All posts tagged: ARISE

Affirmative Action: Forging Our Own Identity

This is the last part on a series about how data effects Education and Affirmative Action. You can catch up with Part One here and Part Two here. Recap: We’ve discussed our need to be seen as a distinct group from the rest of Asian America and we’ve also highlighted some of the obstacles we’re running into, with regards to our push for personhood. As I noted in the last segment (part 2), creating our own Lao American platform, with a good amount of distance from the rest of Asian America, is not about hostility or division: it’s about priorities. As a less-resourced, less-accommodated ethnic group, we have to prioritize ourselves because the big players in Asian America (typically East Asian American groups) don’t seem to have our community’s concerns within sight. Luckily though, work to prioritize Lao Americans has already begun to take root, being championed by our own community members. Know Your Role I mentioned before that Southeast Asian Americans worked to win Asian American educational data disaggregation in Rhode Island. Lao Americans were part …

Affirmative Action: Opposing Forces

This is part two on a series about how data effects Education and Affirmative Action. Find Part One here. Crafting a New Identity It would be nice if we were already supported by the rest of Asian America in the fight against these biases and erasures that hurt Lao Americans, but our community has been holding its breath for that to happen since 1975. The fight is not as simple as data disaggregation, either. We also must make sure that Lao Americans can be viewed completely separately in all social arenas, to combat common biases that group all Asian American groups into a single narrative. The presence of this single narrative impacts how people read empirical data, even when disaggregated. Disaggregation must entail how we Southeast Asian Americans see ourselves. Our groups can start by distancing our self-identification, business ventures, and even, arts and media from the rest of Asian America. Not in a way that promotes segregation, but in a way that frees us from any reliance on other groups for resources or advocacy. Otherwise, …