All posts tagged: data disaggregation

Good Communities Come From Data Disaggregation

Published by Bryan Thao Worra

Even though we’ve come a long way, as Southeast Asian American refugee communities getting ready for our 45th year in the US, there are still many hurdles for us. Recently, the Chinese have been actively mobilizing to undermine the strides we’ve made by making national efforts to eliminate the collection of statistics and data so necessary to understand which policies have been effective in narrowing the educational achievement gap, and which have not. It should be obvious just saying it aloud: Good communities come from good data. In an era when everyone is concerned about the abuse of our social safety nets and education systems, as well as fake news, we should all be committed to gathering the most accurate information about our success and challenges. We should be more than willing to invest in the collection of data that ensures we’re seeing the real picture of how some communities succeed and others do not. Lao Minnesotans are among the many who have a direct stake in this issue. The phrase most commonly associated with …

Affirmative Action: Opposing Forces

Published by Timothy Singratsomboune

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, …