by Susan Riley

If racism was always stark, violent and overt, it would be easy to recognize and easier to deal with. But unfortunately, racism can be mild and unremarkable, part of the daily texture of our lives.

Over the holiday, for example, three men were stabbed in a late-night brawl in the Saigon Capital restaurant on Somerset Street. The restaurant is Vietnamese: those involved in the fracas were of Asian origin.

Does this make it "Asian crime" as headlines in our newspaper and elsewhere suggested? Does the fact that some extortion was involved make the crime particularly Asian? And what Asians? Vietnamese? Chinese? Indonesian?

Or was it merely crime? Is any attempt to define it further careless prejudice or is it a vital aspect of competent police work? Last fall, when Ottawa high school students were involved in a drunken encounter with Hull police, no one talked about "white crime."

To be fair, a story in the Citizen concluded that there is no crime wave within Ottawa's Asian community. It also documented real concerns in Asian communities in Toronto and Vancouver, where thugs and drug-peddlers prey on their own kind and the larger society.

But this still isn't Asian crime. It is crime within the Asian community. The distinction is critical.

The Citizen story also quoted a Vietnamese-born lawyer, Nhung Thuy Hoang, who defends Asian-Canadians accused of various crimes. The most common charges according to her? Theft and wife assault.

These don't sound like Asian crimes: on the contrary, they are common to almost every culture. Imagine the uproar if we started referring to wife abuse as "male crime".

For all that, the Asian community does pose a special challenge to police forces, not because Asians are more mendacious by nature, but because their language and culture is so foreign.

In Vancouver and Toronto, police have had special Asian investigative units since the `70s. Newspapers occasionally feature lurid accounts of their struggles with "Asian youth gangs" that operate protection rackets, smuggle drugs and manage prostitutes.

(Again the language is loaded. If a group of Asian boys wearing leather, chains and aggressive attitude shoves you of the sidewalk, is it an Asian youth gang or just a bunch of punks?)

Ottawa, too, has an Asian unit, formed in 1987, the only squad devoted to one ethnic community. Its professed aim is to assist, rather than target, Asian-Canadians.

Nhung Thuy Hoang applauds this approach, noting that "a lot of police are not very familiar with our culture."

She recalls one client, a Vietnamese woman, who was charged when she burned dry leaves in a city park - a common practice in her native country. Other Vietnamese are charged with abandonment when they let their children wander at large, as they used to in refugee camps.

Still others are mortified when their custom of showing children physical affection is interpreted by non-Asian neighbors as child abuse.

There is, says the lawyer, no need for protection from youth gangs within Ottawa's Asian community. But there is need for educated, sensitive policing.

What she is talking about, of course, is the other side of racism: a respectful recognition of difference. Only when we - the police and society at large - achieve that will "Asian crime" disappear.