All posts tagged: SEARAC

Deportation and Lao America: It’s Time to Wake Up

For a number of years now, our Southeast Asian neighbors, as well as some of our own people, including ethnic groups residing in Laos, have been battling deportation. We have, as a group, largely ignored this. We seem to think that if we keep our heads down, it won’t and can’t happen to us. But it already has and, it will hit us hard very soon. None of these are good enough excuses for how uninvolved we’ve been. If your personal reasons for staying out of the fray are any of the below, please read further to find out why it’s no longer good enough to stay silent. 1) I consider myself American/Lao American and that’s not my problem. Most of the deported also viewed themselves as such. Still, because of at least one mistake, they, and their entire family will pay for this pretty heavily. Have you forgotten why most of us came here and how we arrived? Regardless, one mistake shouldn’t dictate where we feel at home. The tenure of a person’s time …

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, …