Week 2 Presentation Write-Up Section 1

Week 2 Presentation Write-Up
Christopher Mai George Welly

Joanne Agus
ASA 2 Section 1
9 April 2017

Marginalization and Miseducation Analysis

America is a place where the vast majority of immigrants aim to work hard to pursue a better life, known as the American dream. Ideally this may be the expectation, but the reality is not the case.

Within Linda Trinh Vo’s Transformative Disjunctures in the Academy and

Kaozong N. Mouavangsou’s Hmong does not mean free: Miseducation of Hmong Americans, both authors manifest the marginalization and miseducation happening in modern academia. While the two articles focus on both concepts, we have decided to focus on using Vo’s article to discuss the concept of “marginalized” and Mouavangsou’s article to discuss the concept of “miseducated” in this paper.

Marginalized

Focusing on the marginalization aspect, Vo begins with the struggle in the creation of the Ethnic studies department, and especially the Asian American studies department.  Such problems are evident within the article as Vo writes these departments were, “established as a result of the community protests in early 1990s”(Vo, 124).  Protests done by passionate students became the strongest push and power for institutions to finally establish the departments. Creating a department specifically for Asian Americans proved to be significantly difficult due to the predominantly white faculty and their indifference on the importance of the community. By discussing the impact of Asian Americans both socially and economically, Vo argues that the Asian American department is certainly needed in society.

Even with the creation of an Asian American department, the resources made available to these departments are not up to par with other departments in academia. For example, Vo writes such actions are, “detrimental by hiring faculty untrained or distrained in the field or by providing inadequate resources to empower the nit which can be detrimental to both emerging and established programs”(Vo, 126).  By placing individuals that are not fit and unprepared for the job, the faculty is slowly but surely disintegrating foundation of the Asian American studies department. Quintessentially, the future of the Asian American department is in danger.

What it means to work in a predominantly white environment in academia means being tokenized and treated unfairly. Unfortunately, this is still evident nowadays with irrational budget cuts for ethnic studies departments in different institutions across the United States. For instance San Francisco State University’s College of Ethnic Studies faced budget cuts in 2016, which potentially meant that the institution could lose about 40 percent of their staff in the department.

       

Miseducated

In Mouavangsou’s article, she provides insight on the American education system’s downfalls in educating people about the Hmong culture, especially when educating Hmong Americans. Her point of view is special because she herself is a female Hmong American, and her gender plays an important role because Hmong culture is one that does not privilege both genders equally. She examines impacts of U.S. education on the Hmong community. Then she analyzes how scholars have miseducated the Hmong community, and provides insight based on personal experience and case study. Because all people of color suffer similar problems from the U.S. education system, this article provides a good framework for understanding those problems.

U.S. education has always been told to be the best path to financial stability. The irony in this is that for people of color, U.S. education has only served to Americanize with a Eurocentric perspective, resulting in these people distancing themselves from their cultural roots. Mouavangsou mentions how this has impacted the Hmong community. For example, learning English may lead to a loss of a person’s native tongue, and the Eurocentric education provided about various ethnic groups impacts how people perceive individuals from that group. Both of these are factors in transforming people of color’s self-identity into one that is more closely European-American. Furthermore, the U.S. education system creates public spaces of division that separates those that do well in school from those who don’t. Combined with gender expectations in Hmong culture, this results in a case where there are statistically more Hmong women with higher education than men, and causes everyone to perceive Hmong male students to be not as academic as Hmong female students. Finally, Mouavangsou highlights how U.S. history courses marginalize people of color by being Eurocentric. Hmong are rarely mentioned when teaching the Vietnam War, and when they are, they are only said to have fled the country, with no explanation as to why or what they experienced. When Hmong Americans learn about their people’s history this way, it leaves them with an oversimplification, which plays down the importance of their culture and upholds the importance the American values they have been being fed. While discussing this matter, Mouavangsou also includes excerpts of diaries written during her trip to D.C., which shows how she awakened her senses from being tainted by the U.S. education system. Through this, she positions herself to be ready to educate Hmong Americans about their history.

Analysis

Although Asian American studies are becoming popularly offered more in colleges and universities, the widespread of this department hasn’t reached its full capacity in making a significant difference in our community. Because classes are predominantly only open in college settings and are optional, such as here in UC Davis, the indifference of the general community and notion of the model minority continues to be a major issue that marginalizes and miseducate Asian Americans.

The fact that Asian American studies is not offered and educated to students from such a young age makes a huge difference in how the society’s norms and actions are shaped. Without the course, Asian Americans will continue to overlook the microaggressions and other discriminatory acts that they have been experiencing – being asked where they are “actually” from and perceived as foreigners who have lower entitlement than the “dominant” race. The fact is that, the more we understand and learn about Asian American studies, the more we talk about this issue, and the more visibility the Asian American community has in regards to this matter. For instance, Vo’s article elaborates the difficulty of Asian American Studies to have its own department within an institution, and while doing so she mentioned about how institutions accept the idea of having a African American department because they have more visibility in literatures and are portrayed as more “proactive social agents” (Vo, 2012). In addition to that, stories about the African American community seem to be more included in mandatory American history classes1. Without visibility, and without the willingness for people to fight for this visibility, the Asian American community is placed in jeopardy of being marginalized even more.

Similarly, through Vo’s and Mouavangsou’s article, we can understand that up to this point, the education system in the United States is still controlled by predominantly white faculty members with a Eurocentric philosophy. This means that the majority of history classes are taught in a Eurocentric perspective, without elaborating enough of the minorities. More specifically, in Mouvangsou’s article, U.S. education taught Hmong people an oversimplification of their culture, which ultimately shed a negative light on it. Mouavangsou also believes that to remove this light and understand what American education did not teach, the community must also seek for these oppressed information, and think critically about the information that is given through the only source in academia. This form of miseducation from the institution creates a lack of awareness and inclusiveness of Asian Americans as being equally entitled as others in this nation. In addition, miseducation within the Asian American community by parents and family members should also be more carefully assessed and diminished. Although culture is a big social agent in a community, it should not be an excuse to form an injustice ideologies that could make someone feel less of him or herself. Culture is supposed to provide individuals with a sense of self and empowerment of their heritage.

Personal experience

In regards to my (George’s) own personal experience, coming from Indonesia at the age of three, the Indonesian language was my first tongue. With only abilities in English language comprehension, I faltered in communicating with other children since my English speaking abilities were lacking. One year of preschool was enough to completely erase my fluency of my first language, as English soon replaced my native tongue. Personally, I too agree with Mouavangsou’s arguments in relation with my own experience of becoming more distant of my roots. Learning the American culture appeared to be of more importance rather than knowing my original culture and simply I had to relearn my lost culture as I became of age. Moreover, this important issue would not have been apparent if people did not simply talk about it. Once again, Asian American studies raises significance to otherwise unnoticeable disparities within the lives of Asian Americans. If we all continue to be reticent of the ongoing problem within our education system, the same problems will continue and this eurocentric vision will ultimately become a reality. Change is what we need, and we need it—now.
In another person experience (Chris), I am second generation Chinese American, but the more I view China from an American’s perspective, the less pride I feel for my roots. Furthermore, because my parents who immigrated to America became fluent in English, the prevalence of English in my household growing up enticed me to not pick up Mandarin, because I could get by every part of my life with English only. If American education held other cultures to equal importance at an earlier stage in my life, maybe I would have held Mandarin to be as important to me as English. But because American education is eurocentric and one-dimensional, it only succeeds in whitewashing Americans of all cultural backgrounds.

1 Although we understand that there should still be more exposure on this matter, and there is still debate on how this can be implemented in a more widespread manner.

References

CBS. "SFSU Ethnic Studies Students Outraged Over Looming Budget Crisis." CBS San Francisco. N.p., 5 Feb. 2016. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.

Mouavangsou, K. N. (2016). The Mis-Education of the Hmong in America (Doctoral

dissertation, University of California, Davis).

Trinh Võ, L. (2012). "Transformative Disjunctures in the Academy: Asian American Studies as Praxis," in Transforming the Ivory Tower: Challenging Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia in the Academy. Honolulu: HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2012, 120-144.