Week2_Xiao Zhang_section 03

After reading the article Navigating Graduate Education as a First-generation, Hmong American Woman: An Auto-ethnography, I came to better understand the oppression and biased judgement Hmong Americans receive and the hardships they are experience when they wish to pursue higher education. Such inequity is due to pervasive stereotypes and the deficiency of articles and groups studying about this culture in the environment of USA, which leads to misunderstandings and myths.
The “Minority Model” creates an stereotypical views that all Asian are supposed to be academically excellent , talented or even genius. This model became a standard to judge if an AAPI is “okay”. However, such model is apparently discriminating, because people who bear such kind of bias would judge a APPI as “non-normal” if he or she cannot fulfill the image in the model. Just like Martin Luther King’s quotation in the reading of last week “The Untold History of Modern U.S. Education: The Founding Fathers”, “even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us the objective and unbiased truths.” It is horrible that many educational agencies, educators, people who are in charge of authority are not giving equal opportunities to Hmong Americans because they still have such kind of biases. This results in the fact that APPI would be looked down on if they are not as excellent as the ones depicted in the stereotypes and have to spend more time and energy to perform better than other Americans in order to receive same rewards. This is clearly an oppression to them.

While little literature and articles were published, public knew little about real situations of  Hmong American Students. Such an gap creates a vicious cycle: less Hmong American Graduate Students and less literature about their experiences. Therefore, in order to eliminate such kind of stereotypes and help Hmong American students to retrieve equal rights when pursuing their graduate education, more research and articles should be conducted to break stereotypes and deliver a much more accurate situations Hmong Americans are experiencing and the image of “True APPI” to the public.

Moua’s article holds unique perspectives and well explains the situation Hmong American students are experiencing and offers inspirations of possible solutions. More importantly, I think her views and inspirations can be applied to the entire Asian American community.

Questions: How do Hmong American graduate student feels about when they encounter oppression? Have their ever thought about to “fight against the tower”?

Reference:
Moua, M.(N/A). Navigating Graduate Education as a First-Generation, Hmong American Woman: An Auto-ethnography. Hmong Studies Journal, vol 19(1): 1-25.
Jamie Lee (2014) The Untold History of Modern U.S. Education: The Founding Fathers
Bradley J. Fikes(2014) San Diego Hmong mark New Year   retrieved from: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-hmong-new-year-2015-san-diego-2014dec20-htmlstory.html