For this week’s readings, I found it extremely interesting to be examining academia among a subgroup in the API community who blatantly do not fit into the rigid stereotype of being extremely academically. As a member of one of the larger, more visible API communities, such generalizations have shrouded my visibility towards the Hmong experience in higher education even though we technically should have shared similar experiences due to our same racial grouping. Both readings have not only further educated me on just how broad the immigrant experience is within the API community, but also how we can critically draw upon acute problems that Hmong people face with stifled parallels that the greater API community face in the United States that direly need to be addressed.
Firstly, both readings mention the need to rewrite the narrative of Hmong culture being the most prominent reason for low numbers of Hmong students in secondary and tertiary education. Current white-dominated academia has the power to delegitimize API culture as negative if not conforming to their customs further othering and creating inferiority complexes among minority groups. It’s been drilled in many Hmong Americans that their own culture is to be blamed for the low retention rates of Hmong Americans in academic institutions by the dominant outsider perspective of academia. As many Hmong Americans are also subjected to the same education system, they end up being miseducated and are fixated upon the othering of their culture in academia and ignore other macro forces that are cyclically oppressing and limiting their opportunities. It has been very empowering to see studies of Hmong individuals breaking this cycle and critically viewing the intersectionality of their cultural identity with navigating academia to shed light upon how misguided institutions have been towards Hmong students.
A specific institutional failure I resonated with in the readings was in Manee Moua’s paper when they talked about the culture clash between them and their graduate advisor when their eagerness of picking up mundane tasks came off as avoiding actual research work. Similar to them, I was also brought up to accept more than to demand from people of higher authority and it made me also reflect upon many opportunities that a non-API folk would have blatantly asked for but I refrained from due to it going against my cultural upbringing. For many API folks, interactions among higher institutions are their first individual interactions with others of different cultures in a professional setting and I also strongly felt the need for mentors to actively reach out and take the initiative to understand the cultural shock that many API folks experience when navigating professional settings.
The gender inequality seen among Hmong academic achievement further echoes the urgency for identifying macro oppressive forces in institutions and institutional reform. Many Hmong women envision academia as their most accessible way towards freedom from their cultural restraints. However, as seen in Professor Valverde’s paper, the camouflaged institutional oppression of Asian American women in particular reflects a reality of Hmong women needing to face another level of complex oppression by the very system that they thought would provide them with more mobility and freedom.
Firstly, both readings mention the need to rewrite the narrative of Hmong culture being the most prominent reason for low numbers of Hmong students in secondary and tertiary education. Current white-dominated academia has the power to delegitimize API culture as negative if not conforming to their customs further othering and creating inferiority complexes among minority groups. It’s been drilled in many Hmong Americans that their own culture is to be blamed for the low retention rates of Hmong Americans in academic institutions by the dominant outsider perspective of academia. As many Hmong Americans are also subjected to the same education system, they end up being miseducated and are fixated upon the othering of their culture in academia and ignore other macro forces that are cyclically oppressing and limiting their opportunities. It has been very empowering to see studies of Hmong individuals breaking this cycle and critically viewing the intersectionality of their cultural identity with navigating academia to shed light upon how misguided institutions have been towards Hmong students.
A specific institutional failure I resonated with in the readings was in Manee Moua’s paper when they talked about the culture clash between them and their graduate advisor when their eagerness of picking up mundane tasks came off as avoiding actual research work. Similar to them, I was also brought up to accept more than to demand from people of higher authority and it made me also reflect upon many opportunities that a non-API folk would have blatantly asked for but I refrained from due to it going against my cultural upbringing. For many API folks, interactions among higher institutions are their first individual interactions with others of different cultures in a professional setting and I also strongly felt the need for mentors to actively reach out and take the initiative to understand the cultural shock that many API folks experience when navigating professional settings.
The gender inequality seen among Hmong academic achievement further echoes the urgency for identifying macro oppressive forces in institutions and institutional reform. Many Hmong women envision academia as their most accessible way towards freedom from their cultural restraints. However, as seen in Professor Valverde’s paper, the camouflaged institutional oppression of Asian American women in particular reflects a reality of Hmong women needing to face another level of complex oppression by the very system that they thought would provide them with more mobility and freedom.
(Spoken Word Performance of Being A Hmong American Womxn)
Question:
What are the common API struggles experienced across all API communities imposed by institutional oppression?
References:
What are the common API struggles experienced across all API communities imposed by institutional oppression?
References:
- Moua, M. (2018, Jan). Navigating Graduate Education as a First-generation, Hmong American Woman: An Autoethnography. Hmong Studies Journal, Volume 19 (1): 1-25
- Mouavangsou, K. N. 2016. Hmong Does Not Mean Free: The Miseducation of Hmong Americans
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