Week 2

Joshua Omoletski

Section 3

The first of this week’s readings, Hmong Does Not Mean Free: The Miseducation Of Hmong Americans, discusses how Hmong Americans have slowly lost the true history of their culture. When the Hmong came to America, there was this stigma of trying to fit into the American society and culture. Not only was American society and culture somewhat alienating for Hmong immigrants, but the education system served to also isolate Hmong communities as well as Hmong children who went to public school. The Hmong were hugely misunderstood for several reasons. The biggest one was that the teachers in the public education system just did not understand the culture of the Hmong. This can be blamed on their lack of knowledge on Hmong culture and history, but also the lack of information that is shared on Hmong history by the textbooks used. This miseducation was further worsened by the idea that scholars had that the Hmong were barbaric and illiterate since there was no established written Hmong language.

In today’s society, there is a certain lack of interest that students have towards their culture and the history of their ancestors. This proves to be more so of an issue for first-generation students of immigrant families. This concept of miseducation of nonwhite cultures does not just apply to the Hmong. I went to a high school that was roughly 40% white, 40% hispanic, 15% African-American, and 5% Asian-American. There wasn’t really a sense of isolation as experienced by Hmong students, but there was this view that Asian-Americans are just robots that are good at math and memorizing information. We weren’t thought of as having a diverse culture. All the non-Asian American students were probably joking, but they would say that we were all the same. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Viet, it didn’t matter. This was probably also due to the lack of inclusion of Asian American culture in the US history classes. Literally, I think the only time Asian Americans ever received a prominent mention was when we’d gotten to the Transcontinental Railroad being built by Chinese Americans. It was very disappointing to see a complete lack of Asian American history be included in the AP US History textbook, considering how in detail the textbook examined everything. There was no miseducation of Asian American culture or history, just a complete lack thereof.

Question: Do you think that the introduction of foreign language classes in elementary and/or middle schools would help better the general population’s understanding and knowledge of cultural and historical diversity?

This is a clip from Conan O'Brien's show with Steven Yeun. They talk about how so many Asian Americans across the country have been mistaken for Yeun just because he's the most well-known Asian American in today's pop culture. 

References:

Mouvangsou, K. N. Hmong Does Not Mean Free: The Mis-Education of Hmong Americans.

“Team Coco” (February 3, 2015). Steven Yeun: Not All Asians Look Alike! - CONAN on TBS. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5s-MKAPmcg