Week 3 - A03 - Jarrod Baniqued

Week 3 (20 January 2019) by Jarrod Baniqued (Section 3) 
Regarding my thoughts on The Miseducation of the Hmong by Kaozong Mouavangsou, I was intrigued by several important aspects of the paper which the author wrote about. In no particular order:

1. Gender stereotyping. The most prominent lens through which Mouavangsou views the topic of miseducating Hmong Americans is gender stereotyping. Throughout the work, she details how Hmong families consistently stereotype their young males as having a casual, cynical approach to education (with respect to personal reputation and appearance), and their young females as having a goal-oriented, economic success-focused, intensely diligent approach to education. This quote in particular stood out to me: "In reflecting on my own experience with American education, I remember comparing the experience of being Hmong with that of being American. In school, I learned about equality and the melting pot: people from all cultures come together to be part of the same culture, on the same footing – this false image of a merit-based culture was presented to us as evidence of America’s greatness. In contrast, at home in my Hmong family, I was faced with the patriarchal male-centered world, or at least that was how I viewed it. I saw my brothers as better,more valued, because only male children can carry on the family name. The notion that my brothers were deserving of ​value ​and​ privilege​ simply for being sons carried over into and from my academic experience. The problems I perceived in my own family life led me to believe academic success was a way to fight the Hmong culture, which is one of the many explanations that researchers have posited, especially in studies concerning Hmong students (Ngo and Lee, 2007; Lee, 2005; 2001;1997). For instance, in Lee’s (1997) study of Hmong women in higher education, her participants spoke 'about the link between education and freedom from male domination' (p. 814). They believed 'education leads to independence and self-empowerment' (Lee, 1997). However, when viewing one’s own culture in this light, it creates a deficient perspective and generalizes Hmong culture as sexist without fully understanding Hmong culture and traditions. This perception is what the general public believes and it creates an inferiority complex for Hmong youth, both Hmong men and women, and the Hmong community, while freeing the educational institution of any responsibility. We must remember that it is within the educational institutions that these feelings and associations of the Hmong culture as limiting and patriarchal are manifested." While I do hate to generalize, and the large town I grew up in doesn't have many Filipino Americans (meaning I have to rely on experiences with relatives), I do feel that compared to Hmong American families, second-generation Filipino Americans like me have a much more egalitarian view of gender and approaches to education: young males and females have the same views of education, right in between cynically casual and intensely diligent. I haven't asked first-generation Filipino Americans like my mother and uncle about this, but they may feel the same. Then again, they grew up in upper-middle-class households in a country with an entirely different colonial history from the Hmong countries. 
2. Education. At the end of Part 1, Mouavangsou also mentions that the Hmong people are virtually neglected in discussion of high school history in California, and that they are only mentioned in passing during the Vietnam War as a minor note in discussion of U.S. foreign policy consequences. I related to this, as Filipinos are also mentioned only as a minor note in discussing U.S. foreign policy, only with regards to the Spanish American and Second World Wars, and even then neglected in favor of Hawaii and Puerto Rico, which are closer to the U.S. mainland. (Also of note are the Filipino insurrections against the Americans during the 1900s.) I can only answer that more coverage of different Asian groups is needed in high school history; as an example, Filpinos played just as important a role in U.S. labor history as Mexicans during the food strikes of the 1960s.
3. Diary entries. What really hit it home for me was the depth of the diary entries. Have I considered these questions too? To a smaller extent, yes. What has been on my mind the past few years has been the tension of identity politics vs. nationalism, of multiculturalism vs. the melting pot. The points Mouavangsou made about a memorial vs. a museum of racial history are certainly poignant, as is the "I am an American" affirmation. The recommendation she makes of a Hmong American ethnic studies course for K-12 students in Hmong American communities is also very compelling, as is the case she makes that students need to free themselves from a Eurocentric perspective of Hmong stereotypes in light of the melting pot ideal, and I laud this idea, but I'm still attached strongly to the melting pot idea and to the concerns that this is a bit divisive, identitarian, segregationist even, having re-read the New York Times op-ed by Mark Lilla critiquing identity politics in favor of national unity. Still, I liked this paper a lot. 

On Navigating Graduate Education as a First-generation, Hmong American Woman: An Autoethnography by Manee Moua, here are my thoughts:

Yes, I liked it a lot too. I loved the explanation of the origins of critical race feminism and the autoethnography, and I thought it enlightening as to how the Asian American experience in graduate studies was compared to undergraduate studies. I think the autoethnography and the CRF lens, alongside more narratives of mental health, should be employed more and more in academia, in order to counter and reform the "good graduate" expectations system. I didn't have much time before 9:00 pm to go over it in detail, so here it is.

Questions: Why did I have this kind of reaction in comparison to the skepticism I had of Week 1's readings?

Are there any good Filipina American refutations to my generalization in Part 1?

Why is Asian American ethnic studies not ingrained in high school discussion of U.S. history? Does it have more to do with the breadth of high school curricula, i.e. how little time the teachers have? Is it really interrelated with American exceptionalism?

Image: Hmong Americans at a Laotian American wardrobe event in Long Beach, 2011: 

References:

Fuchs, A. (2018). Hmong Americans, Long Beach 2011. Retrieved January 20, 2019, from http://www.albrechtfuchs.com/albums/international-wardrobe-hmong-americans-2011/content/hmong-americans/
Moua, M. (2018, Jan.). Navigating Graduate Education as a First-Generation, Hmong American Woman: An Autoethnography by Manee Moua.

Mouavangsou, K. (2016). Hmong Does Not Mean Free: The Miseducation of Hmong Americans.