Culture Consciousness Among Hmong Immigrant Leaders

Discourse and Knowledge

I understand discourse to be central to the production of knowledge, identities, and social practices (Davies, 2005; S. Hall, 1996; Weedon, 1987). Institutions of law, education, medicine, social welfare, work, and family, among others, help create, instantiate, and give material power to discourses (Weedon, 1987). More than simply a collection of sign systems, discourses are historically grounded (yet evolving) statements, ideas, and images that function to produce specific identities and realities in specific sociopolitical contexts (Davies, 2005; S. Hall, 1996).

Discourses gain power through language use, as we draw on them to make meaning of our social world. As we draw on available discourses, their repeated use and circulation create dominant discourses that naturalize and legitimate certain identities and realities while masking alternative discourses (Weedon, 1987). However, because discourses are constantly animated by language use, they are also constantly challenged and renewed. Since discursive practices may repeat, modify, resist—exceed—existing discourses, it is possible to shift the social meaning (and power) of discourses and open up sites for social change (Davies, 2005; Weedon, 1987).

Culture and Identity

I use culture in this article to “mean the systems of shared meanings which people who belong to the same community, group, or nation use to help them interpret and make sense of the world” (S. Hall, 1995, p. 176). Culture is often conceptualized in one of two ways. The first rests on notions of culture as rooted in the “cultural origins” of groups (S. Hall, 1990, 1995). In this “closed” version of culture and identity, individuals with a shared culture (e.g., ethnic, national) hold in common a “collective ‘one true self’” of identity that is “stable, unchanging and continuous” (S. Hall, 1990, p. 223). Culture is “thought of as a one-way transmission belt; an umbilical cord, which connects us to our culture of origin” (S. Hall, 1995, p. 207). This linear view of culture suggests that the farther individuals move from their “origins” or “roots,” the more they are removed from their “true culture” (S. Hall, 1995, p. 207). This reified or essentialized view of culture assumes an “authentic” culture for ethnic groups and positions “culture as some kind of baggage to be carried around” (Brah, 1987, p. 44).

In the second view, cultural identity is conceptualized as incomplete, continuously in the course of “production” (Bhabha, 1990; S. Hall, 1990, 1996). This anti-essentialist view emphasizes its discursive, contextual construction with terms such as diasporic identity or hybridity (Bhabha, 1990; Hall, 1990). For Bhabha (1990) hybridity refutes notions of originary, “one true” culture, because “the act of cultural translation (both as representation and as reproduction) denies the essentialism of a prior given original or originary culture, then we see that all forms of culture are continually in a process of hybridity” (p. 211). Hybridity underscores the continual process whereby culture and identity are produced through representation.

Despite the predominance of explanations of culture as enduring sameness on the one hand and continual change on the other, a third conception explicates it as a product of a critical awareness of the import of a reified culture. This “strategic” or “critical” essentialism (Baumann, 1996; Narayan, 1997; Spivak, 1985) is grounded in the assumption of the existence of a pervasive discourse that constructs ethnic cultures as static, “traditional” entities. This dominant discourse of culture as reified heritage is the hegemonic language through which “culture” finds meaning and gains purchase. A view of culture based on such critical essentialism proposes that ethnic, national, and marginalized groups may rhetorically mobilize a uniform, “authentic,” and essentialized depiction of culture and identity as a means to gain a critical speaking position.

Spivak (1985) recommends that groups temporarily represent themselves as a cohesive, homogenous community with the purposeful aim of achieving particular group goals. She asserts that critiques of essentialism are often inadequate because they do not acknowledge the “strategic use of a positivist essentialism in a scrupulously visible political interest.” Likewise, Narayan (1997) suggests that “one might find it useful to ‘strategically occupy’ these roles while also calling attention to one’s strategy of occupation. One may find it useful to occupy these roles even as one mocks them, laughs at some of their absurdities, and complains about their limitations” (p. 155). In a different way, Baumann (1996) suggests that immigrants have a culture consciousness that is “a heightened awareness that one’s own life, as well as the lives of others, are decisively shaped by culture as reified heritage” (p. 98). This keen consciousness of culture is a product of and response to the dominant discourse about the cultures of ethnic groups as a reified unity. The dominant discourse is taken up and redeployed by ethnic groups in discourses of political contestation. Thus, culture consciousness highlights the ways in which the response and adaptation of minoritized groups may partially appropriate the dominant discourse of culture as essentialized, homogenous unity.

Culture in this sense is conceptualized as instrumental, deployed by racial and ethnic groups as protective shield or delineating boundary in response to hostile social environments (Barth, 1969). In considering the distinctiveness of ethnic groups, it is “the ethnic boundary that defines the group, not the cultural stuff that it encloses” that may provide most insight (Barth, 1969, p. 15). This focus on the import of boundaries rather than the “stuff” of cultural values and practices underscores the function or use of culture as “border” or “boundary” for identification of membership (inclusion) as well as for exclusion. For Barth (1969), focusing only on the cultural traits of ethnic groups confounds the impact of cultural tradition with the ways in which social environments lead to responses that produce patterns of changes in belief and behavior.

Educational anthropologists and sociologists particularly suggest that students from minoritized groups engage culture as a border or defensive response to racist and assimilationist environments of school (e.g., Carter, 2003, 2007; Deyhle, 1995; Erickson, 1987; Warikoo, 2007). For example, Deyhle (1995) finds Navajo students are able to successfully navigate school by engaging “a ‘boundary’ strategy, resisting assimilation by maintaining pride in their culture and language” (p. 438). Carter (2003) shows African American students set cultural boundaries as a way “to ward off outsiders, particularly other non-Black youth” (p. 142). Warikoo (2007) suggests “the fabrication of racial authenticity serves to maintain the boundaries of ethnic and racial identities and to prevent boundary crossing” (p. 389).

In this article, I extend this research by spotlighting the ways in which Hmong leaders deploy cultural essentialism to make sense of and respond to assimilationist education. I draw on Baumann’s (1996) term culture consciousness to mean an awareness of the salience of cultural difference and the deployment of the dominant discourse (of culture as reified heritage) as a speaking position (from a collective identity) within cultural contestations.

Culture in Immigrant Education

By and large, education research on the role of culture in the experiences of immigrant students and families highlights the notion of an essential, “true culture.” Studies on Southeast Asian American education particularly emphasize the importance of cultural values in academic success (Ngo & Lee, 2007). For example, Zhou and Bankston’s (1998) study with the Vietnamese community suggests that high-achieving Vietnamese children stay connected with their culture and ethnic community while low-achieving youth have succumbed to “over-Americanization” and lost their culture. They suggest that cultural values are continuously instilled in Vietnamese American children by the ethnic family and community: “Children [are] constantly reminded of their duty to respect elders, to take care of younger siblings, to work hard, and to make decisions only with the approval of their parents” (Zhou & Bankston, 1998, p. 151).

Similarly, Caplan, Choy, and Whitmore’s (1991) analysis of Vietnamese American school success stresses the role of “cultural values” and a “cultural foundation”:

Probably nowhere else is the role of these parents more important than in taking the upper hand to transmit the message embodied in the cultural values [emphasis added]. They have faith that the cultural foundation on which their lives rest will support them through the vicissitudes of how every value item influences the family in all domains of family life and achievement, they demonstrate that the basic tenets and norms are acquired by the children and relate directly to achievement in school [emphasis added]. (p. 121)

According to this analysis, culture has enduring “basic tenets” that offer a “cultural foundation” for Vietnamese Americans. Culture is discursively constructed as a stable entity or “possession” (Brah, 1987) that may be transmitted by parents and acquired by children. This research proposes that successful adaptation to U.S. school and society stems from cultural maintenance and a connection with cultural roots. In contrast to straight-line assimilation theories, this scholarship rejects the notion that cultural assimilation is requisite for immigrant success.

Other Southeast Asian American education research suggests traditional, “closed” immigrant cultures are barriers to academic achievement. According to this “culture clash” thesis, the cultural values of immigrants are inexorably different from that of U.S. society (Ngo, 2008) and create a cultural mismatch that inhibits immigrant adaptation and educational attainment. For example, scholars observe that the influence of Theraveda Buddhism in Cambodian culture may negatively inform parents’ view of the academic ability of children and hinder educational attainment (Rumbaut, 1989; Smith-Hefner, 1999). Others suggest that Hmong culture’s value of cooperation over individualism is incompatible with the competitive culture of U.S. schools (Trueba, Jacobs, & Kirton, 1990; Walker-Moffat, 1995).

Despite the predominance of scholarship that reflects the “closed” view of culture as rooted in origins, a smaller body of education research illustrates culture as multiple and dynamic. The majority of these studies reveal culture to be multiple through a focus on the situational nature of identities. K. Hall (1995) finds the identities of British Sikh immigrant students change across “cultural fields” of community, home, and school. Maira (1999) and Sarroub (2005), respectively, show the shifting identities of Indian American and Yemeni students who adapt their language, demeanor, and appearance to the spaces they inhabit with peers and family. Stritikus and Nguyen (2007) suggest that Vietnamese immigrant students engage in “strategic transformation” as they incorporate discourses (e.g., gender equity) and leverage authority in particular school contexts to (re)define gender and cultural identities.

Moreover, research on the hybridity of immigrant student culture brings attention to the salience of nostalgia for understanding cultural change. Maira (2002) explicates the cultural nostalgia of Indian American youth subcultures that simultaneously embrace Indian fashion, bhangra music, and Indian-themed parties and circulate discourses of “real” culture and “true” Indian-ness. Maghbouleh (2010) stresses the relational aspect of nostalgia that occurs as children take up the memories and yearnings of parents. Her research illustrates the “inherited nostalgia” of second-generation Iranian American college students who retell nostalgic family stories and consume pre-Revolutionary Iran, Western-influenced pop music of the late 1960s and 1970s.

Altogether, explications of culture in education research tend to draw on essentialist or anti-essentialist conceptions to make sense of the experiences of immigrant children and families with school. More often than not, these analyses portray immigrant parents and other adults as tied to a “traditional” culture whereas youth are changing and struggling between and transforming the cultures of their ethnic community and the U.S. context. Although this research has advanced knowledge on the complex experiences of immigrant students, there remains a need to examine the perspectives and contestations of immigrant adults with school. Further, while critical essentialism has received analytical attention from feminist scholars, there exists a need for education research to explore the deployment of critical essentialism by immigrant adults to spotlight, critique, and contest the practices and effects of assimilationist education.

It is worth noting that by explicating the culture consciousness of Hmong immigrant leaders, my intent is not to extol or engage in debates about critical essentialism. Numerous scholars have cogently articulated the difficulties of a politics based on a conception of an authentic or essential identity that may exclude groups, reinforce stereotypes, and obstruct coalitions, among others (see e.g., Appiah, 2005). Rather, I seek to complicate the essentialist versus anti-essentialist framework for analyzing the education of immigrant students and families.

Identity Struggles “Between Two Cultures”

As a prevalent discourse in academic and popular arenas, the “two cultures” thesis underscores the distinctive cultural differences between immigrant ethnic communities and U.S. society. According to the argument, due to differences in cultural values, traditions, and expectations, the children of immigrants struggle to adapt because they exist “in between” the culture of their parents who are still tied to ethnic “homelands” and the resettlement culture of the “new land” (Hansen, 1996). As Hansen (1996) put it, “how to inhabit two worlds at the same time [is] the problem of the second generation” (p. 494). Despite persuasive critiques (e.g., Brah, 1987), analyses of immigrant experiences continue to rely on the “two cultures” thesis to construct the struggles of immigrant children within discourses that highlight their “limbo” identities that are “torn,” “caught,” or “stuck” in the middle “between two cultures” (Ngo, 2008).

The influence of the “two cultures” thesis and its related discourses are so pervasive that even immigrants draw on them in their own sense-making (Karakayali, 2005). Hmong community leaders described and theorized the experiences of Hmong youth and adults with explanations that emphasized struggles of youth with cultural identities that are neither Hmong nor American. Their language use invokes ideas of youth struggling with a limbo identity between the worlds of their family and ethnic community and that of school and mainstream society. For example, Hmong leaders such as Kou Vang shared that Hmong American youth are struggling with “a sense of loss of identity”:

My generation, we came here, we knew exactly where we were born, we knew exactly how we got here and we knew that we were poor. And we weren’t ashamed of being poor because we didn’t know any better. And we worked hard at it, to not be poor. But we were well grounded. We knew exactly who we were. We didn’t question our identity. We could speak the language, understand our parents, where they’re coming from, communicate well with them. But with someone who was born here, I think that’s harder. They don’t kind of know where they’re from. They hear from their parents where they were from. They hear from their parents that their parents were poor, but these kids could get almost anything they want. And so I think a sense of loss of identity goes into that.

Similar to scholarship that illustrates higher rates of academic failure, delinquency, and poverty faced by second-generation children, Vang suggests that differences in motivation and ambition define the successful adaptation of first- and 1.5-generation immigrants and the struggles of their children (Portes & Rumbaut, 2006). He points to the lack of connection with a closed Hmong culture to analyze the struggles of Hmong youth. As a 1.5-generation immigrant, Vang maintains that he was “well grounded” and connected to his cultural heritage and thus did not question his Hmong identity while second-generation Hmong children “don’t kind of know where they’re from.” His repetition of “we knew exactly” three times alludes to a definitive Hmong identity. Vang observes that the lack of connection to Hmong cultural histories, language, and experiences results in the “loss” of culture and identity among youth. This language use draws on notions of essentialized culture as a possession that may be acquired or lost (Brah, 1987).

Yet, the community leaders were not simply repeating discourses of the “two cultures” thesis, but deployed essentialism to assess the politics of difference (McCarthy, 1993) underlying the struggles of Hmong children. They observe that youth struggle in school because they lack English skills and simultaneously did not have Hmong proficiency to communicate with parents and grandparents. According to Kou Vang, part of the reason that Hmong youth feel that they are “lost” arise out of feeling that they “don’t belong in the mainstream community either because [they] don’t look like everyone else.” Consider his observation:

With not knowing what your identity is, you’re kind of lost. You don’t feel like you belong with the Hmong community because maybe you don’t speak Hmong anymore. Maybe your parents are doing weird stuff that you don’t understand. But then at the same time you feel like you don’t belong in the mainstream community either because you don’t look like everyone else. So there’s I think a sense of feeling lost [emphasis added] for some of these young people.

Crucially, present in Vang’s language use is a cultural critique and recognition that the struggles of Hmong youth are not solely due to the loss of an originary Hmong culture. His remarks indicate that practices of “Othering” and a “politics of recognition” (Taylor, 1994) tell Hmong youth they “don’t look like everyone else” and thus do not belong. As Taylor (1994) suggests, the “misrecognition” of identity by others has material consequences because “a person or group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people or society around them mirror back to them a confining or demeaning, or contemptible picture of themselves” (p. 74).

Likewise, Hmong leaders such as Pachee Vue drew on essentialisms of the two cultures thesis to critique the cultural politics of schooling that contribute to the struggles of Hmong students. She emphasizes Hmong children’s limbo identity: “Some of the children I’ve talked to say they don’t know how to answer me. ‘I’m not quite Hmong, I’m born in America. But I’m not quite American, so I don’t quite fit in.’” The Hmong leader also notes that youth are “losing the cultural piece because we’ve been in the country for a little while now.” She elaborates in this way:

They don’t have any ties such as experience to the home country, Laos, Thailand, or whatever. And they don’t have that experience so they’re trying to fit in. . . . This is where many parents have the breaking down of communication. Because kids want to fit into the mainstream, at the same time they are being picked on [emphasis added]. Because kids are saying, “You can’t fit into both worlds” [emphasis added]. They don’t understand the parents. Our parents’ generation, they can’t quite fit into the mainstream. So it’s a lot, this is a very confusing place to be. . . . This is where we struggle with kids that maybe aren’t doing so well in school because of their identity crisis. They don’t really know, they don’t want to learn Hmong, but they don’t quite understand the English well enough to be successful.

In the above quote, Vue parallels the discourses of Kou Vang as she suggests Hmong youth are struggling to fit into both Hmong and mainstream communities due to a lack of connection to “the home country” and an “identity crisis.” Despite discourses that construct an essentialized Hmong culture and identity, Pachee Vue also observes that exclusionary practices where Hmong children “are being picked on” contribute to their sense of alienation. Also similar to Vang, she underscores the role of language in Hmong children’s struggles with parents and school.

While the leaders draw on the essentialism of the ubiquitous two cultures discourse to describe Hmong children’s alienation, their language use exceeds the essentialism because they simultaneously criticize the pervasive influence of dominant culture. Specifically, their articulation of Hmong youth’s sense that they do not “quite fit in” or feel “quite American” provides a critical assessment of the “politics of recognition” (Taylor, 1994), citizenship, and belonging (Lowe, 1996; Maira, 2008) within U.S. race relations. As Asian ethnics, they are positioned as “forever foreigners” (Tuan, 1998) or “‘foreigner-within,’ even when born in the United States and the descendent of generations born here before” (Lowe, 1996, pp. 5–6). This “assumption of foreignness” of people of Asian ancestry in the United States constructs their identities as Asian rather than American (Tuan, 1998, p. 18).

This racialization is exemplified by the murder of Vincent Chin by Detroit autoworkers who were angered by competition from Japanese automakers. Although Chin was a second-generation Chinese American, the two White men judged him to be Japanese and bludgeoned him to death in retaliation for the loss of their jobs (Takaki, 1989). Writing about the tragedy, Takaki (1989) points to the culpability of school:

Our educational institutions have also contributed to this tragic event: They have done so by omission. Their curricula, from grade school to the universities, usually overlook or ignore the presence and contributions of Asian Americans. “American” history and “American” literature courses leave out knowledge about the immigrants who went east to America and about their descendants. Consequently, they give the impression that “American” is “white.” (p. 28)

School omission of the histories and experiences of Asian Americans has implications for the constructions of identities—particularly citizenship and belonging. The alienation and lack of belonging Hmong students feel are markers of the ways in which school and society construct and construe American as White.

Subtractive Schooling

Well, I think the concern is that, I’m worried just the loss of their own language and culture because they spend more time in the school environment. (Shoua Yang, Hmong leader)

The exclusion of the views, experiences, and heritages of minoritized groups by school have long been a concern of educational anthropologists who advocate for education that is “culturally responsive” (Erickson & Mohatt, 1982), “culturally compatible” (Vogt, Jordan, & Tharp, 1987), and “culturally relevant” (Ladson-Billings, 1995). Scholarship on immigrant education especially highlights the ways in which deficit practices disregard the “funds of knowledge” of immigrant families that should be incorporated into curriculum and pedagogy (González et al., 2005). This body of literature further suggests that “subtractive schooling” advances assimilationist policies and practices that divest immigrant students of their language and culture (Valenzuela, 1999).

Hmong community leaders expressed concerns about the disconnect between children and parents due to children’s Hmong language loss, disengagement from family gatherings, and ignorance about the refugee experiences and sacrifices of parents and elders. They were critically aware of the role of exclusionary practices of school curricula that privilege dominant culture and perspectives. School leader Pachee Vue insightfully notes curricular omissions that exclude groups such as Hmong Americans:

When the curriculum encompasses all our diversity of our children, that diversity. And reading or being culturally sensitive to meeting all of our students’ needs. When we have history books that is not written from just one person or one group perspective, but it’s more inclusive. Saying, “You know what? This is really what happened in Vietnam, and this is how it impacted society, and this is how it impacted the world.” And I think that will be the most profound, most important piece [emphasis added]. I am sad to say, because it’s very relevant—a lot of information that we’re learning right now, we’re learning from one group, one perspective. They write the history book. They document it. So we’re learning their perspective. And I really don’t know what my perspective. I really don’t know how the Hmong got involved. I have to do a lot of research. When can I incorporate all the information that even today we’re gathering [emphasis added]. When can this information be incorporated into a curriculum? And you don’t have to give pull-out curriculum.

Evident in the above quote is the school leader’s consciousness of the cultural exclusion of Hmong identities and experiences. She points out that school curricula generally are not “culturally sensitive” and thus do not meet the needs of all students. Vue’s comment implies that school texts are written from the perspective of the dominant culture (Apple, 1996). For the Hmong leader, school curricula are written from “their perspective.” The repetition of “they” in “They write the history book. They document it.” demarcates a boundary of difference between White Americans and Hmong Americans and constructs an us/them framework of identity politics often used for political mobilization (Hill-Collins, 2006).

Indeed, Pachee Vue’s remark about what “really” happened in Vietnam suggests that curricular exclusions result in untruthful portrayals of history. The comment particularly alludes to the omission of the CIA’s recruitment of the Hmong to help the United States fight a “secret war” in northern Laos during the Vietnam War (Hamilton-Merritt, 1999) that has left the Hmong neglected “forgotten soldiers” of the United States (Fuller, 2007), denied of veteran benefits and honor (Palazzo, 2010). She suggests that “subtractive schooling” (Valenzuela, 1999) in the Harriet City Public Schools excludes the experiences of the Hmong community and leaves them to pursue Hmong history on their own.

For the school leader, the Hmong perspective is not only unrepresented in curricula but also in teachers and staff. She observes: “There’s not enough teachers, there’s not enough principals. There’s not enough people that are Hmong that are very visible.” Vue especially suggests that Hmong teachers and staff are important for Hmong parent engagement:

When their culture is a barrier, parents want to feel that sense that someone will understand me. Someone will understand where I’m coming from. And I think all of us want a sense of identity, a sense of belonging, a sense of being understood. What I’ve noticed is that many of our families right now, especially families that when there’s a language and when there’s a language and cultural barriers, they want to feel like, that they can contribute. They want to feel like they can help their children be successful.

According to Vue, the alienation of Hmong parents from school exists at the psycho-emotional level, marked by a sense that they do not belong. Her observation of their struggles to be understood and contribute to their children’s education points to cultural exclusion that deprives immigrant parents of language support systems integral to school engagement (Valdes, 1996).

Awareness of the ways in which school privileges dominant culture was not categorically expressed in terms of an advocacy for Hmong cultural inclusion. Not all Hmong community leaders mourned the exclusion of Hmong experiences and perspectives. ¹ Mai Xiong especially understood the pressure to assimilate, yet did not share the same cultural politics as leaders such as Vue. Consider her awareness of the ways in which “Americans” hold on to culture:

So I was in Africa. They [Americans living in Africa] did not want their kids to become African. They didn’t want them to learn the sentiments, to learn the language. They valued being American, they put them in American schools, through the American curriculum. I mean it’s, I think when I share that example with Americans and they realize, “Oh yea.” ’Cause Americans are the ones who most hold on to culture.

In this observation about her travels, Xiong notes that rather than adapt to the local context, U.S. citizens in Africa infuse “American” values into local schools. She suggests that while prevalent anti-immigrant discourses allege immigrants are “unassimilable” because they hold on to their cultures and refuse English acquisition and Americanization (Olsen, 1997), in actuality, “Americans are the ones who most hold on to culture.”

Despite discernment of the exclusion of Hmong experiences and perspectives, Xiong does not espouse its incorporation in school curricula. Her explication of the role of culture in education insightfully points to the salience of cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986) beyond school:

So I’m like, “Why can’t the Hmong parents come here and have Hmong school, where you teach the language, Hmong history, Hmong culture, Hmong instruments?” Why’s that so hard for mainstream to accept, that that’s what parents want? . . . But the reality is that, when they go to college, they’re going to have to interact with others from different social and cultural groups. When they work depending, they can come on and work for a Hmong employer, but the reality is that, Hmong employers do not have enough jobs for Hmong employees. So they’ll have to enter the job market where they will have to interact and encounter different social and cultural groups even religious groups too. So it’s hard to be separate. But again, like I said. I’ve done a lot of traveling. The Americans are the most strict on maintaining their American-ness.

Xiong recognizes the desire of Hmong community members to infuse Hmong histories and experiences into their children’s education. Her question, “Why’s that so hard for mainstream to accept, that that’s what parents want?” simultaneously suggests the reasonableness of the desire as well as the resistance of the “mainstream” school and community. Nevertheless, Mai Xiong affirms the expectation to interact with “different social and cultural groups” in postsecondary and employment settings. Her use of “the reality is that” suggests that while culturally relevant education may be good in theory, in practice, the dominance of “American culture” requires Hmong children to assimilate in order to be successful (Lee, 2005). Pointedly, the Hmong leader reiterates, “Americans are the most strict on maintaining their American-ness” to convey her recognition of the cultural politics of achievement.

Further, Mai Xiong is explicit about the cultural demands that are necessary to “survive” and for “success” in the United States. In the following, she uses language such as “requires” and “demands” to emphasize the dominance of “mainstream” culture. Critically, she names English language and aggressiveness as part of the “set of skills” important for survival and success:

I just don’t think that parents are getting the message that, to be a Hmong kid, you can’t survive in mainstream culture. Because it requires that you know the English language. It demands that you know how to navigate with all different groups. It means that you now have to be aggressive. It means that you have to take on a whole new set of skills from the time that you are in school to when you actually get a job. People, I think people can relax once they’ve gotten a job. Then being a total, reverting back to the Hmongness will be okay. But in the meantime, there’s still that K–12. And then even from the you know, after high school graduation to their education or employment route to become financially stable. There’s all that struggle, where being totally Hmong will not lead to success in the mainstream setting.

The Hmong leader thus identifies assimilation ² as particularly important within the contexts of K–12 schools. Identification with Hmong culture and identity—“reverting back to the Hmongness”—is “okay” only after education and financial security. Even as Xiong reifies culture, she suggests that Hmong immigrants consciously emphasize and de-emphasize culture and identity to instrumentally acquire skills (e.g., English proficiency) and social behaviors (e.g., aggressiveness) requisite for social belonging and upward mobility (Suarez-Orozco, 2001). From this view, the purpose of education is to prepare for future economic success, and success is contingent on embracing and reproducing the values of the dominant culture (Apple, 1996).

Significantly, the Hmong leader’s employment of the dominant reification that constructs Hmong immigrants as uneducated, “traditional” anti-assimilationists buttress the dominant discourse that contributes to the stereotyping and marginalization of the Hmong community. Similar to school practices, Mai Xiong fails to see the opportunity to build on the resources of ethnic and familial identities as a way to foster student engagement and academic achievement (González et al., 2005). While Xiong attests to the need to embrace the dominant culture reflected in school, as the next section illustrates, other Hmong leaders disavow its contribution to the destruction of the Hmong family and community.

Education as Detrimental to Family

I see that as something that school should be addressing, because right now schools they only focus on their nuclear family. . . . That’s mom, dad, child. That’s pretty much it. So you don’t focus to, not a lot to grandparents or not to extended family, like aunt or uncles or extended families. (Shoua Yang, Hmong leader)

Scholars of the Hmong clan system observe that kinship networks function as social, political, and economic support systems that contribute to the spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being of Hmong ethnics (Keown-Bomar, 2004). Within this worldview, “individuals find their identity within the scope of the group” (Conquergood & Thao, 1989, p. 44). The extended family takes part in (nuclear) family decisions that range from “where a family chooses to live, when they will buy a car or a home, where they will send their children to school, how they will confront an illness, all of these issues fall under the decision-making powers of families and their extended kinship network” (Koltyk, 1998, p. 38). In times of need, kinship networks are mobilized to resolve crisis situations; assist with car, house, and education expenses; and find employment and housing for clan members (Keown-Bomar, 2004; Koltyk, 1998).

The Hmong leaders in the study underscored the importance of family and clan, but also recognized shifting values and practices. They saw patterns of relationships changing within and across generations (Donnelly, 1994) and mourned the deterioration of the bonds of families and kinship networks. In the Harriet City metropolitan area, Hmong families are less clustered in low-income housing, and households increasingly contain only nuclear family units rather than multiple units. With the spread of families across the city and first-ring suburbs, families have become progressively less involved in each other’s everyday activities.

As the leaders talked about the changes they see in the Hmong community, they engaged essentialized binaries such as individual versus community, Hmong versus American, or Hmong versus mainstream to juxtapose cultural beliefs and practices. Their observations particularly focused on the decreasing importance of a group ethos and increasing focus on individual interests and achievements. As Tou Khang put it: “And then the mental is thinking-wise, it’s more individualized. Acclimating into the American thinking now so whereas for us [1.5-generation] we are thinking more of the community before the self or the ‘I.’” For Hmong leaders, individualism is especially apparent in the worldview of youth. Khang’s account is illustrative:

They [youth] become more mainstream. I won’t say “Americanized,” because I don’t know if that is a good term, but mainstream. Everybody’s become more alike rather than different. So the thinking like we said earlier about more individualized. They tend to more “Me. Me.” than “We. We.” It’s not bad. It’s just how the society is functioning. They have to do that otherwise—we did what we had to do to survive and now they are doing what they need to do to survive.

Khang understands that the shift to a focus on the individual is part of youth becoming more “mainstream.” His recognition of the demands for cultural conformity and assimilation is apparent: “Everybody’s become more alike rather than different.” While Khang notes that youth are not to blame for their conformity with the remark “It’s not bad,” similar to Mai Xiong, he also understands that assimilation is necessary to “survive” in the United States (Lee, 2005).

The community leaders understood the changes in family relationships to be a part of the regular progression of life. Yet, as they talked about Hmong children’s relationships with their families, they also articulated a critique of the ways in which the privileging of individual achievement in schools is detrimental to the well-being of the family and community (Conquergood & Thao, 1989). Tou Khang’s explication is particularly cogent:

So I see a lot of parents somewhat depressed because for example a family with six or seven grown sons, but the father can’t depend on them to do any of the traditional, cultural relevant activity. And then the father just found himself to be depressed and sometime even thinking about where he may have failed. Not so much what he have failed, but the kids have failed living out to be Hmong [emphasis added]. But in the kids’ mind they have not failed, they have actually become more sure of themselves. But it’s the group and the family perspective thinking that they have failed [emphasis added]. But the kids individually they don’t feel that way because they are succeeding in school and succeeding in their circle of friends. But in the eye of the Hmong they have not.

Khang’s observation that the waning of “the group and the family perspective” has dire consequences for parents and families meaningfully implies that assimilation has brought sickness into the Hmong community (Bliatout, 1982). His use of “depressed” to link the corrosion of a group ethos to a sickness is an indictment of dominant culture’s focus on individual attainment. As Conquergood and Thao (1989) explain, “a sick society, according to the Hmong world view, is one that is fragmented, alienated, highly individualistic, and ruled by competitive entrepreneurial impulses rather than communitarian drives” (p. 44).

Crucially, Khang is cognizant of the ways in which school privileges and reproduces dominant culture. His repeated use of “failed” to explain children’s lack of engagement with “cultural relevant activities” markedly draws on and recasts discourses of school achievement and failure. His observation that parents see that their “kids have failed living out to be Hmong” even though they are academically successful critiques the role of school. The leader suggests that school makes Hmong children choose either academic success or their families (Fordham, 1996; Valenzuela, 1999). Put another way, because school requires students to embrace a curriculum that reflects the values and interests of dominant culture (Apple, 1996; Valenzuela, 1999), their academic success come at the expense of their cultural communities and relationships (Fordham, 1996; Fordham & Ogbu, 1986).

Indeed, Tou Khang suggests there are competing versions of success that are constructed when school privileges dominant culture. Even if Hmong children succeed in school, when they disregard family and community, parents perceive that they have “failed” as individuals (cf. Deyhle, 1995). He elaborates in this way:

But in a lot of the family the kids have just focus on employment and academic attainment and they forget about the cultural piece. So failing the cultural piece in the family or the parents’ eyes, they have failed somewhat in the life. And not able to appreciate what has been acquired because they have no experience basically. ’Cause like for example a Hmong, let’s say, 4-year college degree. She or he may have very good standing in terms of grade point average and a good choice of major and good degrees and would be landing a good job, but have no clue of what the Hmong life is all about. And so for the Hmong cultural piece it would seem that the individual have failed.

The leader’s emphasis on Hmong culture simultaneously denies claims of the neutral politics of school and insists on the harmful impact of curricula that leaves out the “cultural piece” central to Hmong kinship networks and the psychosocial well-being of the community. In contrast to Mai Xiong, Khang does not support the instrumental purpose of education. For Khang, even if “subtractive schooling” (Valenzuela, 1999) allows Hmong students to achieve college and career goals, they cannot be considered successful if they neglect family and community.

Writing about African American students’ “success alloyed with failure,” Fordham (1996, p. 52) suggests that despite conformity to the expectations of dominant culture for school success, African Americans are still “Othered” because they still fail to achieve acceptance and inclusion. For Hmong American parents and adults, children’s school success is alloyed—indeed tarnished—by children’s failure to understand and appreciate the values, histories, and experiences of their families and community. The deployment of essentialized cultural binaries to critique the assimilationist demands of school was articulated not only in private community spaces and interviews with me. As the following shows, it also manifested in public arenas.

Mobilizing Under Culture

As the first Hmong speaker moves toward the podium, Hmong community members in the audience immediately stand and raise hand-made signs intended to address the School Board. The signs reiterate and emphasize the messages of all of the speakers: “Equal voices for all in school decisions,” “Institutional racism,” “We demand respect,” “More staff = better grades,” “We need inclusive leadership,” “Got cultural competence?”

Long relegated to the margins of school curriculum and policy, the announcement of the district’s new senior leadership team without a Hmong staff became a call to arms for the Hmong American community. Hmong policymakers met individually with the superintendent of Harriet City Public Schools, and community leaders mobilized parents and students in objection. The protest efforts included a community petition and formal comment at a school board meeting. The organized activities demanded an appointment of a Hmong staff to the leadership team, an increase in Hmong staff at all levels of the district, and a range of changes to improve school climate, curriculum, and instruction for Hmong students. Explicit in the request for representation was the threat to withdraw Hmong students out of the Harriet City Public Schools.

As Hmong adults, parents, community leaders, and youth pursued representation on the leadership team, they mobilized under discourses of a collective Hmong identity. In an interview with the superintendent, a journalist from a Hmong community paper echoed the sentiments of the community: “But don’t you need that figurehead in a leadership role who can talk the language, who knows the culture, who understands the needs of a particular group? The students are saying they need to see somebody who looks like them in those roles.” While the community rallied around a collective identity that essentialized Hmong culture, as the previous field note excerpt reveals, the underlying politics of the protest includes racism, exclusion, and the lack of culturally relevant education. Although the protest resulted in the promotion of a Hmong staff to a senior staff position rather than the senior leadership team, the response of Hmong community members provides critical insight into the culture consciousness of Hmong leaders. As the following section illustrates, cultural essentialism is deployed not only in a racist construction of minoritized groups, but also taken up and redeployed by groups (as political strategy) to mobilize under an ascribed, collective identity and respond to the inequitable practices of school.

Four months after Mr. Moua engaged Hmong American youth in a discussion about the lack of a Hmong senior staff in the district office, nearly 100 Hmong adults and children packed a school board meeting to address the superintendent and board. In the coordinated public comment the Hmong community asked the board to take action to meet the cultural needs of Hmong American students and families. As these field note excerpts illustrate, the comments appeal to an ascribed notion of an essential Hmong culture:

Female student: The population of the Hmong and students of color are growing. There are 73.5% students of color and 29.8% of this group is Asian American. Less than 7% of the staff are Asian American. The district has not done all that it can to meet the academic and social needs of Hmong students and families. “Hmong students live in two very different cultures.” Non-Hmong teachers are not able to assist when they “do not understand Hmong culture.” It takes someone who has “lived in the culture to understand the struggle of Hmong families” and to provide a role model.

Female parent: There is a need to include Hmong representation at the top level of district leadership. This is needed so that there is someone at that level who “understands the culture and family dynamics” in the Hmong community. A school staff beat my child. I was not able to communicate with anyone because no one at the school understood Hmong culture. A Hmong staff on the leadership team would help resolve future issues.

Male parent: There is a need for Hmong representation on the school leadership team. There’s a need to have someone in a leadership position that “understands Hmong culture” and what the “Hmong people have been through” so that Hmong students can be on a level playing field with other students. A Hmong staff in a leadership position will help the district with a “better understanding of Hmong students.”

Male community leader: “Look around you, [lists high schools]. What do you see? Teachers, administrators—not representative. It’s not an issue of race—it is an issue of representation. We want someone who has real authority [Hmong staff] who reports directly to the superintendent.”

Throughout the statements are common themes that highlight the importance of ethnic representation and knowledge of Hmong history, worldviews, and experiences for the academic achievement of Hmong American students. The Hmong community members privilege lived experience and underscore the need for a Hmong staff on the leadership team because they needed a school staff to intimately and authentically “know” and “understand” Hmong culture and identity. In order to meet the educational needs of Hmong families, school staff must be an “Authentic Insider” (Narayan, 1997, p. 144) and share the ethnicity of students and parents.

By and large, the appeal for the appointment of a Hmong staff to the leadership team comes under the banner of a reified Hmong culture. In the political contestation, Hmong leaders, parents, and youth enlist dominant discourses of culture as an essence passed down from one generation to the next (S. Hall, 1995). Within-group differences (e.g., language proficiency, generational values) are tamed and represented as a monolithic set of beliefs, experiences, and practices rooted in tradition and shared by all Hmong individuals (Baumann, 1996; Narayan, 1997). However, the statements signal that the problem is less about authentic cultural representation and more about issues related to the exclusion of Hmong perspectives and experiences from educational policies and practices.

As Hmong leader Dia Lee sees it, the controversy is in part a manifestation of parents’ frustration with their access to high-level administrators as well as the lack of response to the concerns about the education of Hmong children. Consider for example what Lee says about language, communication, and the “siloed” district:

Because this school district has been so siloed for so long they have somehow become trained into the thinking that the only people who could competently address the needs of the Hmong community is gonna have to be somebody who speaks Hmong. But at the end of the day, the Hmong community has access only to a low-level administrator, never access to the person who has the ability to make the decisions. . . . When nothing happens, the parents get frustrated and they feel like nobody hears what they have to say.

As Lee understands the situation, the desire of the Hmong community for a Hmong representative stems from dissatisfaction with the lack of access to decision makers who are able to actively and effectively respond to their concerns. The use of “siloed” reflects her assessment of tracking and marginalization in Harriet City Public Schools. Within the context of Dia Lee’s attempt to make sense of the community outcry, “siloed” particularly alludes to the separation and exclusion of the concerns and perspectives of Hmong students and families. The protest and focus of the Hmong community on ethnic representation is a result of experience—“being trained” to understand—that teachers and staff will support the educational needs of students and parents only if they come from the same ethnic and racial group (cf., Dee, 2004).

Lee’s insight into how the protest was “read” by the superintendent reveals not only her perceptivity of the politics of the community’s demands, but also the superintendent’s:

She said, “I have been too often in your shoes. That’s why I know what you’re talking about.” She said, “My fight here is not to symbolically put somebody in a symbolic senior leadership position because that is just an empty promise. My fight here is about systemic change that will really respond to the needs of students. Not to create silos so that I can temporarily satisfy the political needs of certain communities.” She said, “Don’t you think that the Black community comes to me and say, ‘Well, now we have a Black Superintendent, so what are you gonna do about our Black kids?’”

The Hmong leader shares that the superintendent sees the demands of the Hmong community as a political request for “symbolic” representation that undermines her goals for “systemic change.” These remarks criticize the identity politics of “representation” for impeding social change because they are “empty” of substantive intention. They also indicate the problematic ways in which identity politics promotes separatism or “silos” that requires individuals to work only within racial groups (i.e., “Black Superintendent” working only for “Black kids”) and undermines productive coalitions across groups (Appiah, 2005).

While Dia Lee recognizes the critical essentialism of the protest, she suggests that the mobilization of the community under a collective identity may be an avenue for social change (Narayan, 1997; Spivak, 1985). This is possible because as a representative of a particular group, you may be a “show horse” or a “work horse.” When organizations recruit Lee for their advisory boards, she shares that she often asks, “Well, do you want me as a work horse or do you just want me as a show horse? Because if you just want me as a show horse, I don’t have time.” According to Lee, the distinction between “show horse” and “work horse” makes all the difference in calls for representation: “That’s the question I place when we talk about role models and representation. If we really truly want our children to have good role models, they better be work horse role models. And not only that, but they better be work horse role models that can really make a difference in the children’s lives.” From the perspective of the policymaker, essentialism may serve as a platform for “work horse” social change.

This is explicit in Dia Lee’s outlook on the work of community leaders. She encourages the demand for “visual representation” as one component of advocating for Hmong children:

And this is where I think it’s very, very important, for the Hmong American community, for the communities of color, but in particular for community leaders—For community leaders to demand for the physical, visual representation. But also then to not be satisfied with that access. But to also then demand for representation for Hmong from all of the people who are supposed to be working for our kids.

Lee’s suggestion that Hmong leaders partially appropriate the essentialism of the dominant discourse is especially remarkable for its pragmatic and instrumental quality (Baumann, 1996; Narayan, 1997; Spivak, 1985). She proposes that leaders demand “physical, visual representation” of Hmong individuals in influential positions. Once Hmong Americans are in positions of power—have “access”—Lee asserts that community leaders must also move beyond essentialisms in order to effect change. This is possible through the insistence that school staff from all ethnic and racial backgrounds support the education of Hmong children.