during a news conference Thursday that the transmission in California of the coronavirus began in a nail salon.
“In this highly charged environment, some folks could use that for their own purposes,” said Tam Nguyen, president of the Advance Beauty College in Garden Grove and Laguna Hills said Friday.
The nail salon industry in the United States is predominantly Vietnamese Americans and the governor’s remarks reverberated through that community quickly.
“I think my brain stopped working and I was saying, what the hell? I never heard anything like that before,” said Kelvin Pham, co-producer of the documentary Nailed It which explores the history of the Vietnamese Nail Salon, said to ABC7.
Newsom defended his remarks on Friday, saying he didn’t mean to imply anything.
“It’s just a factual statement and it was not a statement to be extrapolated as an indictment, quite the contrary of an industry I deeply respect,” said Newsom.
The location of the nail salon has not been revealed.
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RE: Vietnamese Americans call out California Governor Newsom’s comments about nail salons: idiot