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After going through this week's readings I realized that Asians have always been misrepresented in history taught in US schools. Even though I come from a very Asian populated area, I always knew that the history I was learning never really went into Asians and their place in the United States. This thought was further solidified once I read Hmong Does Not Mean Free: The Miseducation Of Hmong Americans. To be completely transparent I actually did know about Hmong people before reading the article, but I didn't really know about them and their culture until my second year of university. I met someone who told me they were half Hmong and I just accepted it without really knowing what it was. Instead of asking, I looked into it a little later that day and found a whole group of people that I literally had never heard of. This actually made me think to myself and wonder why I never heard of this group of people during all my years of schooling. That is why when Kaozong says that there is a "miseducation about the Hmong" I totally feel like this is an understatement. The fact that I had never even heard of Hmong people before I was nineteen boggled my mind. I think that it's terrible that because there is no representation of the Hmong culture in the textbooks, the Hmong people have miseducation about themselves. I believe that there is a direct link between why so many Hmong boys don't even try with their education and treat it as if it is just a whatever thing and Hmong representation in the textbooks. In my opinion, it seems like these poor teenagers are just being predisposed to the idea that Hmong people don't have a mark on the world. What makes this even worse is that I do believe that some people actually think that young Hmong males are just slow learners and don't really care about their education. I then thought about it further and realized that the "lower tier Asians" or jungle Asians don't even really get a spot on textbooks in the United States. I firmly believe this has to change in order for people to really get a sense of where they come from and feel like they do have a place in the United States.
What can we do as Asian Americans to get more representation of Asian Americans' place in the history of the United States in US classrooms?
References
Mouavangsou, K.N. 2016. Hmong Does Not Mean Free: The Miseducation Of Hmong Americans. Retrieved January 20, 2019.
Worra, B.T. 2018. Good Communities Come From Data Disaggregation. Little Laos on the Prairie.
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