southeast asian education our journeys, our communities (2004)

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Southeast Asian Education: Our Journeys, Our Communities…

Maria Soledad L. Flores

University of California at Berkeley

iv

Our main objective is to present various factors that facilitate and undermine the

educational performance of Southeast Asian American students and how their progress in higher

education challenges the Model Minority Myth. We examine the role of parents and community

and the effectiveness of school language programs that accommodate Southeast Asian students

in the academic achievement. We also follow Southeast Asian students in higher education to

see the effects of participation in retention services and on campus organizations in their

academic success. Contrary to the Model Minority Myth as an explanation to the success of

Asian American student, not all Southeast Asian students are advancing into higher education

because of barriers that prevent further achievement.

Specifically, we researched topics that further explain the position of Southeast Asian

students in higher education. We assess the effectiveness of ESL and bilingual programs for

Southeast Asian students and the impediments to higher education for Mienh students. We

highlight the educational experiences of first and second generation Vietnamese college students

and include responses about their perception of Affirmative Action. We also attempt to explain

why there are large numbers of Vietnamese students attending community colleges.

Through individual interviews and data survey collection of Southeast Asian students in

secondary and post-secondary education, we found out that most Southeast Asian students are

motivated by familial obligations in pursuing academic achievement. However, in contrary to

the model minority myth attributing success to cultural traits, those who choose to attend a junior

college instead are influenced by peer pressure, feel that there is inadequate academic support

from their parents and worry about financial issues when it comes to education. In addition,

female interviewees have attributed influences to female role models and participation in

preparatory programs. However, programs that claim to assist Southeast Asian students both

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ESL/bilingual programs and the retention programs prove to be insufficient in assisting

Southeast Asian students due to the insufficient funding that prevents the programs to hire

qualified instructors in the case of the ESL/bilingual programs and fails to expand existing

programs to cater to the needs of Southeast Asian students in college in the case of the retention

services on campus.

A common theme in several of our team members’ individual papers is to look at and

critique the Model Minority Myth. For example, one paper includes summaries of interviews

with Vietnamese students in which the students mostly disagree with Vietnamese community

influence as a key factor in their educational achievement; another paper disaggregates Southeast

Asian educational achievement data to highlight impediments to Mienh higher education; and

another paper focuses on the cultural factors influencing Vietnamese students to attend

community college rather than a four year college or university.

In addition, the following themes emerged in our as a result of our individual interviews

and data survey collection of Southeast Asian students in secondary and post-secondary

education:

Most Southeast Asian students are motivated by familial obligations in pursuing

academic achievement.

Contrary to the Model Minority Myth attributing success to cultural traits, Vietnamese

students who choose to attend a community college rather than a four year college or

university are oftentimes influenced by negative peer pressure, feel that there is

inadequate academic support from their parents and worry about educational financial

issues.

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Female academic achievement is oftentimes influenced by positive Southeast Asian

female role models and participation in college preparatory programs.

Programs that claim to assist Southeast Asian students, such as ESL/bilingual programs

and student retention programs, are inadequate in assisting Southeast Asian students; this

due to the insufficient funding that prevents the programs from hiring qualified

instructors in the case of the ESL/bilingual programs and from expanding existing student

retention programs to cater to the needs of Southeast Asian students in college.

Group Findings and Final Remarks

As our team members deconstructed their areas of individual focus, we discovered that much

of the academic achievement aspects of the Southeast Asian Model Minority Myth do not

withstand scrutiny when tested against interviews with, and survey data from, Southeast Asian

students in secondary and post-secondary education. As a result of our examination of several

aspects of Southeast Asian academic achievement, as well as our interviews and survey data, our

team concludes that there are many myths and misunderstandings in society at large concerning

Southeast Asian academic achievement.

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1

Children of Vietnamese Refugees Respond to Some of the Theories Explaining

Vietnamese Academic Achievement in the United States

Jay H. Espovich


2

“The Quintessentially American Immigrant Success Story”

Children of Vietnamese refugees who have migrated to the United States in 1975 and

later years have been widely labeled and hailed as a “model minority”, or what Kibria calls “the

quintessentially American immigrant success story” (Kibria, 1993, p.7). One of the key factors

contributing to this perception of Vietnamese as a “model minority” is the academic achievement

of the children of Vietnamese immigrants in U.S. schools. For example, Zhou and Bankston

write in their preface “Vietnamese children seem to be doing exceptionally well in school” (Zhou

and Bankston, 1998, p. 5). Portes and Rumbaut, in their survey of several dimensions of today’s

immigrant second generation in the U.S., write “Twelve Stories” in Chapter One about

immigrant/refugee families of various nationalities (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001, pp. 1-16); the

Vietnamese family example they provide is the family of Quy Nguyen (fictitious name), a 19

year old female Vietnamese student who left Vietnam with her family in 1975 when she was 7

years old, whose family members seem to meet the attributes of a “model minority”. One of her

older brothers was the valedictorian of his high school class and is studying computer science at

a college in Texas; another of her older brothers graduated fourth in his high school class and is

studying premed at a college in Texas. After her parents moved to California during her senior

year in high school, Quy herself remained in Texas, living with her grandparents, in order to try

to graduate as valedictorian of her high school class in Houston (she graduated as co-

valedictorian), and is attending the University of California where she is majoring in

biochemistry and aspiring to go to medical school. Finally, both Quy’s father and mother were

college educated in South Vietnam; Quy’s father attended community college in the U.S. and is

working in the computer field and her mother is a seamstress doing alterations in a department

store.

3

While both Zhou and Bankston, and Portes and Rumbaut, go on to provide a much more

nuanced view of both the achievements and failures of the children of Vietnamese refugees, note

their initial focus on “model minority” stereotypes in the early pages of their books, particularly

Portes and Rumbaut’s selection of Quy Nguyen and her brothers as presumably prototypical

examples of the U.S. academic achievement of the children of Vietnamese refugees.

In this paper, I will (i) briefly summarize the theories of Zhou and Bankston, and Portes

and Rumbaut, focusing on their explanations for the high level of academic achievement by the

children of Vietnamese refugees, and (ii) report on reactions/responses to these theories by eight

children of Vietnamese refugees, all of whom are either currently students at the University of

California at Berkeley (“U.C. Berkeley”) and/or recent college graduates from other universities.

I had lengthy discussions with these eight children of Vietnamese refugees (hereinafter referred

to as the “students”). The eight students with whom I discussed these theories had the following

demographic characteristics:

Four were born in Vietnam; four were born in the U.S.

Five were male; three were female.

Four went to a University of California undergraduate school directly out of high

school; four first went to junior college and then transferred to U.C Berkeley.

Four grew up in Buddhist families; four grew up in Catholic families.

It must be emphasized that I have made no attempt to structure and conduct a survey that

would yield any kind of statistically valid survey results. Rather, selection of the students with

whom I discussed the theories of Zhou and Bankston, and Portes and Rumbaut, was a function of

either my meeting with students whom I already knew, or meeting with students whom I didn’t

previously know, but to whom I was introduced by other students.

4

Zhou and Bankston: The Impact of “Ethnicity”

Zhou and Bankston note that, as a result of the Vietnamese refugee community’s limited

economic means upon resettlement in the U.S., Vietnamese refugees have been resettled in low-

income, socioeconomically marginalized neighborhoods, neighborhoods in which “Social

isolation and deprivation have given rise to an oppositional culture among young people who

feel outside of mainstream America and oppressed by it” (Zhou and Bankston, 1998, p. 219). In

addition, the children of Vietnamese refugees tend to attend schools dominated by minority

students (Zhou and Bankston, 1998, p. 220). Returning to the “model minority” stereotype,

Zhou and Bankston note “our study has found that Vietnamese children have displayed

remarkable academic achievement, despite low socioeconomic status, low-income

neighborhoods, and poor schools” (Zhou and Bankston, 1998, p. 221).

So how do Vietnamese youth overcome low socioeconomic status, low-income

neighborhoods, and poor schools to display Zhou and Bankston’s “remarkable academic

achievement” (Zhou and Bankston, 1998, p. 221)? Zhou and Bankston postulate that this

academic achievement results, to a large extent, from distinctive patterns of Vietnamese ethnic

social relationships, noting (i) the need for Vietnamese refugees in the U.S. “to use ethnicity as a

basis of cooperation for survival in a strange and different environment”, and (ii) the role that

various Vietnamese community-based institutions, such as churches and temples, play in helping

the children of Vietnamese refugees adapt to the American educational system (Zhou and

Bankston, 1998, p. 222). Individual families might lack the economic resources to provide their

children with after-school classes and activities, but a “dense” co-ethnic community and

neighborhood might offer these kinds of classes and activities through an ethnic Vietnamese

church, temple or other ethnic organization (Zhou and Bankston, 1998, p. 157).

5

The research of Zhou and Bankston, which was conducted in the neighborhood of a New

Orleans public housing project that was heavily populated by the families of co-ethnic

Vietnamese refugees and African Americans at the time of their research, suggests that “in a

socially and economically marginal environment, the ethnic community is crucial in providing

help and direction to enable young people to combat the disadvantages associated with

immigrant status and poverty and counter the negative influence of the adversarial youth

subculture that permeates urban public schools” (Zhou and Bankston, 1998, p. 157). Therefore,

while parental and family support and encouragement provided to children by poor families in

low-income neighborhoods might not be sufficient to overcome the combination of low

socioeconomic status, low-income neighborhoods, and poor schools, when the parents’ efforts

are reinforced by the larger co-ethnic community, this in turn can create social capital that

reinforces the efforts of the parents with their children (Zhou and Bankston, 1998, p. 158). Zhou

and Bankston note that Vietnamese refugee parents do not maintain and pass on cultural values

to their children in isolation, but rather rely on what they call “wider webs of social relations in

the community” in this process (Zhou and Bankston, 1998, p. 224). Children of Vietnamese

refugees who grow up in Vietnamese neighborhoods heavily populated by the families of co-

ethnic Vietnamese refugees are in turn “enmeshed in these dense, overlapping networks of social

relations based on shared ethnicity” (Zhou and Bankston, 1998, p. 222). These “dense,

overlapping networks of social relations based on shared ethnicity” in turn create “an effective

mechanism of social control” (Zhou and Bankston, 1998, p. 222); such mechanisms of social

control serve the dual purpose of (i) encouraging the children to adopt positive American ways

and (ii) shielding the children from negative non-Vietnamese community influences (Zhou and

Bankston, 1998, p. 222).

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Most of the students with whom I spoke disagree with the Zhou/Bankston Vietnamese

parental and community social density theory as a driver in their academic success; most of these

students did not grow up in Vietnamese neighborhoods heavily populated by the families of co-

ethnic Vietnamese, but rather in mostly pan-Asian or mixed race, working and lower class

neighborhoods. Therefore, their childhood and adolescent neighborhoods tended to be different

from the Vietnamese ethnic neighborhood that Zhou and Bankston studied at Versailles Gardens

in New Orleans. In general these students report that, to the extent that they experienced social

density, it was not exclusively co-ethnic Vietnamese community social density, but rather tended

to be a pan-ethnic Southeast Asian social density with its pan-ethnic Southeast Asian focus on

the importance of education.

Only one student (“K1”), who grew up in a very “dense” Vietnamese neighborhood

located very close to Little Saigon in Southern California, explicitly agrees with the Zhou and

Bankston Vietnamese parental and community social density theory. Another student (“T1”),

who was a teenager at the time of resettlement to the U.S. in 1993, lived in a very poor, working

class neighborhood, but in an apartment building with mostly Vietnamese tenants; T1 reports

that living in this apartment building with mostly co-ethnic Vietnamese tenants constituted a

form of Vietnamese community social density.

Therefore, based upon my discussions with the aforementioned eight students, it would

appear that the Zhou and Bankston co-ethnic parental and community social density theory only

applies to children who grow up in a neighborhood densely populated with co-ethnic Vietnamese

refugees, for example a neighborhood such as Little Saigon, or perhaps in an all Vietnamese

tenant apartment building. With the exception of “dense” neighborhoods of co-ethnic

Vietnamese in a neighborhood such as Versailles Village in New Orleans or Little Saigon, the

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Vietnamese co-ethnic “social density” theory of Zhou and Bankston appears to be of limited

applicability in explaining the high academic achievement of children of Vietnamese refugees

who grow up in either pan-Asian or Southeast Asian neighborhoods or mixed race

neighborhoods.

Portes and Rumbaut: The Impact of “Acculturation”

Portes and Rumbaut extensively analyze the meanings of the data collected in their

Children of Immigration Longitudinal Study (“CILS”), a study that followed the progress of a

large sample of second generation, children of immigrants in Southern California and South

Florida, including 370 children of Vietnamese immigrants (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001, p. 27). It

should be noted that Portes and Rumbaut do not use the term “refugees” to identify refugees

from South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, but rather identify all the children in their CILS study

as children of immigrants, irrespective of parents’ immigrant or refugee status.

In their CILS, Portes and Rumbaut found that “selective acculturation”, as indexed by

children of immigrants’ fluent bilingualism and ability to communicate meaningfully with their

parents in the parents’ native language, has a significant positive effect on academic achievement

(Portes and Rumbaut, 2001, p. 239); the key attributes of selective acculturation are identified as

preservation of parental authority, little or no intergenerational conflict and fluent bilingualism

among children (Portes & Rumbaut 2001, p. 52). Selective acculturation occurs when the

learning process of both generations is embedded in a co-ethnic community of sufficient size

promote retention of the parents’ home language and norms (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001, p. 54).

Conversely, “dissonant acculturation”, as indexed by children of immigrants’ limited

bilingualism and inability to communicate meaningfully with their parents in the parents’ native

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language, has a “consistent, powerful and negative effect on early academic achievement”

(Portes and Rumbaut, 2001, p. 239); the key attributes of dissonant acculturation are (i) loss of

parental authority, (ii) intergenerational conflict, (iii) “role reversals” arising from immigrant

parents’ need to use their children as interpreters to interface with governmental agencies,

schools, etc., and (iii) children’s limited bilingualism and fluency in their parents’ native

language (Portes & Rumbaut 2001, p. 52).

CILS survey results show that second-generation knowledge of English is almost

universal, with an overwhelming second-generation preference for the use of English rather than

their parents’ native language (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001, p. 118); this preference for the use of

English tends to be accompanied by a decrease in language skills and fluency in the parents’

native language (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001, p. 119). In comparing the language skills and

fluency in English and Vietnamese of Vietnamese refugees and their parents, Zhou and Bankston

cite the following from the 1990 U.S. Census of Population and Housing

44.1 percent of Vietnamese children identified themselves as “limited bilingual”,

46.2 percent of Vietnamese children identified themselves as “fluent bilingual”, and

(Zhou and Bankston, 1998, p. 113),

73.6 percent of Vietnamese parents identified themselves as limited bilingual, and

23.9 percent of Vietnamese parents identified themselves as “fluent bilingual” (Zhou

and Bankston, 1998, p. 115).

This the CILS survey results report even lesser Vietnamese language skills for the

children of Vietnamese refugees:

98.7 percent of Vietnamese second-generation youth identified themselves as

knowing a foreign language

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communicating with their parents in a foreign language,


preferring to speak English, and

only 6.1 percent of Vietnamese second-generation youth identified themselves as

bilingual (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001, p. 123).

What are the U.S. educational achievement implications of the above language barriers

between Vietnamese refugees and their children? Portes and Rumbaut report that where second-

generation youth have far superior English knowledge than their parents, but are not bilingual in

their parents’ native language, “fluent communication across generations ceases, opening the

way for affective separation and weakening of parental authority” (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001, p.

134). Such weakening of parental authority in turn increases the likelihood of dissonant

acculturation and a “consistent, powerful and negative effect on early academic achievement”

(Portes and Rumbaut, 2001, p. 239). Given the negative implications of multi-generational

dissonant acculturation that should result from the limited bilingualism of children of the

children of Vietnamese refugees, how does one account for the high levels of academic

achievement in the U.S. for these children? Portes and Rumbaut refer to this phenomenon as an

“achievement paradox” (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001, p. 258) and conclude that it is the

“emergence of tightly knit communities that can act favorably on children’s school behavior and

performance” that accounts for the children of Vietnamese immigrants’ academic achievement in

the U.S. (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001, p. 261).

Amongst the students with whom I spoke, there is widespread agreement with Portes’

and Rumbaut’s conclusions about loss of native language fluency and cultural skills in the U.S.

10

amongst the children of Vietnamese refugees, resulting in cultural and linguistic

misunderstandings in multi-generational conversations with parents and grandparents. While

several students reported going to a church or temple in their youth to take Vietnamese lessons,

all of these students acknowledge that this was not sufficient for them to achieve a culturally

appropriate fluency in speaking with their parents, grandparents and other Vietnamese adults.

Only two students do not report a lessening of Vietnamese language skills in the U.S., namely (i)

T1, who migrated to the U.S. from Vietnam when fourteen years old, and (ii) B1, who from a

young age has been conscious of wanting to communicate well in Vietnamese, in a culturally

appropriate manner with parents and community elders, and has always tried to meet parents’

and community elders’ linguistic and cultural expectations.

While the students agree with Portes and Rumbaut’s conclusions that loss of Vietnamese

language skills results in cultural and linguistic misunderstandings in multi-generational

conversations between the Vietnamese students and their parents and grandparents, most

students disagree that their loss of language Vietnamese skills resulted in a lack of respect for

parents and loss of parental authority. Therefore these students do not agree with Portes and

Rumbaut’s theory about loss of parents’ native language skills giving rise to dissonant

acculturation and resulting in a negative impact on academic achievement.

Other common themes amongst most of the students are as follows:

A lack of parental involvement with their education due to a lack of parental

understanding of the U.S. educational system and parental limited English proficiency.

However there were exceptions, notably (i) the father of V1 who took ESL classes

and forced V1 to accompany him to the local public library to take out books written

in English, and then required V1 to read a book written in English for one hour every

11

night, and (ii) the father of J1 who also took ESL classes and insisted on speaking

English rather than Vietnamese with his children at home. In both of these cases, the

fathers were able to help their children navigate school systems with their ability to

speak English,

The parents’ consistent focus on education as a means to a better life in the future,

irrespective of the educational background and socioeconomic status of the parents.

Finally, three students (“B1”, “H1” and “M1”) were sent to middle class/upper middle

class schools outside of their neighborhoods; all three rebelled against the perceived classism and

racism they felt at these schools and did poorly academically, with this poor academic

performance extending all the way through high school. While the parents who arranged for

intra-district or inter-district school transfers in search of better academic opportunities did so in

the quest for better academic outcomes for their children, in all cases where this occurred, the

racism, classism and overall negative ethos of reception these students experienced in these

“better” schools, e.g. classism arising from wearing hand-me-down clothes and participating in

government-sponsored free lunch programs resulted in these students’ alienation from their

schools and very poor academic achievement in these schools.

Conclusion

While most of the high academic achievement children of Vietnamese refugees with

whom I had discussions do not attribute their educational achievement to neighborhood co-ethnic

parental and community “social density”, there appears to be no doubt that Confucian family and

educational values are strongly emphasized by Vietnamese refugees to their children,

irrespective of the parents’ own levels of education in Vietnam. In addition, living in a pan-

12

Asian neighborhood whose residents emphasized the importance of educational achievement to

the children of the community appears to be precursor for high educational achievement, as was

the case with many of the students with whom I had discussions. Additional research should be

done in studying Vietnamese educational achievement in these neighborhoods.

All of the students acknowledge the validity of Alejandro Portes’ and Rubén Rumbaut’s

conclusion concerning loss of parents’ native language skills by the children of immigrants.

However there is no consensus that such a loss of parents’ native language skills will result in

disrespect by the children for their parents and loss of parental authority, even where role

reversal occurs. Perhaps this is more prevalent with other nationalities, but having read Kibria

and having discussed this issue with all of the students, I am not convinced that loss of parents’

native language skills results in the negative consequences associated with Portes and Rumbaut’s

“dissonant acculturation” model.

Finally, I found great value in discussing these theories with the students whom I met.

They were very open and candid with me, and many were excited about the opportunity to tell

their “story”. While researchers such as Zhou and Bankston, and Portes and Rumbaut,

appropriately rely on statistical models to develop defensible overall conclusions, much of the

individual histories and agency seems of the children of Vietnamese refugees gets lost when

using this statistical approach; stereotypes are developed, based upon statistical outcomes, with

little or no knowledge or understanding of the individual stories which make up these statistics

and stereotypes. The students with whom I met represent a very important piece of recent U.S.

history; I recommend that a mechanism be found, such as an oral history project, to record the

agency represented by the first and second generation personal histories of Vietnamese students,

while their childhood and adolescent experiences are still fresh in their minds. They are amazing

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stories of destruction, courage, perseverance, resettlement, incredibly strong family values and

reconstruction of their communities in a strange new country. I hope that more of these stories

will be told and recorded in the future.

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Works Cited Garcia Coll, C. & Magnuson, K. (1997). The Psychological Experience of Immigration: A

developmental Perspective. In A. Booth, A., A. Crouter, A. & N. Landale (Eds.), Immigration and the Family: Research and Policy on U.S. Immigrants. New Jersey:

Lawrence Erlbaum. Phelan, P. & Locke Davidson, A. & Yu, H. (1999). Students multiple worlds: Navigating the

borders of family, peer and school cultures. In P. Phelan & A. Locke Davidson, A. (Eds.), Renegotiating Cultural Diversity in American Schools. New York: Teachers College Press

Kibria, N. (1993). Family Tightrope: The Changing Lives of Vietnamese Americans. Princeton:

Princeton University Press Portes, A., & Rumbaut, R. (2001). Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation. Los

Angeles and New York: University of California Press and Russell Sage Foundation. Rumbaut, Rubén G., Acculturation, Discrimination, and Ethnic Identity Among Children of

Immigrants. Paper presented to the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government December 2002 Malcolm Wiener Inequality & Social Policy Seminar. Retrieved April 6, 2004 from www.ksg.harvard.edu/inequality/Seminar/Fall02.html

Suárez-Orosco, C., & Suárez-Orosco, M. (2001). Children of Immigration. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press Um, Katharya (2003). A Dream Denied: Educational Experiences of Southeast Asian Youth,

Issues and Recommendations (An issue paper based on findings from the first national Southeast Asian Youth Summit, University of California-Berkeley, December 9, 2000). Washington, D.C.: Southeast Asia Resource Center (SEARAC). Retrieved April 6, 2004 from http://www.searac.org/search.html

Zhou, M. & Bankston III, C. (1998). Growing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to

Life in the United States. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

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Appendices B1 interview 4/28/04

1. Grew up in a poor inner-city, neighborhood in a large Northern California city; neighborhood was almost 100% Mexican and Vietnamese residents.

2. Parents were members of capitalist bourgeoisie class in Saigon and came to the USA as

part of a 1979 cohort; father was very well educated but experienced downward mobility in USA and worked as an electronics assembly worker.

3. Parents overtly expressed their expectation that B1 should do well academically B1

should do well in school and attend college. B1’s mother was a very successful businesswoman in Vietnam.

4. In middle school, B1 was bussed to a better, more affluent school in an affluent

neighborhood. A sense of alienation in this school arising from several factors, including (i) racism, (ii) “classism”, e.g. bussed SE Asian students looked down upon by neighborhood schoolmates due to participation in free lunch program, “raggedy clothes”, etc., and (iii) being teased by classmates.

5. As a result of above sense of alienation, B1 dislikes school and does very poorly

academically.

6. In 8th grade B1 returns to a neighborhood school, where B1 falls in with a group of neighborhood Vietnamese academic non-performers and continued poor school performance.

7. B1’s parents very upset with B1’s hanging out with the wrong crowd of Vietnamese

youth in her neighborhood and enroll B1 in a high school in another, more affluent part of the city. B1 hates the school and leaves school, runs away from home and hangs out with a gang of Vietnamese youth for several months.

8. When B1 returns home, parents enroll B1 in yet another high school in yet another, more

affluent part of the city, where B1 again feels a sense of alienation from classmates due to racism and classism (“they made me feel so ghetto”), but is a “decent” student.

9. After high school, B1 enrolls in a junior college with goal to obtain an AA degree and

then get a job. No thoughts of attending a 4 year college or university. B1 meets a classmate at junior college who encourages B1 to pursue a transfer program to UC and B1 follows this advice. Very strong role of an Asian professor in mentoring B1 in junior college and in transfer to U.C. Berkeley.

16

Conclusion: Despite very rebellious behavior by B1 and continuous emotional confrontations with parents about B1’s school performance, social behavior, friends and control issues, B1 always felt great pride in what parents had accomplished in fleeing Vietnam and resettling in USA, and also took great pride in Vietnamese heritage. For example, B1 worked hard in achieving the ability to communicate well with parents in Vietnamese, not only grammatically but also culturally as well, and always made it a point to meet Vietnamese cultural expectations when communicating with family and community elders. At the same time, while B1 felt parental and community pressure to succeed academically, family and community pressure not sufficient to overcome the sense of family B1 developed with non-academic SE Asian neighborhood peers, with these friendships largely resulting from the rejection B1 experienced at various more affluent “better” schools, to which B1 was bussed, in more affluent neighborhoods. So while there were many elements of inter-generational dissonant acculturation in B1’s relationship with family and larger Vietnamese community, also some elements of strong inter-generational consonant acculturation, e.g. B1’s respect and admiration for Vietnamese heritage and culture and B1’s focus on communicating with parents and Vietnamese community not only in fluent Vietnamese, but also in an culturally respectful manner. In addition, note continuing proactive role of B1’s parents in always trying to find the best school fit for intra-district school transfers for B1. Finally note mentorship and influence Asian professor in junior college in B1’s academic performance and transfer to Berkeley. Therefore, it would appear that B1’s eventual academic success is somewhat, if not largely, attributable to the Min Zhou and Carl Bankston theory of parental and community “social density” as a driver in Vietnamese second generation academic success.

17

H1 interview 4/27/04

1. Grew up in a largely pan-ethnic SE Asian poor neighborhood in Southern California. 2. Seven children in a Catholic family, with three oldest children good students and attended

college after high school.

3. Parents on and off welfare/public assistance, with poor English skills, resulting in miscommunications between English speaking H1 and Vietnamese speaking parents.

4. H1 was child #5 and was bussed to a “white school” in an affluent neighborhood from

kindergarten through 12th grade of high school.

5. A sense of alienation in “white school” arising from several factors, including (i) racism, (ii) “classism”, e.g. bussed SE Asian students looked down upon by neighborhood schoolmates due to participation in free lunch program, “raggedy clothes”, etc.

6. As a result of above sense of alienation, H1 and SE Asian classmates and friends (i) act

out and are disruptive in school, (ii) engage in heavy alcohol and drug use in high school, (iii) under-perform academically and receive poor grades with many SE Asian classmates and friends dropping out and failing to graduate from high school and (iv) many of H1’s SE Asian classmates and friends spent time in Juvenile Hall. H1 graduates from high school with a 1.9 GPA.

7. H1’s parents move to another state in search of better economic opportunities while H1 in

high school; H1 remains in Southern California living with older siblings.

8. H1 feels parental and community pressure to succeed academically but family and community pressure not sufficient to overcome peer pressure and sense of alienation in a “white school” in an affluent neighborhood. Parents unable to provide any real school support to H1 due to limited English proficiency and unfamiliarity with American educational system.

9. H1 works for 2 years after high school without attending college and then starts junior

college, resulting in eventual transfer to UC Berkeley.

Conclusion: H1 rejects Min Zhou/Carl Bankston Vietnamese parental and community “social density” theory as a driver in his eventual academic success. T1’s experience with his peers was that children of Vietnamese refugees were as likely to join gangs as succeed in school, despite Vietnamese parental and community “social density” in his neighborhood. He attributes his academic success to a combination of (i) initial dissatisfaction with prospects of same type of employment he had after high school for the rest of his working career and (ii) his own personal growth and focus once he started junior college, without any parental and community involvement.

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J1 interview 5/3/04

1. Migrated to USA in 1979, when 6 years old, with Buddhist father and younger sister to Section 8 subsidized housing in a violent, inner-city neighborhood in California; sponsored by an uncle in California. Mother and younger sister remain in Vietnam and do not move to U.S. until approx 10 years later.

2. Father is a college graduate in Vietnam and a military veteran; in reeducation camps

1975-1979.

3. Father takes ESL classes in order to be able to enroll in college and then attends university at night, ultimately graduating with a degree in engineering. Despite difficulties with communication, father prefers to speak English at home with J1 and sister. Vietnamese language skills deteriorate markedly, although J1 attends Buddhist school to improve Vietnamese language skills. J1 uncomfortable speaking Vietnamese with his Vietnamese friends.

4. Father pushes education for his children to be able to live in a better neighborhood and

achieve a better life than initial life in U.S.; goes to school at night but still finds time to help children with schoolwork. Since mother still in Vietnam, father is key support structure for J1 and sister.

5. Mostly Vietnamese friends in grade school.

6. Family moves several times in search of better neighborhoods and better schools.

Graduates from a high school with few Vietnamese and other Asians and viewed as “whitewashed” by his old Vietnamese friends in former, inner-city neighborhood.

7. J1 is a good student in high school and gets admitted to UC Berkeley, graduates from

Santa Clara and has received an MBA.

Conclusion: J1 rejects Min Zhou/Carl Bankston Vietnamese parental and community “social density” theory as a driver in his eventual academic success. J1 attributes his academic success in large part to the strong emphasis his father and extended family in U.S. placed on education, e.g. father helping his children with homework and his speaking English with his children. Re Portes and Rumbaut theory of dissonant acculturation, given the deterioration of J1’s Vietnamese language skills, note mitigating factor of J1’s father taking ESL classes, attending college and majoring in engineering in the U.S., and supporting J1’s learning English by speaking in English, rather than Vietnamese, with J1 and his sister.

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K1 interview 5/4/04

1. Migrated to USA in 1987, when 5 years old, with Buddhist family from Vietnam to a Vietnamese middle class neighborhood near Little Saigon in Southern California.

2. K1 learns to speak English in grade school, but speaks Vietnamese with parents. Reports

a loss of Vietnamese language skills and is “conversational only” in Vietnamese.

3. Parents are not high school graduates, but emphasize to K1 the importance of education in U.S. K1’s only sibling is also a student at a UC school. Strong Confucian values in K1’s family and a tremendous family and community emphasis on academic achievement in order to achieve better economic outcomes and middle class status.

4. K1 attends neighborhood schools with lots of other Vietnamese children, many of who

are poor and participate in a free lunch program. T1 reports “classism” by middle class Vietnamese classmates who view poor Vietnamese students who don’t wear trendy clothes, participate in free lunch programs, etc. as “FOBs”.

5. Friends are largely Vietnamese and Vietnamese “social density” is enhanced through

parents enrolling K1 in Vietnamese community tutoring institutions.

6. K1 reports a strong sense of Vietnamese community values. Reports strong family and Vietnamese community pressure to conform and do well academically, in order to reflect well on parents in the community and maintain and/or better the middle class status K1’s parents have achieved in U.S.,

7. K1 a good student in high school and goes directly from high school to UC Berkeley.

Conclusion: K1 accepts Min Zhou/Carl Bankston Vietnamese parental and community “social density” theory as a key driver in his eventual academic success, citing Confucian, family and community influences to conform and do well academically. Re Portes and Rumbaut theory of dissonant acculturation, given the deterioration of K1’s Vietnamese language skills after starting public school in the U.S., note the above strong Vietnamese community “social density” factors which tend to mitigate any dissonant acculturation resulting from loss of Vietnamese language skills.

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L1 interview 5/4/04

1. L1 born in the U.S. L1’s ethnic Chinese Buddhist family migrates from Vietnam to USA in late 1979 to an all Chinese Chinatown in California.

2. L1 lives in a Chinatown until 4 years old when family moves to a lower/middle class 70

percent Asian ethnic enclave; lots of Vietnamese and relatives in the neighborhood but a mixed pan-Asian neighborhood. Schools in this neighborhood 70 percent pan-Asian and 30 percent Latino.

3. L1 bilingual from birth, speaking only English with her 4 older brothers and only

Vietnamese with her parents and aunt, who lives with L1’s family. L1 reports weakening of Vietnamese language skills as L1 grows older.

4. L1 is ethnic Chinese and attends Chinese language instruction, and not Vietnamese

language instruction, at Buddhist temple.

5. Father was a teacher in Vietnam but downward mobility in US; family on welfare. Father works under-the-table, below minimum wage jobs in order to enhance family income.

6. L1 attends neighborhood schools with lots of other Vietnamese and other Asian children,

many of who are poor and participate in a free lunch program. Friends are mostly Asian, and not only Vietnamese. As a result of having so many Vietnamese and other Asian classmates in similar circumstances, L1 feels no stigma from poverty and participation in free lunch program.

7. L1’s mother dies when L1 around 10 years old. Father “trusts” L1 and brothers and not

controlling about who their friends are, strict curfews, etc. L1 reports father more “laid back” than other Vietnamese parents in the neighborhood, who are more controlling of their children.

8. Buddhist temple not a strong factor in L1’s growing up. Would go to temple only a

couple of times of year on anniversary of mother’s and other ancestors’ deaths.

9. L1 a good student in high school and goes to and graduates from UCLA and is currently in graduate school at UC Berkeley.

Conclusion: L1 rejects Min Zhou/Carl Bankston Vietnamese parental and community “social density” theory as a driver in L1’s academic success. L1 does not think it important to grow up amongst Vietnamese co-ethnics, but it was important to grow up in (i) a family in which L1’s father and extended family placed a strong emphasis on educational achievement as a means to attain a better life, although L1’s father unable to provide any real school support to L1 due to limited English proficiency and unfamiliarity with American educational system, and (ii) a pan-ethnic Southeast Asian community with a strong emphasis on educational achievement. So, L1 appears to validate Zhou’s and Bankston’s “social density” theory as a driver in L1’s academic

21

success, but on the basis of the influence of the “social density” of L1’s neighborhood pan-ethnic Southeast Asian community, rather than on the basis of the “social density” of a Vietnamese co-ethnic community.

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M1 interview 4/27/04

1. Grew up in a racially mixed, poor, working class neighborhood in Northern California; neighborhood consists of mostly African American, Latino and SE Asian residents.

2. Oldest child in a Catholic family.

3. As a child and adolescent, a very diverse group of friends, including African Americans,

Latinos and SE Asians. Mother didn’t like his non-Vietnamese friends, but couldn’t control M1’s choice of neighborhood friends.

4. Parents on and off welfare/public assistance, with poor English skills, resulting in

miscommunications between English speaking M1 and Vietnamese speaking parents. Mother works as a manicurist and father works a variety of jobs.

5. It is “implicit” that M1’s parents expectations are that M1 will go to college, since his

parents want M1 to be a doctor. However, parents don’t know what that entails academically due to limited English proficiency and unfamiliarity with American educational system and parents unable to provide any meaningful school support to M1 due to these factors.

6. Mother works as a manicurist in neighboring city with better school district; clients

advise her to get M1 out of impoverished school district where he is attending school and enroll him in the largely white, middle class school district in which she works. Starting with fifth grade, mother places M1 in the largely white, middle class school district in which she works.

7. A sense of alienation in new school arising from several factors, including (i) racism, (ii)

“classism”, e.g. looked down upon by schoolmates due to as a poor kid with “raggedy clothes”, etc.

8. As a result of above sense of alienation, M1 compensates by not trying in school and is a

poor student through the eighth grade.

9. M1 returns to the impoverished neighborhood school district, in which he lives, for his freshman year of high school and then returns to the largely white, middle class school district in which his mother works for sophomore through senior years of high school.

10. M1 feels parental and family pressure to succeed academically but parental and family

pressure not sufficient to overcome peer pressure to join an Asian gang, engage in petty crime, etc. Many of his Asian friends in high school drop out and fail to graduate from high school.

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11. M1’s parents move to another state in search of better economic opportunities while M1 in high school; M1 remains in Northern California living with non-English speaking grandparents in a poor inner city neighborhood.

12. M1 continues to experience alienation in the largely white, middle class high school and

(i) joins a mostly Asian gang with lots of fights with other students and gangs, (ii) engages in lots of petty crime like stealing, drug dealing, etc. to have spending money and not have to take money from parents, (iii) under-performs academically and receives mostly Cs and Ds with some Fs in high school. M1 graduates from high school with a 2.2 GPA.

13. M1 reports only one good teacher in high school who took an interest in him.

14. Senior year in high school M1 decides wants to attend college and takes an AP class.

However M1 has no knowledge of college application process and admission requirements and cannot access high school’s overburdened counselors who have knowledge of college application process and admission requirements.

15. No knowledge of how junior college system operates and M1 enrolls in and graduates

from a private technical college. Works in the computer/electronics industry in Silicon Valley. After graduation from technical college, M1 is encouraged to enroll in junior college as a result of a chance encounter with the only teacher in high school who, M1 reports, took an interest in and encouraged M1 in high school. With the encouragement and counsel of this teacher, M1 enrolls in junior college at age of 20 and after 3 years in junior college, transfers to UC Berkeley.

Conclusion: M1 rejects Min Zhou/Carl Bankston Vietnamese parental and community “social density” theory as a driver in his eventual academic success. M1 did not grow up in a neighborhood with Vietnamese “social density” and does not attribute his academic success to Vietnamese neighborhood parental and community “social density”. He attributes his eventual academic success to a combination of (i) initial dissatisfaction with prospects of same type of employment he had after high school for the rest of his working career, (ii) a chance encounter after graduation from technical college with the only teacher in high school who took an interest in and encouraged M1 in high school and (iii) his own personal growth and focus once he started junior college, without any parental and community involvement in this academic success.

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T1 interview 4/28/04

1. Grew up in Vietnam and did not move to USA until 14 years old. 2. Father and two older brothers escaped from Vietnam in 1983 and eventually resettled in

Northern California.

3. T1 and mother escape from Vietnam when T1 is approx 11 years old and spend 3 years in a Southeast Asian resettlement camp in Indonesia.

4. T1 and mother reunited with father and brothers in Northern California in 1993 when T1

is 14 years old.

5. Family lives in a very poor inner city neighborhood with lots of families on welfare/public assistance; neighborhood consists of mostly African American, Latino and SE Asian residents.

6. While a racially mixed neighborhood, mostly Vietnamese live in T1’s apartment building;

a small Vietnamese enclave in this apartment building.

7. T1’s neighborhood friends are a mix of African American, Latino and SE Asian.

8. T1’s parents did not have much education, e.g. in Vietnam, father had a 9th grade education and mother had a 2nd grade education. Two older brothers had both dropped out of high school.

9. Parents have little interest in T1’s education; traditional Vietnamese view that education

of a daughter is not important and certainly no expectation that T1 would attend college.

10. When T1 admitted to UC Berkeley on a full 4 year scholarship, parents did not understand the significance of this accomplishment and did not attend the scholarship award ceremony.

11. T1 attends a very poor inner city high school in which she is the only Vietnamese student

in her class and only approx 10 Vietnamese in the whole school. Most other neighborhood Vietnamese children went to better academic high schools, but T1’s parents had very limited English proficiency and almost no understanding of the American educational system, so unable to provide T1 with any guidance re high school selection. T1’s friends in high school are almost 100% consists of mostly African American and Latino.

Conclusion: T1 partially accepts and partially rejects Min Zhou/Carl Bankston Vietnamese parental and community “social density” theory as a driver in T1’s academic achievement. While T1 did not grow up in a very “dense” Vietnamese neighborhood, T1 does report community influences resulting from (i) living in an apartment building with lots of Vietnamese families, (ii) attending a Vietnamese Catholic church and taking Vietnamese to second generation Vietnamese

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American children and (iii) the strong role model influence of a young Vietnamese woman from her apartment building, whom T1 has never met, who graduated from Yale and UCLA Law School. But T1 also reports that her family had little interest in her academic achievements and had no interest in her attending college, which does not conform to the Min Zhou/Carl Bankston Vietnamese parental influence and children’s conformity to parents’ expectations theory as a driver in T1’s academic achievement.

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V1 interview 5/3/04

1. Migrated to USA in late 1981, when one year old, with Buddhist family from Vietnam to an all Southeast Asian, poor, working class neighborhood in California; older brother remains in Vietnam and does not move to U.S. until approx 20 years later.

2. T1 speaks only Vietnamese with family and friends until enters grade school, where

enrolled in ESL, after which time V1’s Vietnamese language skills deteriorated over time, despite taking Vietnamese classes at a local Buddhist temple.

3. Parents have low education levels in Vietnam, but emphasize to V1 importance taking

advantage of free public education in U.S.

4. Father works as a gardener in U.S. and takes ESL classes in order to be able to communicate with gardening clients.

5. Father frequently goes to public library to check out books and takes V1 with him. From

an early grade, father requires that V1 read books written in English at least one hour per day through 11th grade.

6. V1 attends neighborhood schools with lots of other Vietnamese children, most of who are

poor and participate in a free lunch program. As a result of having so many Vietnamese classmates in similar circumstances, T1 feels no stigma from his poverty and participation in free lunch program.

7. In 5th grade, V1 and family move for economic reasons to a poor, working class

neighborhood in another city, where demographics of neighborhood and school are mostly Latino and Southeast Asians. V1 a “good student” but not outstanding; most of V1’s friends are Vietnamese schoolmates.

8. In 11th grade, V1 and family move again for economic reasons to Section 8 subsidized

housing in a middle/upper middle class neighborhood in another, much larger city.

9. Local high school is about 50% Asian and most of V1’s friends are Vietnamese schoolmates.

10. V1 continues to be a good student in high school and applies to but is rejected by a UC

school, so then attends local junior college and transfers to UC Berkeley. Conclusion: V1 rejects Min Zhou/Carl Bankston Vietnamese parental and community “social density” theory as a driver in his eventual academic success. V1 attributes his academic success in large part to a combination of the positive educational achievement role model the Vietnamese children of the 1975 cohort provided, and the strong value his family placed on education, although parents unable to provide any real school support to V1 due to limited English proficiency and unfamiliarity with American educational system. Re Portes and Rumbaut theory of dissonant acculturation, given the deterioration of V1’s Vietnamese language skills after

27

starting school and enrolling in ESL, note mitigating factors of V1’s father taking ESL classes, reading English language books, taking V1 to the public library and supporting V1’s learning English by requiring V1 to read books written in English at least one hour per day through 11th grade.

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Role of Parents and Community in Educational Performance of Southeast Asian Students

Maria Soledad L. Flores


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There are many factors related to family that influence the academic performance of

students. Since the family consists of immediate members or extended relatives and non-

relatives, the influence can be direct or indirect. Nevertheless, families shape the educational

expectations for their children as well providing support for the achievement. Portes and

MacLeod (1996) explain the importance of studying immigrant students as the educational

progress of students in school reflects the overall progress of the emerging ethnic communities in

the United States. Thus, the educational attainment of Southeast Asian students reflects how

well they have integrated into U.S., and also indicates how much role parents and the community

influence and provides resources for the students to achieve. The Southeast Asian young adults

interviewed for this paper share how their parents as well as the larger ethnic community

influence their overall performance in school.

The interviewees consist of six Vietnamese and Cambodian young adults between the

ages of 18 years old and 22 years old who reside and attend schools in the San Francisco Bay

Area. The Vietnamese and Cambodian respondents each consists of two females and one male,

all of whom preferred to remain anonymous.

Parental Role in Shaping Educational Expectation

Parents play an integral role in their child’s academic performance and their achievement.

When parents and children agree in their educational expectations and goals, then children tend

to achieve in their school. The involvement of parents in students’ education helps both the

parents and the children to construct a sense of educational goal, which the students tend to

achieve, according to Hao and Bonstead-Bruns (1998). For immigrant families, parent-child

agreement in similar educational expectations happens when both parent and child acculturate in

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the U.S. culture in the same way (Hao and Bonstead-Bruns 1998:177). The study shows Asian

immigrant students and their parents have higher educational expectations and are more likely to

agree in their goals in comparison to Mexican immigrant along with Mexican, black, and white

students born in the U.S. (Hao and Bonstead-Bruns 1998:183). When comparing the educational

achievement in terms of scores from math and reading standardized test and grade point average

(GPA) of the different groups, Asian immigrants scored higher than those born in the U.S. and

scored equally well as native white students in all three areas (Hao and Bonstead-Bruns

1998:184). Furthermore, parents’ expectations is positively affected by their involvement in

school activities; on the other hand, children’s expectations is shaped by parents’ involvement in

school learning at home, which emphasize the parent-child agreement in the educational

expectations and the student’s chances of attaining their goals. Thus, when parents are involved

in their child’s education, they provide them with a sense of expectations to meet and goals to

achieve.

The goal orientation of students relates with their commitment of following through with

their educational expectations. Lese and Robbins (1994) specifically studied Southeast Asian

adolescent refugees (Vietnamese and Cambodians) attending a bilingual vocational high school

program to identify how students prioritized their goals, their commitment and accomplishment

to their goals. The researchers used the term “goal instability” to identify career indecisiveness

and satisfaction by assessing their level of commitment, outcome expectancy, and the point in

which the student begins working towards the goal (Lese and Robbins 1994:47). In the study,

students identified goals related to family as their top priority, with education and school being

their second goal; the assessment of their goals tended to be individually oriented and they

perceived them in a positive way (Lese and Robbins 1994:49). Between the two groups, the

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Vietnamese students were more likely to take immediate action than their Cambodian

counterparts; overall, time in the U.S. positively related to GPA, and students perceived their

goals positively the longer they stay in the U.S. Thus, students that perceived their goals

positively are more likely to follow through with immediate action because they are more

focused on their goals; their attainment of goals correlated with their GPAs (Lese and Robbins

1994:49). This study relates to Hao and Bonstead-Bruns’ conclusion that parent-child

interaction, especially one in which the parent’s expectation is in agreement with the child, leads

to students achieving their goals (1998). Since family goal is rated as top priority, then the

students’ goals are in relation to the goals of their families.

Student Reflections: Parents Provide Direction

The connection between educational expectations and achievement helps the

interviewees to understand where their parents stand in regards to their future. All of the

students echoed the phrase, “I understand where they’re coming from” which reflected the

difficulties their parents faced in their homeland as well as the ongoing experience in the U.S.;

this was partly their reason for wanting to do well in school. Although they “understand” their

parents, many of them did not necessarily agree with the educational expectations placed upon

them because they said that they were always compared with their peers or cousins. Student A, a

21 year old Vietnamese female attending college felt her parents always expected her to do well

because her two older sisters were already in college pursuing a career in nursing. The other two

Vietnamese respondents: Student B (female, 22, attends art school) and Student C (male, 20,

attends college) have parents who related school with getting a good job. Student B and Student

C explained that their parents never said where to go to school or how to get a good job, but they

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were always aware of the accomplishment and failures of their peers from their parents.

Again, the concept of being compared with other people their age occurs with the Cambodian

interviewees; however, their parents are less likely to involved. Student D is a 20 year old

female attending college expressed how her parents never really “into it” until she was accepted

into a college and according to her she never expected to get accepted because of how much

attention her older sister, who attends college, received in comparison to her. Student E, a 18

year old female attending vocational school, has always been in and out of school because

according to her she did not like school, even though her parents were disappointed in what she

was doing. She always “followed friends around,” which partly explains how she found out

about the vocational school program that accepted low-income students. On the other hand,

Student F, who is a 19-year-old male attending high school, always felt the pressure to get a

good job and to make the parents “proud” by providing for them when they are old. All of the

students were aware that their parents encouraged them to get a good job, because of their

economic status and the types of jobs or the lack of jobs available for their parents.

Community Ties Provide Support in Educational Attainment

While parents contribute to the performance of their children in school, their interaction

with their children is not isolated or separate from other factors that have as much or even more

influence in the students’ performance. Portes and MacLeod (1998) showed in their study that

despite the below than average socioeconomic status of Vietnamese parents, their children

maintained higher score in math, and did not do worse than the other ethnic groups in the

standardized English test. Portes and MacLeod contend, “given the modest socioeconomic status

of most Vietnamese families, the internal character of the community plays a key role in

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encouraging students to achieve” (1998:264). Thus, aside from parental involvement in the

child’s education, the ethnic community also facilitates educational expectations to students

when parents lack economic resource.

According to Zhou and Bankston III (1994), Vietnamese adolescents in New Orleans

with strong ties to their community and traditional values were more likely to receive higher

academic achievement than those with loose ties. Although the Vietnamese community in New

Orleans is located in a low-income community with a largely African American population, and

mostly female-headed families, the Vietnamese adolescents score higher GPAs than expected,

and still maintained their ties with Vietnamese roots. The results from the student survey

indicate, “Adherence to these traditional Vietnamese family values and behavioral orientations

are combined with a high level of ethnic involvement to form a coherent complex of immigrant

culture” (Zhou and Bankston III 1994:836). Considering that the Vietnamese youth are

“vulnerable to disruptive social factors typical of urban ghettos,” they still outperform other

students from different ethnic groups that live in the same area (Zhou and Bankston III

1994:838). With strong adherence to traditional family and community values such as obedience,

work ethic and ethnic identification (i.e. literacy and verbal skills in native language, association

with friends in similar ethnic background), the adolescents “tend to make the ethnic community

the primary reference group” (Zhou and Bankston III 1994:843). Just as parent-child interaction

transmits educational expectations to the child, involvement with the community also direction

in their educational goals and support in their achievement.

Along with parental involvement, the particular ethnic community also affects the

performance of students in school to “form a coherent complex of immigrant culture” that Zhou

and Banskton III (1994) identified as a way fro communities to transfer traditional values related

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to educational achievement. Thus, the Vietnamese community in New Orleans has been able to

influence the younger generation because they were able to provide a community with strong

traditional values. The concept of keeping ties with the community helps transmit values and

traditions to immigrant students, which Hao and Bonstead-Bruns (1998) identified as between-

family social capital. Hao and Bonstead-Bruns (1998) defined between-family social capital

“generated from the relationships between the family and other social institutions” by using

immigrant status and ethnicity to differentiate between the groups in their study (Hao and

Bonstead-Bruns 1998:178). After controlling for parent-child interactions and parents’ and

children’s characteristics, Asian immigrant parents and children have higher educational

expectations in comparison to Mexican immigrant parents and children (Hao and Bonstead-

Bruns 1998:185). Considering parent-child interaction is relatively lower among immigrant

Chinese and Mexicans, the educational achievement of Chinese is positively related to between-

family social capital and the lower educational achievement of Mexican students is negatively

related to the lack of between-family social capital (Hao and Bonstead-Bruns 1998:192).

Therefore, the role of the community provides support for families in which the parents are not

able to completely support their children’s educational performance. A community with strong

traditional values transfers the same expectations to the children in the community, so that when

parents lack the social capital, the community is able to assist.

Student Reflections: Stronger Ties with Extended Families

The interviewees expressed the expectations from their parents of doing well in school so

that they can get into a good job in comparison to the jobs their parents have. At the same time,

their parents always referred to other people, such as family members and friends, as a

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comparison of what the students should and should not do. However, outside of the family

setting, the interviewees did not have direct influence from their neighbors and family friends

because many of them lived in areas with low density of their ethnic community. All of the

Vietnamese students expressed that aside from their immediate families, their extended families

sometimes took on the role of their parents; both Student B and Student C lived in close

proximity with their extended families, and so they would frequently visit each other’s houses.

The interviewees point out that during family gatherings, their aunts and uncles would

congregate to talk about each other’s children and parents are informed about their own children.

According to the interviewees, the topic of education comes up every time, and so there is an

added pressure to fulfill their parents’ expectations as well as maintaining their status amongst

their family.

The extended family plays an important role in shaping how the Vietnamese students

perceived the importance of education because of their proximity to their homes. For the

Cambodian interviewees, the small ethnic community in their area contributed in relaying their

activities to their parents. Before finally moving into a house in San Leandro, Student D lived in

an apartment complex in Oakland, where a small number of Cambodian families lived. She

describes her current situation in San Leandro as a “better living conditions,” but she preferred

having people she had “known all her life” to be around. According to her, the families helped

each other and just provided a place where children can grow up with a strong culture. On the

other hand, for Student E and Student F, the Cambodian families living in their neighborhood did

not have a strong influence in doing well in school, because their set of Cambodian friends were

also not doing well in school, according to Student E. Families would communicate through the

form of gossip, but they would not get into another family’s business, expressed Student F; thus,

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they played an indirect role in comparison to the experience of the Vietnamese interviewees.

Parental Pressure Shapes Educational Attainment

Despite the combination of parental and community roles, Southeast Asian students still

experience varying levels of academic achievement. Considering that the Southeast Asian

population consists of different ethnic groups with varying cultural norms and traditions, the

academic performance of the children should also reflect the difference in academic expectations.

If the academic performance of immigrant children depends on the transmission of educational

expectation and goal from the parents and the community to the children, then this would explain

the academic success (Hao and Bonstead-Bruns 1998). However, Southeast Asian children’s

academic success differs due to factors that affect how different Southeast Asian ethnic groups

place emphasis on educational achievement.

According to Kim (2002), the difference in academic achievement between Vietnamese

and Cambodian children in the study is attributed to cultural and structural explanations. This

study indicates that Vietnamese children exhibit higher score in reading and math standardized

test in comparison to Cambodian children; more Cambodian students tend to score lower in

reading and in math, while Vietnamese students’ scores are evenly distributed (Kim 2002:223).

In the study cultural explanation consists of educational aspiration and emphasis in achievement,

time spent in homework, and emphasis on family and kin as factors that lead to higher

achievement (Kim 2002:221). While structural explanation comprises of parents’ level of

education and socioeconomic status, socioeconomic level of neighborhood and school, ethnic

make-up of the community and school, and experience of discrimination (Kim 2002:222). Kim

concludes that structural factors better explain the difference in academic achievement than

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cultural factors between Vietnamese and Cambodian students; while the cultural factor of

educational aspiration explained reading and math achievement (Kim 2002:229). Therefore,

differences in culture between the two groups do not fully predict and indicate why Vietnamese

are outperforming Cambodians because cultural explanation accounts for emphasis placed on

education rather than actually affecting the achievement. On the other hand, structural factors

strongly affect the overall academic performance of the students because those factors do

account for the resources available for them to achieve well in school from their parents and their

particular ethnic community.

Another perspective to the educational experience of Southeast Asian children, in

particular the Vietnamese adolescent, is how family adds pressure to achieve higher in school

instead of providing support to their children. Thus, it would seem that while there is agreement

between parent and child, and transmission of values from the community, the process is not

always to the benefit the child. Vietnamese young women in New Orleans experience the

pressure to achieve higher in their education compared to their male counterparts from their

parents and their community, which has incorporated traditional Vietnamese gender roles with

the effects of socioeconomic conditions in the U.S. (Zhou and Bankston III 2001). The study

showed that Vietnamese young women performed better than Vietnamese young men, and those

women who identify with their ethnicity are more likely to do well in school (Zhou and Bankston

III 2001:137).

While the women are out-performing the men in school, they also experience greater

pressure to maintain their educational status due to different expectations that arise from their

parents and male peers. Fathers emphasized obedience from their daughters to perform well in

school and even attain higher education because they realized that a formal education provides

38

higher income for their daughters as well as likelihood that they will marry someone of a higher

status (Zhou and Bankston III 2001:139). Thus, the young women are still expected to follow

the traditional role of obeying their fathers by doing well in school, and to use their educational

status to attract potential husbands rather than pursue their own career. Mothers also perceived

the importance of education as “enhancing opportunities and thereby improving their daughters’

bargaining position with traditional gender roles;” thus, young women are more likely to

participate in the decision-making despite the husbands’ traditional role of holding more power

(141). Furthermore, the parents still maintained the double standard for their daughters in whom

they are always expected to be “good girls” even though their sons are allowed to be “unruly”

and this is evident in how daughters must help with house chores and still maintain good grades.

The young men are slightly more open about gender roles; yet, they identified young

women who perform well in school as more “Vietnamese” and to have the responsibility of not

having a “bad name” in comparison to the men (Zhou and Bankston III 2001:142). Finally,

young women must deal with conforming to the roles placed upon them by their parents and

male counterparts. According to the survey, Vietnamese young women “voiced general

acceptance of traditional gender roles, but felt that role expectations were perplexing and

frustrating matters” fore them to deal with (Zhou and Bankstoo III 2001:143). One of the ways

in which obedience is achieved is through corporal punishment, which many of the young

women accepted as part of learning their parents’ expectations (Zhou and Bankston III

2001:143). They are aware of how their small ethnic community help regulate their actions; one

young woman is aware of getting a “bad reputation” through the gossip that circulates among the

neighbors (Zhou and Bankston III 2001:144). While the Vietnamese young women are

performing well in school, they also must conform to the traditional gender roles that obligate

39

them to follow their parents as well as their community. Thus, their advancement in education

leads them to perpetuate instead of challenging the gender bias; however, both the young women

and their mothers accept maintaining their roles as housewives, but to a certain extent.

Student Reflections: In Search of Available Support

The Vietnamese and Cambodian young adolescents interviewed are satisfied with their

current educational status, with one entering college next fall, and the rest are either attending a

vocational program or college. All of them considered the pressure or the expectation of their

parents to do well in school and get a job as part of their parental roles. However, the

Cambodian interviewees are more aware of the connection between their parents’ lack of

education with the availability of jobs. Student E decided to attend a vocational school because

she knows that the program will “place you in jobs right away” without spending years in school.

Her main concern is to help her parents, instead of “using up all their money to go to college.”

Student F, on the other hand, wants to attend college primarily to “get away from it all,” in which

he refers to the constant comparison he hears from his parents. However, he also adds that he

will still help his parents when he gets a job because of his “responsibility as a son.” Familial

obligation to help their parents once they graduate is one of the reasons all of the interviewees

want to do well in school.

However, the Vietnamese interviewees feel more pressure to do well because of their

extended family. For Student C, he constantly has to explain, “what grades (he) got each

semester” to his relatives during family gatherings, because “they always want to know.”

Student B describes the same scenario whenever her aunts or uncles stop by to visit their family.

She says that her relatives would share the same information about their daughters and sons who

40

are in school, and then it becomes like a “competition on who’s doing what.”

All of the female interviewees expressed the same frustration about being treated

differently than their male counterparts, especially when it comes to carrying the family’s name.

They actually express different ways of juggling between the image of the traditional

Vietnamese and Cambodian female with the image they see in the U.S. According to Student E,

“Once I get a job that pays good, I’ll help out my parents and then be on my own,” until she

finds someone to marry. Again, the other females express the same strategy of pursuing what

their parents expect out of them, but at some point they will eventually have to be on their own.

Such responses reflect the ways in which the students are looking for other options aside from

conforming to the traditional role of going directly into marriage after college.

Conclusion

Although educational achievement of students occurs when the parents and children

agree on the same educational expectations, there are factors in which children feel the pressure

to agree. While the Southeast Asian that was interviewed explained that the parents’ high

expectations reflect their role as parents, they also voice frustrations. The interviewees have had

to deal with parents making comparisons of them with other relatives, which add more pressure

for them to do well. It seems that the achievement in education is related to the attaining a well-

paying job and in the end supporting their parents. The extended family becomes the small

community that scrutinizes their educational performance, which does not reflect the research

that contends that strong ties with the community provide the support to do well in school. On

the other hand, the interviewees lived in areas where their extended families made up their ethnic

communities.

41

Works Cited

Hao, Lingxin and Bonstead-Bruns, Melissa. 1998. “Parent-Child Differences in Educational

Expectations and the Academic Achievement of Immigrant and Native Students.” Sociology of Education 71:175-198.

Kim, Rebecca. 2002. “Ethnic Differences in Academic Achievement between Vietnamese and

Cambodian Children: Cultural and Structural Explanations.” The Sociological Quarterly 43:213-235.

Lese, Karen and Robbins, Steven B. 1994. “Relationship between Goal Attributes and the

Academic Achievement of Southeast Asian Adolescent Refugees.” Journal of Counseling of Psychology 41:45-52.

Portes, Alejandro and MacLeod, Doug. 1996. “Educational Progress of Children of Immigrants:

The Roles of Class, Ethnicity, and School Context.” Sociology of Education 69:255-275. Zhou, Min and Bankston III, Carl L. 2001. “Family Pressure and the Educational Experience of

the Daughters of Vietnamese Refugees.” International Migration 39:133-151. Zhou, Min and Bankston III, Carl L. 1994. “Social Capital and the Adaptation of the Second

Generation: The Case of Vietnamese Youth in New Orleans.” International Migration 28:821-845.

42

The Educational Legacy of

1st Generation Vietnamese-American College Students

Cherry Ordoñez


43

Let us rethink the stereotype of the quiet, Asian-American student. The stereotype

generally is as follows: due to the student’s Asian background, they are attributed to be diligent

workers who exit high school as the class Valedictorian with a 4.20 GPA, breezes through

college with a Summa Cum Laude computer science degree, and becomes an engineer working

in Silicon Valley. Statistics, likewise, do nothing to dispel this Model Minority Myth as the

2002 Census reports 47.2% of the Asian Pacific-Islander American (APIA) population held a

Bachelor’s degree compared to the 26.7% of the general American population.1 Furthermore,

the pan-Asian categorizing of APIA overlooks pressing issues occurring within the Southeast

Asian group. Disaggregated data however, will prove that many educational profiles of

Southeast Asian American communities resemble those of African American and Hispanic

communities than white Americans.

This research paper helps deconstruct the Model Minority Myth by focusing on the

educational experiences of first generation Vietnamese-American college students into higher

education. Special attention was made to gender experiences in order to gain insight to the kind

of opportunities (formal or not) extended to the first generation Vietnamese-American college

student population and how differently these services may be absorbed.

Additionally, by focusing on first generation Vietnamese-American students who all have

retained their fluent skills of the Vietnamese language, a key aspect of Portes and Rumbaut’s

Selective Acculturation model, 2 this paper will reveal that fluent bilingualism does not

necessarily translate to academic success. Though all the research subjects are students of a

1 Southeast Asian Americans and Higher Education. Prepared for the Congressional Forum Entitled: “Evaluation of Asian Pacific Americans in Education.” Washington, D.C.: Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC), 2003. P. 3. 2 “Selective Acculturation, as indexed by fluent bilingualism, has a significant positive effect [on academic achievement]…the positive net association of bilingualism with achievement emerges clearly” in Portes, A.& Rumbaut, R. Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation. P. 239.

44

prestigious institution such as the University of California, Berkeley, a closer look into the

students’ process of attaining higher education and sustaining their UCB student status will

unveil stories of struggle—paradoxical to the Model Minority’s blind emphasis on the end

product of success.

Magnifying the lens on the 1st Generation Vietnamese-American College Student

Contrary to the fictional “model minority,” Vietnamese American college students

graduate at a rate of 17% as of 1990.3 More specifically, Professor Khatharya Um reports that in

the University of California, Berkeley, the Vietnamese-American college enrollment rests at 7%

amongst a 41% Asian American undergraduate study body. In order to understand the minority

status of Vietnamese-American college students even amongst its membership in the larger

APIA community, the process of attaining entrance into college institutions must be observed.

This process however, is not limited to college preparatory steps taken solely in the students’

high school career, rather even earlier memories of the students play as much as large a

stakeholder.

Barriers/Opportunities to Educational Advancement into Institutions of Higher Education

The access, or denial, of a college education is contingent on various factors that while

separately, can pose as challenges; but it is when these factors play out systemically does the low

admission and retention rate of first generation Vietnamese Americans become a

disenfranchisement. A close examination of the access, or denial, of: (a) social networks, (b)

formal outreach education/programs, (c) academic preparedness, (d) economic constraints, and

(e) discrimination is foretelling of a student’s higher education experience. 3 Southeast Asian Americans and Higher Education. loc. cit. P. 3

45

Social Networks. The presence of moral support and role models for first generation

Vietnamese American students are closely tied to issues of representation. For reasons of

language and cultural barriers, parents of these first generation Vietnamese-American students

may not understand the American educational system and often do not become involved in their

children’s education. One interviewee stated that her parents did not ask for her report card in

high school thereby contributing to a lack of educational expectation on her part.4 On the flip

side, one male interviewee emphasized his father’s persistent value on education. So much so

that when asked about where he obtained resources and ideas of applying into college, he replied:

“It’s something that you do, it’s not an option.”5

The presence of role models became of serious importance in highlighting the gendered

access to social networks by first generation Vietnamese-American college students. All the

female6 research participants were proactive in seeking college related resources, outreach or

financial, through formal college preparatory sources such as Upward Bound, Summer Search,

High School Honors Program, and the Berkeley Incentive Award.

As with one case study, one female interviewee would mention several females in the

college bound programs she was of membership. By the interview’s end, this same interviewee

had a light bulb moment stating that all her role models were women, and this showed her that

“woman can do things…doesn’t have to be Vietnamese, just women.”7

Similarly, with another female interviewee, when asked to elaborate on her Upward

Bound experience, a college preparatory program, she delved into details about the first day of

4 Personal Communication, T1. 6 Apr. 2004. 5 Personal Communication, A1. 26 Apr. 2004. 6 Personal Communication, T1, P1, and T6. 7 Personal Communication, T1. loc. cit.

46

class with her female, former English Professor.8 This interviewee recalled the very name of her

African-American English professor, yet in describing other aspects of the Upward Bound

program, she summarized the day’s itinerary devoid of details about other program participants,

and facilitators.

The student’s interaction in high school with a Southeast Asian educational staff member

can serve as an “inspirational [example] of academic achievement,”9 however, what happens

when that staff member is not of Southeast Asian descent? This staff member at times can be the

student’s only personal knowledge of a person of “their own ethnicity who have graduated from

college.”10 Yet with the two female interviewee mentioned above, it is the figure of an educated

female, not necessarily that of Southeast Asian descent, that have become their source of

inspiration.

Formal outreach organizations/programs. Access to critical information necessary to

arrive at the gateway of higher education are usually in the hands of high school counselors, that

is if the student does not obtain this information by other resources such as college preparatory

programs. While one male interview did not seek counseling at all during the process of trying

to obtain admissions into college,11 a female interviewee12 utilized several college aid and

preparatory resources such as Summer Search, and obtaining the Berkeley Incentive Award. This

same female interviewee’s interaction with these college preparatory resources however, are

filled with memories of female mentors, regardless of the fact that the college-bound resources

she utilized do not filter their applicants based on gender.

8 Personal Communication P1. 3 May 2004. 9 Southeast Asian Americans and Higher Education. loc. cit. P.11. 10 ibid. 11 Personal Communication, Q1. 3 May 2004. 12 Personal Communication, T1. loc. cit.

47

Conversely, all three of the male research participants either did not utilize formal college

preparatory programs, or as Q1 stated:

“In Upward Bound, even though the Saturday schools made me learn a little bit more compared to other high school students, I only learned just a little bit more; that doesn’t make up for all that extra time I put in. So I drop[ped] it.”13

Another male participant expressed his distrust in seeking help from counselors:

“I didn’t trust the counselor because they were bad. They didn’t know stuff…Better to do it by yourself.”14

Academic preparedness. Regarding the academic preparedness of the schools that the

students come from and their own self preparedness, the experiences of the research participants

tackle the Model Minority’s archetype of the excelling Asian-American student. Whereas the

Model Minority ignores sources of struggle such as language barriers, the educational

institutions and its actors that the research participants encountered exacerbated a negative

stigma on the students’ slightest marker of a “foreign” accent.

A high percentage of Vietnamese American students have Limited English Language

Proficiency (LEP). Vietnamese LEP students of California’s public schools in the year 2000

totaled 39,447.15 The decreasing or elimination of assistance to LEP students can lead to a more

frustrated educational environment for the student, producing low GPA’s, possibly even drop

outs, and contribute to impediment for the student’s college goal.

All of the interviewees started out with LEP upon first entrance into the US school

system, likewise, all underwent some form of ESL (English as a Second Language) program.

However, it is the coupling of ESL programs with an English class for a student to take in the

13 Personal Communication, Q1. loc. cit. 14 Personal Communication, T5. 4 May 2004. 15 2000 California LEP Data. (online) www.seacrc.org/pages/demogr.html. [Accessed 23 Apr. 2004].

48

same academic year that allowed all the research participants to complete the A-F requirement16

necessary for UC admissions. Were it not for two of the students’17 own protest to be taken out

of ESL during their high school career, and in the case of Q1, were not for a sympathetic

counselor who enrolled him in ESL as well as English classes,18 these students would not have

finished the required English courses, but more largely, resulting in a ripple-effect of rejection to

any UC school.

Economic Constraints. Financial capability is the most obvious determinant of a first

generation Vietnamese American student’s choice of college. All of the interviewees arrived in

the US in the 1990’s from Vietnam, leaving behind a “hard” life as they all at least once

mentioned in their interview. All interviewees received some amount of financial aid and agree

that if it were not for some subsidy (either from scholarships or financial aid), they would not be

able to attend UC Berkeley.

Discrimination.

“When I went to the founder of Summer Search to ask where else other than Berkeley and Stanford I can apply, she told me that I might not be able to go to Berkeley nor Stanford. Sooner or later, I drop[ped] out of the program.”19

A climate that is not receptive of any student contributes to the fact that the student can in

fact be “pushed out” of the school system.20 Other students have been blatantly denied to state

exam tests as T6 painfully recollected being in 5th grade, when she asked her then teacher why

she was the only student not taking an exam, her teacher insensitively responded: “because you

16 2004 ATDP Courses for a-g Requirements. (online) www-atdp.berkeley.edu/sec.ucreqs.html. [Accessed 6 May 2004]. 17 Personal Communication, T1. 6 Apr. 2004. 18 “She (the counselor) probably knew I want[ed] to go to college & that four years of English is necessary…maybe it was because she’s Asian too…thinking back on it, I’m glad she did that….because I didn’t realize what she did for me until I was a senior (in high school)” in Personal Communication, Q1. 3 May 2004. 19 Personal Communication, T1. 6 Apr. 2004. 20 Um, K. A Dream Denied: Educational Experiences of Southeast Asian Youth, Issues and Recommendations. Washington, D.C.: Southeast Asia Resource Center (SEARAC), 2003. P. 14

49

don’t speak English!”21 This incident became powerfully engraved in the interviewee’s mind

that she became aware of American society’s embedded racism.

“I actually wrote my admissions essay to Berkeley about my first years in America. I remember it being very difficult. I was very hurt. I all of a sudden became very aware that I didn’t have the right clothes, the right language, the right look. I cried during recess.”22

It is true that in the end, whether having experienced discrimination or not, all the

research participants have managed to “make it” to UC Berkeley. However, the focus of this

paper highlights that the means to attain, and furthermore, sustain higher education is not a

smooth process. Any student learning English should be supported throughout their

development without having to worry about being “deterred [because of] their language

constraints.”23 American society’s rooted racism manifests itself even in the educational system,

an institution that is suppose to be a leveling field.

What’s Language Got To Do With It? In Portes and Rumbaut’s book, Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation,

when discussing the Selective Acculturation Model,24 bilingualism has a “positive net

association”25 with academic achievement. Min Zhou and Carl Bankston’s Growing Up

American, reinforces the importance of building strong Vietnamese language skills:

“The psychological identification with the ethnic group, interest in Vietnamese cultural expressions, participation in activities such as studying the Vietnamese language, involvement in Vietnamese religious organizations, and membership in Vietnamese social networks are all associated with children’s high academic achievement.”26

21 Personal Communication, T6. 5 May 2004. 22 ibid. 23 Um, K. loc. cit. 24 “Selective Acculturation takes place when the learning process of both generations is embedded in a co-ethnic community of sufficient size and institutional diversity to slow down the cultural shift and promote partial retention of the parents’ home language and norms” in Portes, A.. & Rumbaut, R. Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation. P. 54. 25 Portes, A., & Rumbaut, R. Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation. Los Angeles and New York: University of California Press and Russell Sage Foundation, 2001. P. 239. 26 Zhou, M. and C. L. Bankston III. Growing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998. P. 107

50

More generally, Jeremy Hein’s description of the Ethnic-Resilience Model alludes to

retention of ethnicity as promoting a better competency to compete for power.27 However, while

this constant emphasis on the retention of Vietnamese language amongst the ethnic pluralism

found in America, we must ask ourselves, “does posing the Ethnic-Resilience model and

Selective Acculturation model as essential elements to academic achievement parallel the

misconceptions of the Model Minority Myth?”

Both the Ethnic-Resilience model and the Selective Acculturation model rests on

strengthening the ties of the student’s “home” culture will lead to deflecting negative

externalities (e.g. gang involvement, dropping out of high school) that can lead to

intergenerational conflict, role reversals, and loss of parental respect to name a few. The “home”

culture then, functions as a kind of protective core shielding “us” (the student), from or versus,

“them” (the rest of American society). Invariably, stating that academic success can result from

strengthening the ties of the student’s “home” culture, both models assume that the student’s

“home” culture is static to that of the parent’s culture in Asia and thereby attributes academic

success—once again like the Model Minority Myth—inherent to Asian culture.

Moreover, this paper focuses on 1st generational Vietnamese-American college students

who not only are fluent in Vietnamese, but also have solid recollections of life and education in

Vietnam. Taking into account Portes and Rumbaut’s Selective Acculturation model on

attributing bilingualism as a major factor in a student’s academic success, these research findings

do not coincide with their theory. All but one interviewee has experienced struggling to sustain

their UC Berkeley student status. All six interviewees save T5, during their career at the

university level dealt with being on academic probation (AP).

27 Hein, J. From Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia: A Refugee Experience in the United States. New York, NY: Twayne Publishers, 1995. P. 4

51

Concluding all interviews, the question, “What keeps you here at Berkeley (when there

are so many reasons to drop out, to do something else besides college, to attend a different

school?” was posed. Responses ranged from “I’m a role model now;28 to concerns with what

possible jobs they can attain with only a high school degree;29 to carrying the burden that

regardless of having a low GPA, “my parents would be really proud of me when I get a degree

from here (Berkeley).”30 Captured in the students’ last comments are values of pioneering and

perseverance however, short of the academic success Portes and Rumbaut theorizes since all but

one participant dealt with being on AP; nonetheless, the students’ values resonate with the

fervent hopes of their parent during times of diaspora.

Legacy In examining the process of attaining higher education amongst a very small (and

admittedly not the most ideal representation) sample of first generation Vietnamese-American

college students, we unveil that higher education is not simply a threshold. Rather it is a course

of development that functions as a springboard to attain freedom, both symbolic and financial.

This act of digging deep into the stories of the first generation Vietnamese-American

student community unlocks a kind of refugee experience that did not end with the parents’ point-

of-contact with America. Unconcerned with the individual’s personal strife, the Model Minority

Myth negates the propensity to survive as a reaction to a crisis (in Vietnam)—replicable in any

community enduring times of hardship—and is therefore, not necessarily culture-specific.

This research has found that the legacy of the refugee experience becomes internalized in

all the research participants and materializes into “feeling inferior” when pulled out of class to be

28 Personal Communication, T1. loc. cit. 29 Personal Communication, A1. loc. cit. 30 Personal Communication, Q1. loc. cit.

52

taught English,31 to gaining an unprecedented sense of urgency to tutor your younger siblings

after reflecting on your own struggles in college.32 The memory of the refugee flight and

consciousness for the search of “mooring and moss”33 is of universal stories of displacement and

transiency.

31 Personal Communication, A1. loc. cit. 32 Personal Communication, Q1. loc. cit. 32 Peña, R. “Flipizoids” in Tokens? The NYC Asian American Experience on Stage ed. by Alvin Eng. Philadelphia, PA: Temple Univ. Press, 2000. P. 147.

53

Barriers to Higher Education for Vietnamese Community College Students

Hai Truong

University of California, Berkeley

54

From Refugee to PHD, What happened in between?

Asians have been praised as being the “Model Minority” since the 1960’s; subsequently,

the Vietnamese refugees that have started pouring into the United States since 1975 have been

granted this obedient label. According to this theory, the academic/economic success of

Vietnamese Americans is attributed to the stability, traditions, and hierarchical confines of the

family structure which is inherent in the Vietnamese culture (Kibria, 7). In their book “Growing

up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States”, Min Zhou and Carl

Bankston reinforce the Model Minority theory by presenting the story of an academic award

winning Vietnamese student. Thuy Trang Nguyen won the Middle School Student of the year

award in 1995 after winning the school district’s Superintendent’s Award for the previous eight

years. Upon receiving the award, Nguyen gave credit to her parents for her academic success

(Zhou, Bankston 130). Undoubtedly, there are numerous cases in which Vietnamese Americans

perform successfully, whether it be academically and/or economically. However, the Model

Minority Theory tends to ignore the process that leads to this level of “success”.

When analyzing the assimilation process, the Model Minority Theory paints a neat

picture of a linear process towards success. The focus of the theory primarily magnifies the

arduous humble beginnings and the sensationalized “American dream” ending. This attention

between the contrasting beginning and endpoint of the assimilation process oversimplifies and

minimizes the importance of the transitional phase in between; which, when ignored, can lead to

a glorified view of the Vietnamese American experience.

55

“Keeping it Real”: The Ethnic Resilience Model

In order for immigrants or refugees to integrate into the mainstream society more

effectively, Jeremy Hein offers a broad definition of the Ethnic Resilience Model, which

suggests that the “retention of ethnicity promotes adaptation (3-4). Zhou and Bankston provide a

more detailed description of this adaptation theory claiming that

Dense, multiplex social system of family or kinship ties, religious ties, organizational ties, and work ties weaves its members into a fabric of both supports and controls that is in many ways conducive to successful adaptation to American society. Within a short span of time, they have managed to mobilize ethnic networks to build communities and new social structures shaped by the need to use ethnicity as a basis of cooperation for survival in a strange and difficult environment. (222)

Investing in one’s ethnicity is the common denominator that links the Model Minority Theory to

the Ethnic Resilience Model. Both theories endorse the idea of relying on cultural traits as a

solution for Vietnamese refugees to assimilate.

Zhou and Bankston conduct a study on the academic achievement of the children of

Vietnamese refugees from a housing project, the Versailles Village, a low-income urban

minority community in New Orleans (15). Due to the context in which most Vietnamese

refugees arrived in the United States, most of them settled in low-income, neighborhoods with

high levels of social toxicity. Despite having a low socio-economic status, in low-income

neighborhoods, and attending poor schools, Zhou and Bankston claim that the social networks

that are created in an ethnic enclave should balance or outweigh the negative influences of the

environment in which the student grows up in (221). There should be checks and balances that

the community is supposed to implement in order to perpetuate the advancement for members of

the community. This community surveillance system assumes that academic success is

embedded within the community’s culture. The Ethnic Resilience Model can be linked back to

56

the Model Minority theory because the end result of achieving successful accomplishments are

derived from a work ethic that is integral in Vietnamese culture.

Methodology

The purpose of my research is to give a voice to Vietnamese Community College

students, whose experiences have been widely ignored by academia. Most of the research on

Vietnamese American education has been focused on students at the four year universities. I

want to shed some light on the experiences of Vietnamese Community College to demonstrate

that despite the appearance of achieving academic success, the Vietnamese American

educational experience is not a simplified linear process that is rooted in a cultural hard working

ethos which inevitably blossoms into a fruitful accomplishment. Furthermore, I will use the data

that I collected in my research to argue that the social networks built within the Ethnic Resilience

Model do not necessarily correlate with a successful educational outcome.

I must point out that half of my case studies were Community College transfer students

who currently attend UC Berkeley. Those students subsequently introduced me to the other half

of my sample who are current Community College students. These students do not represent a

simple random sample of the Vietnamese American community. Since four out of nine of the

students are attending UC Berkeley, and the rest are planning on transferring to a four year

university, these students can be viewed as successful Model Minorities. On the contrary, I will

use the data from their high school education to dispute their roles as model minorities. The

demographic information of my informants is as follows:

The age range of all subjects is from 19 - 25 years old.

57

Two subjects are female and seven are male. To maintain anonymity I will refer to each

female subject as F1, F2…and each male subject as M1, M2…

M1, M2, M3, and F1 are from San Jose, M5 and M6 are from the East Bay

(Oakland/Richmond/El Cerrito), M4 is from Modesto/San Jose, F2 is from Santa Clara,

and M7 is from San Diego.

Five are at the Community College and four attended a Community College and

transferred to Berkeley.

Eight are children of Vietnamese refugees and one is an international student from

Vietnam.

Research Results

A. Lack of Academic Preparation

More than half of the subjects did not attend or apply to a four university because of their

lack of knowledge of the college application process and/or they did not meet the academic

requirements. Of these five subjects, three did not apply to a four-year university because they

were academically unprepared. M6 and M7 did not have a competitive GPA, they did not take

the SAT’s and they knew that they were headed towards the Community College. “College was

one of the last things on my mind when I was in high school. I knew that I wanted to work first,

before going to college”, recalled M7. M6 met the minimum GPA to attend a CSU and took his

SAT’s but his lack of knowledge of the application process led to the non-enrollment into

college after high school. “I thought college was like high school. I thought all you had to do was

show up a few days before school started and sign up. I had no idea you had to apply the fall

before”, reported M6. M4 and F2 applied to a four-year university but did not get accepted into

58

the school of choice. M4 said that “If I knew what it took [academic and extracurricular

requirements] to get into UCLA, I would have done whatever it took to get in.”

F2 attended De Anza Community College and ended up transferring to UC Berkeley with

the intention of going to into medicine. “My family had a big desire for me to be a doctor so my

first semester I wanted to fulfill this dream for my mom. During my first semester I was enrolled

in biology, chemistry, calculus, and physics.” Unbeknownst to her, the classes were extremely

demanding compared to the classes at De Anza. The transition between the Community College

to the University of California was overwhelming because F2 was not prepared for the arduous

workload. As a result of not being academically prepared, she ended dropping all of her classes

the first semester and ended up changing her major.

B. Peer Pressure

These five students expressed that their choices and behavior during their high school

years were highly influenced by peer pressure. M5, M6, M7, and F2 expressed that the peer

pressure they were exposed to compelled them to partake in illegal activities in which their peers

were involved. M6 stressed that “the only thing that I was really concerned about was making

money and being cool”. M7 reported that he was arrested in the 10th grade and sent to juvenile

hall and a juvenile camp for thirty days. When he was released, he continued to hang around

gang members from his neighborhood and continued his participation in illegal activities that

would land him in a detention facility again. “That was a normal thing for me and my friends. It

seemed like everybody that I grew up with got locked up at one point in their lives” he said.

M7’s parents were concerned for the future of their son and held his peers and the environment

he was immersed in accountable for his delinquency and sent him out of state to live with

59

relatives in order to remove him from the influential environment in which he grew up. M7 was

detached from the negative social forces in San Diego for one year and returned to finish his

senior year in high school. During his last year in high school, M7 reverted back to his old ways

and recounted that “When I came back I was back in the same old routine. This time I started to

smoke weed a lot, drinking a lot, I tried crystal meth, acid, and mushrooms. I was ditching school

and hanging out at the pool hall and cafes all day. But somehow I barely managed to graduate

high school.”

While reflecting back on her high school experience, F2 described herself as being

“young and stupid”. During her junior year in high school, there was a period of two months

where she left home to stay with friends and did not go to school. “I was hanging out with a

really bad crowd. They were all Vietnamese. I never did drugs but I did smoke and drink” she

said. F2 hung out with this harmful crowd at Vietnamese coffee shops because she “wanted to fit

in and feel like a part of something”. While she was away from home for those two months she

was in a relationship with a twenty eight-year old man and she was only sixteen years old. As a

result of this hiatus from school, F2’s mother became worried for her educational future and the

overall well being of her daughter so she sent F2 away to a Christian boarding school in Missouri

to finish her high school education. F2 applied to a few University of California campuses but

was not accepted to any of them. After graduation, F2 was advised to move to Westwood with a

sister in order to stay away from the negative influences that remained in Santa Clara. While in

Los Angeles, F2 lived with her older sister and brother for one year before moving back to Santa

Clara after an onerous experience living with her siblings.

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C. Economic Constraints

Another pattern that surfaced from the interviews was the cost of tuition and considering

the burden it would be on the family budget. One third of the case studies did not attend a four-

year university due to budget constraints. M3 considered himself to be a good student in high

school and was accepted into Stanford and UC Berkeley. However, M3’s parents were highly

influential in his decision and discouraged him from going. The reasoning behind their

apprehension was based on the educational experience of M3’s older sister who attended a four-

year university and ended up dropping out. M3's parents did not want to bear the burden of

sending another child to college and possible risk M3 following in his sister's footsteps. He said,

“My parents persuaded me to consider other options before making a big investment in

something that did not have a big return”. M3's parents wanted him to obtain an Associate degree

from a Community College and get a job so he can help support the family.

Conclusion

All of the students that partook in the interviews are from cities with a high concentration

of Vietnamese with the exception of M4, who spent some of his adolescence in Modesto.

According to the Ethnic Resilience Model, this upbringing in a Vietnamese enclave, even if it

was a low-income neighborhood with high crime rates, would foster successful educational

experiences due to the cultural retention and social networks that should naturally emerge from a

dense Vietnamese community. However, the experiences of nearly half of the subjects

demonstrate that growing up in a dense Vietnamese community did not compel them to great

academic accomplishments of the Model Minority. On the contrary, their upbringing in an

enclave, which happened to be in low income neighborhoods, contributed to their delinquent

behavior and poor academic performance. Even if there is a social structure that reinforces the

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cultural values of the ethnic community, that does not necessarily translate into the community

placing a high priority on the value of education in relation to other issues confronting the

community.

One of the startling revelations from the students that I interviewed was that none of them

received any assistance in the college application process from a parental figure. M5 said, “My

parents told me to go to college but they didn’t help me with my application or anything because

they had no idea how to go about it”. Four adults on M1's father's side of the family went to

Berkeley, and a couple of them went on to medical school, and M1 still did not receive any help

in the application process. If there is supposed to be such a high value placed upon education in

the Vietnamese American community, why is it that all of these students were left alone by their

parents in the college application process? The lack of involvement by parental figures in this

important process of education for their children can lead to the conclusion that the value placed

on education in the Vietnamese community, according to the Ethnic Resilience Model, is inflated.

M3 was accepted into two elite institutions and was explicitly discouraged by his parents

to attend those schools. Why was M3 not supported in his quest towards an education at an elite

University like UC Berkeley or Stanford? If education is held in such high regard, the cost of

tuition should not matter. According to the Model Minority theory, Vietnamese parents can rely

on their hard work ethic that is inherent in their culture to incur and pay off debts if it means that

their children's education is not compromised. If the maxim of the Ethnic Resilience Model were

to be true, then the parents should be able to tap into the economic resources that are supposed to

be accessible to members of the community in order for the parents to support their children’s

education.

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The evidence from the case studies of these Vietnamese Community College students

clearly demonstrates that their educational experience is not a simple linear process that

consistently ascends with a positive slope. The academic achievement of these students cannot

and should not be attributed to some cultural traits that have been inherited; rather, their

accomplishments can and should be explained through the context of each individual's life

experiences. The major flaw with the social theories that I've critiqued thus far is that a formula

has been constructed using complex variables in order to reach a simple solution to explain the

behavior of a group of people. The uniqueness of each individual's experience should not be

reduced or confined to a variable in order to fit into a formula.

There is no doubt that all of the students that I interviewed displayed great resilience

throughout their path towards higher education. The students are second generation survivors

that continue the refugee struggle, which was inherited from their parents. Professor Khatharya

Um declared that the refugee experience does not occur within the confines of a moment; rather,

it is an ongoing process that is endured over an extended period of time. Vietnamese refugees

were confronted with the grueling task of surviving and their children continue this legacy of

struggle in their journeys toward higher education.

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Works Cited Hein, J. (1995). From Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia: A Refugee Experience in the United States. New York: Simon and Schuster Macmillan Personal Interview, M1. 29 March 2004. Personal Interview, F1. 29 March 2004 Personal Interview, M2. 29 March 2004 Personal Interview, M3. 29 March 2004 Personal Interview, M4. 27 April 2004 Personal Interview, M5. 1 May 2004 Personal Interview, M6. 2 May 2004 Personal Interview, F2. 5 May 2004 Personal Interview, M7. 5 May 2004\ Kibria, N. (1993). Family Tightrope: The Changing Lives of Vietnamese Americans. Princeton:

Princeton University Press Zhou, M. & Bankston III, C. (1998). Growing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to

Life in the United States. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

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Appendices M1, 20 San Jose March 29, 2004 De Anza College Above average high school student at Leland high - one of best high schools in Bay Area. Attended top high school for speech and debate in nation. I was academically prepared to get into all of the schools I applied to - Berkeley, Irvine, San Diego, Davis, but rejected from Cal Poly. Guidance councilors did not impact decision at all.

They provided generic schedule advice and double checked to make sure that I met the minimum requirements.

The students at my school came from rich backgrounds and were expected to excel or meaning they were expected to head to the UC. I found out about the application process through research on school websites and friends helped me find out about application process. Up until my junior year I had my heart set on going to a four year university. My physics teacher during my senior year teacher endorsed the community college. He said it was cheaper and in the long run it doesn’t matter whether or not I spent all four years at the university. I want to put myself through school (pride) cheaper, price influenced my decision to attend community college. The main reasons for going to community college instead of a four year university were lower tuition and gaining pride from paying for school. I do receive financial aid: No assistance from family, No support to family. I’ve been at community college since my freshman year in high school - 6 years. I want to transfer to a private school because of the smaller classes. I was going to apply to Stanford but I don’t think that I can compete with other transfers from UC’s. my councilors told me that I would have to compete with other highly qualified transfers. I’m applying to Santa Clara because I’m looking for one on one attention. Low acceptance rate, expensive Santa Clara is 30k a year, I’ll stay at home to cut cost of living. I want to major in mechanical engineering. I plan to transfer in fall 2004. I will have spent 6 years in community college with 4 while I was in high school. I want to get my masters, not sure about phd - most likely not. I wish I knew about the application process in high school so I would not have taken unnecessary classes (honors, non transferable…). My mom’s side wanted me to go to a UC because of the prestige…they did not want me to go to community college. My dad’s side went to De Anza then Berkeley. Then they became doctors so they encouraged me to go to De Anza. My grandfather is going to San Jose State. He doesn’t want to hang around the house all day so he’s getting a degree in electrical engineering.

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F1, 20 San Jose March 29, 2004 De Anza College I wanted to go to cosmetology school out of high school so I didn’t focus on meeting the requirements to enter a university. Average student. The councilors gave the CC a bad name. They didn’t want me to go to De Anza because they said it is for students that didn’t do well in high school and they want to go back and refocus. After cosmetology school I knew that I didn’t want to do hair and make-up for a living, I wanted to major in business because I wanted to do the business aspect of cosmetology. One of my professors at cosmetology school said that people (customers) will look up to you more if you have a marketing/advertising background for your product or new lines. Its not all about personal service, its about education. My family wanted me to go to college and they didn’t want me to jump into my career. Yes I receive financial aid. Yes I work. I Live at home, and my family and mother gives me money sometimes. This is my second year at community college. I want to transfer to UCLA, but if I have money I would go to USC. UCLA because its well known, even though it doesn’t have my major, however its my parents’ dream. I’m kind of accomplishing that for them. Then when I go for an MBA I would like to go to NYU. I will spend a total of 3 years at cc. I wish I had more access to counseling. They’re too busy. When I’m available, they’re not and vice versa.

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M2, 19 San Jose March 29, 2004 De Anza College I was a good high school student. I had the requirements to go to a UC but I chose to attend De Anza instead. My councilors helped me out. They gave me enough information. I knew that I wanted to go to community college after high school. I felt that the first two years at the community college and at the four year university would be the same, just cheaper. My decision was based on money. I do not receive financial aid because I don’t qualify. I’m an international student. I’m from Vietnam, Danang. I do not work. I used to help support my family by working for my parents, now they are supporting me. This is my first year at the community college. I want to transfer to Santa Clara or Hayward because they offer my major(s) which is business and computer science. I plan on transferring in two years. I would like to receive an mba. I would have liked to receive more benefits as an international student. They don’t treat international students as they do residents. I have to pay 10 times more and I can only work at school for up to 20 hours per week. I cannot apply for financial aid. Before I came here, I worked and saved money. Half of the money that I’m spending now is from my parents. I would like to stay here after I graduate. I live with my aunt right now in San Jose. I finished high school in San Jose. I finished my junior year in Vietnam and finished my senior year here.

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M3, 19 San Jose March 29, 2004 De Anza College I switched around high schools during my freshman year once or twice. My high school experience was basically ok. I went to a mainly Vietnamese school. It was consisted of about 50% Vietnamese and the rest was mostly comprised of other minorities. Whites were not the dominant group. I guess I was a good student. I was regarded as a good writer. I teachers loved me because I got close to them on a personal level. I got the grades and that was really the point of high school. I actually never went to counseling. Most of the time I would just find my own way. Counselors were kind of discouraging in a way, they always assumed that we wanted to go to a CSU like San Jose State and assumed that we weren’t aspiring to the bigger private schools. They thought CSU’s or UC’s, something that you can handle. That was my major impression of them. They kind of underestimated the student body. Some faculty would be encouraging and say that I should apply to the prestigious schools. A lot of the counselors were sticking to the status quo. Just stick to this format ant you’ll be fine. When I was in high school, back when I was transferring around during my freshman year, I did not put to much thought into college. During my transfer period there were some credits missing like. Somehow my transcript got lost so I was missing an entire semester of classes. So basically my main goal in high school was to catch up and get my diploma on time. Really that was all my parents wanted me to do. I wasn’t thinking about college about my senior year. I chose cc because of my family. My sister was not college savvy, she is intelligent but struggled through college. Her direction in life was predetermined by parents. She took time off and more time, she lacked motivation, then folks became disillusioned with college because of my sister’s experience. My parents persuaded me to consider other options before making a big investment in something that did not have a big return… My parents encouraged me to go to cc, get an AA and go to work. My confidence sank. I couldn’t afford a university on my own. My dad said he can’t afford it, and told me to go to cc. Reasons for not going to a four year were familial expectations, and economic constraints. I would sacrifice for family. Living in my sister’s shadow provided motivation, just because she didn’t make it doesn’t mean I can’t. Parents perceived us to be the same - in terms of beong siblings with similar outcomes because of similarity in being close… I want prove to family that I will succeed. Would have chosen No matter what school, I will strive to be a great person, doesn’t really matter what school,

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Yes receive fa No assistance from family… How do you support yourself? Father and sister helps out. I can’t work, no time. Cannot help support family. I’m in my 2nd year. Stanford or Berkeley, Berkeley because more in touched with community. Friends that became family… are at Berkeley. Friends Discouraged to go to Stanford. Prestige is intimidating. 2 years I want to get an English degree, phd.

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M4, 22 San Jose/Modesto April 27, 2004 UC Berkeley I spent 9th and 10th grade in Modesto, I went to an average school located in a middle class neighborhood with a decent number of Vietnamese. 50% white, 25% Mexican, 25% Asians and Blacks. In 9th and 10th grade I didn’t do too well, average, because I hung out with a group of friends that fucked around. School was my main thing in life, but focus was geared towards hanging out with friends. I hung out with Vietnamese and Cambodians who were less academic. I was the best academic performer among my friends. Since friends were less focused on academics, it took away from my studies too. Took honors in English. In 11th and 12th grade I moved to San Jose. It was difficult to adjust because I was in a new city in a big school with 5-6 thousand students. It was very diverse. A lot of Vietnamese. I had a hard time adjusting because I had no friends. In the 11th grade I didn’t hang out with people and did really well in high school. I hung out with friends who were honors. I wanted to go to ucla but by the time I was in the 12th grade I didn’t know what it took to get into ucla. If I knew what it took to get into UCLA, I would have done whatever it took. If I had a role model or a mentor to lead the way, I would have had help. My parents didn’t know anything about the school system. My older cousins would ask me how I was doing but they provided no real guidance. I applied to ucla, Irvine, Davis, and Berkeley. Only got into Irvine but didn’t want to go. I had a lot of fun hanging out with the intelligent students. Since I didn’t get into ucla, I went to De Anza instead. Once I got into college, I felt like it was easy because you just had to read and write. There were no daily work assignments. I went to De Anza for 3 years. I took some time off to fuck around. I had an easy time at De Anza and transferred to Berkeley. First semester I was unsure whether or not my performance at De Anza would carry over to Berkeley but I ended up doing well. I’ve done well since, so I think it is easy. The curriculum at college is easy but the requirements to get it are different. My first year at De Anza was the first time I got politically involved on campus. By third year, I slowed participation because I wanted to focus on transferring. My first year at Berkeley was a difficult year personally. I had no desire to go to Irvine. I only wanted ucla. But once transfer time occurred, I felt like it was best to stay near home. Schools in big cities are attractive like New York or LA. I do receive financial aid. I do not receive assistance from family. I do not help support my family. I pretty much learned the application process on my own. I want to go to law school or grad school after I take a break after graduating. I want to go to Vietnam for a while and build my resume..,. Main source of motivation to go to college is that I realized that a college degree or a law degree would be conducive towards what I want to do in the future. Doing stuff in Vietnam is what I want to do, not necessarily making money. I want to do something worthwhile. I would not consider myself a model minority because the mm is complacent and they attribute their success to white people.

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M1, 20 El Cerrito/Richmond May 1, 2004 UC Berkeley Not a good student. Not really. I didn’t do bad in class but ireally didn’t try. I got sidetracked by other things. The people I hung out had a lack of interest. All of the opportunites were there to go to college but I didn’t take advantage of it. I needed to hang out with a different set of friends, friends with drive. My parents were not really involved in my education. Maybe its because they were not educated. I don’t know. I was easily distracted with parties, girls, there was a lot of peer pressure to fit in. even though I went to Berkeley high, most of my friends were from Richmond. They weren’t the best influences. Some were in gangs. There was a lot of fighting and thievery going on. I never spoke to a guidance councilor about college. I knew I was headed straight to the cc. I was not qualified to go to college straight out of high school because I didn’t take my sats but I did have the other requirements. I could have gone to a state school like Hayward but I wanted to go to cc to use it as a second chance to get into a better school. a lot of my friends didn’t go to a 4 year but the ones that did motivatd me to want to go to a good school. I haven’t applied for financial aid but its only like 11 or 12 bucks a unit. I live at home. I have no money. I used to sell drugs but I stopped and the saving disappeared. Now my mom gives me money. I would like to go to Berkeley but I’ll go anywhere that takes me. Sf state, davis, santa cruz… I should transfer some tiem next year.

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M6, 25 Richmond/Oakland May 2, 2004 UC Berkeley I had moved around a little bit. When I was in high school I lived in Richmond but I went to school in El Cerrito. My mom heard from people at work that the schools out there were better so she wanted me to go there. I have an aunt that lives out there so my mom said that I live at my aunt’s address so I can go to school I that district. Coming from Richmond I was a little hood going to this middle class school. I felt a little isolated at first but I started to make friends with some asian folks from around the way. It was weird when I would come home cuzz i went to a different school than all of my friends. They went to school in Richmond and I was in el Cerrito so I hardly got to see them. I really wasn’t feelin it and things started to change for me. I started to hang with a gang but I never joined. My priorities started changing. My primary concern began to be making money. The only thing that I was really concerned about was making money and being cool. Peer pressure to hang with the cool kids and having money was the way I wanted to go. At that time my parents were having some financial difficulties and being the oldest child, I kind of wanted to help them out. At least I told them to not worry about me and take care of my brothers and sisters cuzz I could take care of myself financially. I concentrated on working and selling weed. Then it elevated to sellin crack. But that got crazy cuzz fools were really tryin to kill me for my shit. I eventually stopped but I still worked a lot and I didn’t focus on school too much. Then my folks moved away to Oklahoma for a little bit but I stayed in Oakland with an aunt that I really didn’t get along with. During my senior year I started hangin out with other folks. They were more into school and they were talking about college and shit. After graduation all of those friends were going away to school and I was left in Oakland and I didn’t know what to do. So I went to sf state a few days before the fall semester started and I wanted to enroll. I thought college was like high school. I thought all you had to do was show up a few days before school started and sign up. I had no idea you had to apply the fall before. So now I felt really stuck. So I went to heald college. It was an 18 month program where you get a certificate and work right afterwards. It was cool at first cuzz I had a lot of money but I didn’t know what to do with it. I was making 26$ an hour but I was hella depressed. I started drinking heavily. I became an alcoholic and I was drinking everyday before work and after. It got so bad I developed an ulcer. Then I ran into an old high school teacher who saw me when I was in bad shape and she helped me out. I got help and I was also going out with a girl in college. She told me about community college and then I started going to laney. By now things got better cuzz my family had moved back and I was doin good in school. I eventually transferred into UC Berkeley and here I am. I am an ethnic studies major and im a senior. Yes I do receive financial aid. Yes I do work and mentor. No I don’t support my family but I help out whenver I’m asked.

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M7, 25 San Diego May 4, 2004 UC Berkeley I grew up in San Diego in a neighborhood with a lot of Vietnamese, Lao, and Hmong. It was considered a “ghetto” when I was growing up because a lot of shit was going down. There were a lot of gangs in my neighborhood so my parents had me bussed into the suburban middle class neighborhood to go to school. I was never really a good student but I did all right. When high school started that’s when things got a little crazier in my life. I started to get into trouble and getting suspended in the ninth grade for fighting and stealing shit. Then in tenth grade I got arrested for grand theft auto. It was the thing to do. During spring break all of me and my friends stole a new car everyday and went joy riding. Then on the last day of break I got arrested and I was sent to juvenile hall and campo for 30 days. That was a normal thing for me and my friends. It seemed like everybody that I grew up with got locked up at one point in their lives. When I got out my mom sent me to Florida because I was still hanging out with my friends and she felt like I was gonna do something to get locked up again off I went. While I was in florida, I hated it. I was there for one year and I convinced my parents to let me move back to san diego for my senior year in high school. When I came back I was back in the same old routine. This time I started to smoke weed a lot, drinking a lot, I tried crystal meth, acid, and mushrooms. I was ditching school and hanging out at the pool hall and cafes all day. But somehow I barely managed to graduate high school. My gpa was about 1.8 and I never took the sat’s. needless to say, I didn’t apply to college since every school requires sat scores. College was one of the last things on my mind when I was in high school. I knew that I wanted to work first, before going to college. I knew I was headed towards the cc and I wanted to work. First I went to school full time and worked part time. I got all f’s and w’s my first semester. That’s when I started working at a computer graphics place full time and going to school part time. After two years I realized that I hated the job and I wanted to quit to go back to school full time. That’s when I realized that I wanted to do something meaning with my life, career wise. I didn’t want to be like my coworkers who are middle-aged overweight people that have to work 60 hours every week just to make ends meet. That robotic computer work wasn’t for me. So I started to go to a CC full time and then I transferred to Berkeley. When I first got here I was really struggling. I thought there was just too much work. I only had to read a total of 2, mayber 3 books at the most when I was at the CC and that was for the whole 3 years I was there. But I had to start reading about 8 books per class! Plus a reader! I was completely overwhelmed and I ended dropping most of my classes my first semester. Since then things have been improving every semester because I got used to the system here. It seems like education has been a roller coaster ride but I feel good about where I’m at right now. I don’t regret any of the shit I did because it helped me stay strong and I learned important life lessons from my mistakes as a juvenile. I do receive fa. I do work. I do not get support from my family. I do not support my family. I learned about the transfer process from the transfer center at cc. I wanted to go to school to learn and work towards a meaningful career. I wanted to go to Berkeley or ucla. I just wanted to get out of san diego. I might go to grad school or law school but that would have to be about 5 years after I graduate.

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F2, 21 Santa Clara May 5, 2004 UC Berkeley I was going to high school. I was doing pretty badly in high school. I was hanging around a bad crowd. I was considering dropping out and finding a job. When I turned 16 my mom sent me away to boarding school in Missouri and I stayed there for 2 years. The education was different. We were doing self paced work. At the end of each book there is a self test to study for. The school was transformed to church at night. Bible study was incorporated into the curriculum - different from typical public high school. When I got into the school I felt like I wasn’t challenged enough. The highest math work was algebra 2. My family wanted me to apply to a UC so they sent me applications. The counselors discouraged to go to a university because they felt that universities provide secular education. They wanted me to attend a Christian school. I felt that going to a university would expand my horizons. I did apply to a UC but I was not qualified. They wanted extracurricular activities, a good background in school, and I didn’t meet the requirements. I ended up going to JC. After I graduated I moved to LA and went to SMC. I felt like I didn’t belong there. I felt like I was too good to be in a community college. Then I started to learn more and take advantage of what they provided. Then I went back to Santa Clara and enrolled in De Anza. Then I got involved in senate… When I applied to the UC’s I got into Davis, UCLA, but San Diego did not accept me because I did not have a certain class. I had a different perspective of what Berkeley was going to be. I had high hopes for Berkeley. I thought it was going to be very diverse, and very radical. You could be what you want to be here and you could succeed here. But what was disappointing was how lonely I felt. I moved into a house and rented a room in a house of a Japanese couple. I went to class and came home to an empty home. I did not have the network and the friends that would change my experience. I have received financial aid since my community college days. I’m from a low income family. Mom makes a little over 20,000 a year. I have 2 bros and one sis. I work 20 hours a week. I commute from Santa Clara to Berkeley everyday. Its costly and time consuming. It’s a different experience from someone that lives here. I was hanging out with a really bad crowd. They were all Vietnamese. I never did drugs but I did smoke and drink. I hung out at Vietnamese coffee shops where its dark and there’s a lot of smoke. There was a period where I didn’t go home for 2 months. I was having promiscuous sex. I was with a 28 year old guy at the time and I was 16. When I look back I feel like I was so young and stupid. I wanted to fit in and feel like I was a part of something. I was entering my Jr. year in high school when I was sent to boarding school. While I was gone for those two months, I was dropped from the high school honors classes that I had tested into and I was left with only two classes. Then my mom started to worry when I decided not to go to school so I was fooled into thinking I was going to a wedding in Missouri. She got my dad to convince me into going (they’re separated). Makeup of the school was 5 Asian people, including me. The school was for troubled teens. Mostly the people were adapted. They were either delinquents or brats. Everyone was white. It seemed like I was surrounded by ignorance.

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Coming back to LA was very strange. My family didn’t want me to return to San Jose to hang with the old crowd. So I moved to LA with my sister at ucla. I was very conservative and quiet when I got back. I was kind of a wall flower. When I got into college I realized that I couldn’t be so dogmatic. I was in LA for one year. I took 3 buses to school everyday. I had to find my own transportation. My older sister wasn’t too helping. I gained discipline from my experience in Missouri. I was a nerd. I was a model minority. I started rebelling against family authority towards the end. My older brother and sister moved in and set a curfew on me. Sometimes I would come home late and brake my curfew and get grounded for 2 weeks. When I dated another guy I moved out with him. That didn’t work out. Then I decided to move back to Santa Clara because I did not want to live with my sister because she is OCD. It’s always been driven in me that if you want to be anything you have to have degree. My mom instilled education in me. I never doubted that I was gonna finish college. Now that I’m pregnant, if I want a good life for my child then I have to get a degree. Unlike my mom who didn’t have the opportunity, I don’t want to waste the chance that I have. My family had a big desire for me to be a Dr. so my first semester I wanted to fulfill this dream for my mom. 1st semester I was enrolled in bio, chem., calc, and physics… and I was hanging out with freshman. It was an extremely difficult workload and the freshman classmates made me feel isolated. Getting into a university is a different lifestyle. I wasn’t prepared for this workload. Its not easy at Berkeley. Now I want to finish my Asian Am degree and get a masters and even phd, time permitting. I would like to do what Prof um does. I just don’t know about student services. I don’t even know about this study room. I haven’t explored about ¾ of campus.

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Academic Progress and Impediments to Higher Education for Mienh Students in the United States

James Saelee


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Starting as early as the 1960s, Asian Americans have been regularly praised by the media

and politicians for their academic and professional achievements. They have been deemed the

“model minority”—a stereotype that all Asians excel in education and in the professional life

(Yang 1). Asian Americans do indeed constitute a large percentage of students on our nation’s

college campuses, however, “this misleading view of the APIA [Asian and Pacific Islander

Americans] community results in policymakers to focus less attention on their needs and often

ignore the community” (Yang 1). More importantly, the amalgamation of all Asians into one

broad category hides the needs of marginalized Asian groups (especially Southeast Asians) who

need it most. Congressman Robert Underwood of Guam stated in his introduction to the Summit

on the Status of Pacific Islander and Southeast Asian Americans in Higher Education in May of

2001, “Misconceptions by institutions and policymakers continue to persist regarding Southeast

Asian and Pacific Islander Americans in higher education due to the fact that our data continues

to be aggregated in the overall Asian and Pacific Islander category” (Yang 2). Moreover, even

on the rare occasions where data is disaggregated, smaller Asian groups tend to be ignored and

are relegated to be included once again into another broad category—this seems to be the case

for the Mienh.

The purpose of this paper is to find out the academic progress and the impediments to

higher education for Mienh students in the United States. In addition, the paper hopes to debunk

the prevailing notion that Asians do not need any type of assistance due to the “model minority”

myth. Furthermore, this paper will contribute to a disaggregate study of one specific ethnic

minority group from Laos, in which these ethnic minority groups (approximately 60 in all) tend

to get thrown together under the category of “Laotian.” The dissection of one of these groups

from the greater “Laotian” category will help to shine some light on the particular problems that

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this specific ethnic minority group faces. In addition, this paper will also contribute to the very

minimal literature written on the Mienh.

Due to the lack of literature and relevant statistics on the Mienh, I had to resort to

personal interviews and surveys to conduct my research. I conducted a mini-questionnaire that

was filled out by 108 Mienh high school students at the 6th annual Iu-Mien Student Conference

in Sacramento, California on February 27, 2004. This parent-student conference gathers together

Mienh students from across California and is a way to promote academic achievement, high

school graduation, and higher education among middle school and high school students. In

terms of the interviews, I interviewed one Mienh parent and a Mienh outreach specialist who

works for the Sacramento City Unified School District. I also used a lot of information from

Southeast Asia Resource Center’s (SEARAC) website. Another type of resource that I used

were articles from the Sacramento Bee, as this was one of the few media available that focused

attention solely on the Mienh.

The Mienh are an Asian ethnic minority from Laos whose real origins are in Southern

China. Because of persecution and increased dominance by the Chinese, the Mienh slowly

migrated down to Northern Vietnam in the 1700s and then to Laos in the early 1900s (Saetern 2).

The Mienh come from a simple agrarian society and lived as subsistence farmers. As early as

1963, the Mienh were recruited by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and became

“engaged in supporting the American forces in the Vietnamese war. They, along with other [hill

tribes], fired modern weapons, carried out surveillance against North Vietnamese troop and

supply movements, gathered intelligence for the American forces, and rescued American pilots”

(Moore-Howard, 75). The Communist forces that took power in Laos, Cambodia, and South

Vietnam in May of 1975 “began transforming society along socialist lines, rigidly enforcing

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political control, and testing their military strength against neighbors” (Hein, 26). “The Iu Mien

long-standing family cooperation with the Royal Lao, French, and United States governments

meant that they were marked for execution in the Communist takeover” (Moore-Howard, 75).

As a result, the Mienh fled from Laos, and most of them ended in the refugee camps in Thailand

where they would wait to be resettled in the United States.

In my research of the academic achievements of Mienh students, I came across a very

disappointing problem: I could not find very many statistics on the Mienh. The 2000 Census

combines ethnic groups like the Mienh, Khmu, and Taidam into the “Laotian” category.

However, the Hmong, also an ethnic group from Laos, received their own distinct category. The

reasoning behind the Hmong having their own distinct category is self-explanatory: the Hmong

population in the United States far outnumbers that of the Mienh, and the Hmong are a rather

large Asian group in general. However, the 2000 Census listed the population numbers of other

Asian American groups that are much smaller than that of the Mienh. Of the estimated 25,000 to

quite possibly 35,000 Mienh in the United States by Chiem-Seng Yaangh, a Mienh outreach

specialist, the 2000 Census gave the following Asian American groups their own separate

category when it came to population statistics: Maldivian, Iwo Jiman, Indo Chinese,

Singaporean, Nepalese, Okinawan, Burmese, Malaysian, and Sri Lankan. These groups all had a

population smaller than that of the Mienh, with the Maldivian population totaling a mere 51. Of

the minimal statistics that I did find were found in a Sacramento Bee article titled Schools Eye

How to Help Mien Pupils. Although the writer of the article does not cite where he got his data,

it is assumed that he got it through Youd Sinh Chao, a Mienh college professor and the

interviewee for the article. This article was written in November 20, 1999 and it states that “only

60 [Mienh] have graduated from college, a mere dozen have master’s degrees” (Magagnini).

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The article also states that there are 25,000 Mienh in the U.S. at this time. This would mean that

only 0.24 percent of the Mienh population in the U.S. had bachelor’s degrees and a measly 0.05

percent had master’s degrees. In comparison, by 2000, the Hmong, a similar ethnic group to the

Mienh in terms of historical background, arrival time to the U.S., and socio-economic

background, had 7.4 percent of their population holding bachelor’s degrees or higher (SEARAC).

Whereas compared to the overall Asian American population, 42.7 percent of the Asian

American population holds bachelor’s degrees (SEARAC). It is very likely that these numbers

for the Mienh are highly flawed, but if these numbers are true, and there is no real way of

figuring this out since there is no real statistical data on the Mienh, this should present a real

shock to educators and policymakers and show the huge disparity among Asian groups.

What I found in my mini-questionnaires was that these Mienh high school students are

surprisingly highly ambitious about attending college. An overwhelming 88.9 percent of the

respondents plan on attending college. Only 4.6 percent do not plan on attending college, and

6.5 percent are unsure. This provided a very positive outlook, however, Khatharya Um points

out that it is very common for children of Southeast Asian parents to have high aspirations but

remain pessimistic about their goals. She attributes this to low self-esteem (Lecture 4/15/04).

Alejandro Portes and Ruben G. Rumbaut strengthen this argument by pointing out in their book,

Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation, that “aspirations and expectations are

not the same thing. Aspirations refer to desired levels of future performance (what people want

to happen); expectations are beliefs about a probable future state of affairs (what people think

will happen)” (215). So while second generation immigrants have high aspirations, their

expectations on actually achieving these aspirations are fairly low. Portes and Rumbaut provide

an example of the Hmong, where 54 percent aspire to an advanced degree, but only 6 percent

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expect to receive it. Unfortunately, I was not able to ask the Mienh students their expectations

on whether or not they would actually make it to college. However, it is probably safe to say

that these Mienh students would also have lower expectations of their perceived aspirations.

Of the twelve respondents in the mini-questionnaire who either replied “no” or “not sure”

regarding their intent on college attendance, most of these students felt that the main

impediments in the pursuit of higher education dealt with issues over money and feeling

academically unprepared to attend college. The question asked for the main factors as to why

they were unsure about college or why they did not plan on attending. The question allowed

students to check as many factors/impediments as they wanted.

Number of Tallies Main Factors/Impediments 2 Bad/insufficient grades 6 Anxiety over money (not being able to pay for

college) 1 Anxiety over smarter students and greater

competition 5 Academically unprepared 3

Family responsibilities (having to take care of parents or siblings, having to work to help support family

3 Other

Some of these findings reflect the studies done by Um in A Dream Denied: Educational

Experiences of Southeast Asian Youth, Issues and Recommendations. Um also considers

economic constraints as one of the barriers to educational achievement. She goes on to say that

due to the high rates of poverty among Southeast Asians, “economic hardship remains one of the

key impediments to higher education. Of the Southeast Asian students surveyed, 36 percent

listed financial constraints as the biggest obstacle to their educational pursuit” (20). Um also

adds family responsibilities as an impediment: “Family obligations present added challenges to

the attainment of higher education. Many Southeast Asian males, in particular, feel the pressure

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to contribute financially to the family, which often results in early employment and

postponement of further education or in pressure to take on multiple jobs in college” (20). Many

Mienh students represented in the questionnaire also felt academically unprepared for college.

Growing up primarily in the inner-city, these students often go to very poor high schools where

the quality of teaching is not as high as other schools. Also, because of the crime-ridden

neighborhoods, they become pre-occupied with survival (i.e. avoiding getting jumped, robbed)

instead of education (Um, lecture 4/6/04).

Another impediment that I found through the mini-questionnaires was the lack of support

from teachers. When the Mienh high school students were asked whether or not their teachers

genuinely cared about their academic goals, 31.5 percent responded with “not sure,” and 12

percent responded with a definite “no.” Although 56.5 percent responded with “yes,” it is still

very discouraging to see how the other half of the students feel like their teachers don’t care or

support them. Um also found similar responses in her surveys with Southeast Asian students:

“Many Summit participants felt that, for them and their peers, support is neither present at home

nor available elsewhere. This is consistent with the survey responses in which 18 percent of the

students indicated that they received no support from their high school teachers or counselors”

(2). Yang expands on this and goes on to say that “Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese

American students often feel that their teachers consider them incapable of first-rate achievement.

Accounts of teachers telling their students they should not consider going to college are

commonplace” (12). Yang shows that not only are the students lacking support from their

teachers, but the students are also being discouraged from attending college.

The role that Mienh parents play in their children’s educational pursuit is very minimal;

this creates another barrier for Mienh students. The necessary support that Mienh students need

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from their parents is almost non-existent. It is not that the parents do not want to support their

children, it is because they cannot or do not know how to. In Schools Eye How to Help Mien

Pupils, Chao says that “Mien parents want their children to succeed in school – some parents in

Oroville even offer their children $100 for straight A’s – but many don’t know how to get

involved in their kid’s education.” Although these Mienh parents cannot help their children with

homework or provide them with advice and resources on college admissions, their children do

feel like their parents do an adequate job encouraging them in their academic endeavors. When

asked how much their parents encouraged them in their studies and pushed them towards going

to college in the mini-questionnaire, 51.9 percent of the students responded with “About the right

amount.”

Most, if not all, Mienh parents came to the U.S. with no formal education and no written

language of their own. “[Parents] are challenged by their limited English proficiency (LEP) and

by their limited understanding of the educational system in the U.S.” (Um 2). A Mienh parent

who was interviewed for this paper described how she had no idea how the school system in the

U.S. worked. She just knew what time to send her children to school and what time to pick them

up. In a survey prepared by the Iu-Mien Student Committee which was completed by 88 middle

and high school students at the 6th annual Iu-Mien Student Conference in Sacramento, California

on February 27, 2004, only 1 percent of the respondent’s parents held bachelor degrees and 19

percent held high school diplomas (this information was distributed by Yaangh through an

informal interview). Moreover, “Rumbaut and Ima (1988) found that there was a strong

relationship between the academic achievement of the Indochinese students in school and the

educational attainment and previous occupations of their mothers” (Mitrsomwang 57-58). The

importance of these mother’s resources were important because women were in charge of child

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rearing and child training in Southeast Asia. Applying how Mienh women were never allowed

to attend school in Laos and their low employment rates to Rumbaut and Ima’s theory can

explain the low academic achievements of Mienh students.

The cultural values of the Mienh can also be seen as obstacles to higher education for

Mienh students. The Mienh parent who was interviewed for this paper explained that in Laos

there were very few Mienh who had received any formal education. Education was not viewed

as being important for the Mienh since they lived a simple life style and did not see the need for

education. They valued hard work and respect for the elderly. As described earlier, the Mienh

women in Laos were not allowed to receive education. These cultural values transferred over

with the Mienh as they arrived here in the U.S. Mienh women’s educational goals became

compromised as they were pressured into getting married at an early age. Since education was

not viewed as being important back in Laos, Mienh parents did not encourage their children to

attend college after they graduated high school, but would rather encourage them to get married,

start a family, and find a job. The parents did not see the point in putting in money for college

when their children could already start working. However, the Mienh eventually saw the

benefits of education and began to change their traditional cultural values. People like Moung

Saetern, a Mienh high school counselor and author of the book Iu Mien in America: Who We

Are, has been trying to show other young Mienh students that they can “break the old customs

and forge their own path in life” (Nhu).

What my research found was that a lot of the impediments that Mienh students faced in

pursuing higher education reflected the studies done by Um and Yang. There is a diverse gamut

of impediments that these Mienh students continually face. Given the time limit and lack of

relevant resources on the Mienh, my research was not extensive enough to find more Mienh-

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specific impediments. What seems to be the case for the Mienh, though, and for any other ethnic

group that gets lumped into broad categories, is that there cannot be any clear cut answers as to

what the main obstacles are for the Mienh until there is disaggregate data made available. This is

the main reason why the research was so difficult. This lack of disaggregate data on the Mienh

leads to generalized estimations that are usually quite sketchy. The reason why the Mienh do not

have their own separate category is because they are considered statistically negligible. Small

groups like the Mienh are “commonly lumped into the miscellaneous category of “Other

Asians,” which further masks their particular issues and concerns” (Um 20). Moreover, without

group-specific data, the Mienh and other small cohorts “virtually do not exist from the

institutional perspective, and their interests and concerns are not considered in policy and

programmatic decisions. Hence, they are caught in the vicious cycle of invisibility, marginality,

and persistent under-representation” (Um 21). It is because of this that recruitment outreach

services are not targeted at the Mienh and efforts are not made to provide Mienh students with

information on higher education. Furthermore, the U.S. government “provides resources to

higher-educational efforts focused on African-Americans, Native Americans, Native Hawaiians,

Alaskan Natives, and Latinos, it does not provide such resources for Asian Americans (Yang 2).

This is the government’s way of assisting the under-represented minorities, however, the Mienh

are not considered under-represented because they are “Asian American.” The solution here is

to disaggregate data for every ethnic group, no matter how small a group they are. This would

lead to more accurate statistics of specific ethnic groups, which would then lead to better

policymaking in catering to the specific needs of each ethnic group not only in the educational

institution, but also in institutions of health, government, and employment.

85

Works Cited

Chavez, Erika. “Mien Students Given Push Toward College.” The Sacramento Bee 13 March 2001, B1.

Duong, TC, and Max Niedzwiecki. 2004. Southeast Asian American Statistical Profile. Washington, DC: Southeast Asia Resource Cented (SEARAC).

Hein, Jeremy. From Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia: A Refugee Experience in the United States. New York: Twayne, 1995.

Magagnini, Stephen. “Schools Eye How to Help Mien Pupils.” The Sacramento Bee 20 November 1999, B1.

Mitrsomwang, Suparvadee S. Family Values and Behaviors in the Academic Performace of Indochinese Refugee Students. Diss. Vanderbilt U, 1992. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1994. 9230989.

Moore-Howard, Patricia. The Iu Mien: Tradition and Change. Sacramento: Sacramento City Unified School District, 1989.

Nhu, T.T. “Iu Miens Turning Focus to Education.” West County Times (Richmond, CA) 28 June 2001, a08.

Portes, Alejandro, and Ruben G. Rumbaut. Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation. New York: U of California P, 2001.

Saetern, Moung Khoun. Iu Mien in America: Who We Are. Oakland: Graphic House, 1998.

Um, Khatharya. “A Dream Denied: Educational Experiences of Southeast Asian American Youth, Issues and Recommendations.” Washington: SEARAC, 2003.

Um, Khatharya. “Lecture.” Asian American Studies 125. Dwinelle Hall, Berkeley. 6 Apr. 2004.

Um, Khatharya. “Lecture.” Asian American Studies 125. Dwinelle Hall, Berkeley. 15 Apr. 2004.

Yang, KaYing. “Southeast Asian Americans and Higher Education.” Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC). 28 Apr. 2004. <http://www.searac.org/sea-he-tst6-17-03.pdf >.

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Appendices

Results from the mini-questionnaire conducted at the 6th annual Iu-Mien Student Conference in Sacramento, California on February 27, 2004 A.

Do you plan on attending college?

Answers #’s Percentage Yes 96 88.9% No 5 4.6%

Not sure 7 6.5% B.

If so, what is your main reason?

Answers #’s Percentage College degree = money 61 64.2%

The lack of Mienh in higher education

10 10.5%

Just for the pure sake of learning

11 11.6%

To get away from parents and home

7 7.4%

Other 6 6.3% C.

If not or unsure, what are the main factors? Check all that apply.

Number of Tallies Main Factors/Impediments 2 Bad/insufficient grades 6 Anxiety over money (not being able to pay

for college) 1 Anxiety over smarter students and greater

competition 5 Academically unprepared 3

Family responsibilities (having to take care of parents or siblings, having to work to help support family

3 Other

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D.

Do you feel like your teachers genuinely care about your academic goals? Answers #’s Percentage

Yes 61 56.5% No 13 12%

Not sure 34 31.5%

E.

How much do your parents encourage you in your studies and push you towards going to college?

Answers #’s Percentage A little too much 34 31.5%

About the right amount 56 51.9% Not as much as I would like

them to 9 8.3%

Not at all 9 8.3%

F.

Questions for Mienh parent:

1. What is the highest level of education you have accomplished?

2. What did you think of the school system in the U.S. when you arrived here?

3. How did you and/or other Mienh view education back in Laos?

4. Who were allowed to receive education in Laos?

5. Did anyone in your family receive education in Laos?

6. What are the important values in the Mienh culture?

7. How do you view education now?

88

IIII.. PPOOLLIITTIICCSS AANNDD GGOOVVEERRNNMMEENNTT PPOOLLIICCIIEESS

89

The Effectiveness of ESL and Bilingual Programs in Furthering the Education of Cambodian and Vietnamese

Refugees and Their Children in America

Sokunthea Chhun


90

Language programs such as bilingual education and immersion language programs such

as ESL (English as a Second Language) where the student is taught in an English-only program

are hotly debated. Notably, during the large influx of Southeast Asian refugees into America the

years following the Vietnam war, to the effects felt today through the children of these refugees,

language programs continue to be utilized by public schools for integrating first and second

generation Southeast Asians into the American classroom. Controversies over the effectiveness

of the programs continue to be argued however. Issues concerning the better program—bilingual

versus ESL, of the competence of the learning program itself, the lack of structure, as well as

lack of funding has arise. How effective are language programs, and for whom?

The interviews consist of six Cambodian and Vietnamese students in their early twenties,

attending four year university institutions within California. Four of the interviews were

Cambodian students; two female (Student A and D) and two male students (Student B and C).

Two of the interviews were Vietnamese students; one female (Student F) and one male (Student

D). Of six interviewed, two students are Southeast Asian refugees (Student B and D); the rest

are unknown—they may be refugees or may be children of refugees. All remain anonymous.

Education for Newly Arrived Southeast Asian Refugees

For Southeast Asian refugee children who have just arrived in the United States, whether

or not they can succeed in America is dependent on their English proficiency. With over 60

percent of Southeast Asian refugees having less than three years of formal education, and with

little to no English having been taught in their native countries, a large percentage of refugee

youths need special accommodations (Um, 2003). Thus, the role of language programs in

integrating Southeast Asian youths into the classroom is an important role. To lesson the

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financial burden of the large influx of Southeast Asian refugee youths, in 1975 and 1976, $300

per refugee child was given to local districts, and school districts with more than 100 refugees

were given $600 for every refugee student over the 100 mark. This funding later came under the

Indochina Refugee Children Assistance Act of 1976, and by 1978, $29 million were spent on the

education of Southeast Asian children and adults. Most of the money was spent on the ESL

program (Taft, North, & Ford, 1979). Yet, studies have shown support for bilingualism.

Children often fail in learning basic subject matter when they are taught in a language they do

not fully understand; but when both languages are integrated in the classroom, children learn the

second language more quickly, actively participate in class more, and are less frustrated by the

subject matter (Augusta & Hakuta, 1998). Why then, with $98 million spent on bilingual

education in 1978, only 18 grants were available for school districts in offering bilingual classes

for Laos, Khmer, and Vietnamese speakers? Furthermore, in cities with large communities of

Southeast Asian refugees such as Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, no bilingual services

were offered (Taft, North, & Ford, 1979).

The role of politics came into play. Learning two languages is harder than learning just

one, and children who learn bilingually may at first lag behind their peers on some language

measures (Pearson & Fernandez, 1994). However, children who are proficient in two languages

perform better on a varying number of cognitive tests than do children who know only one

language (Peal & Lambert, 1962). Cummins & McNeely (1978) theoretically propose a

principle based on the hypothesis that bilingual children participating in a bilingual program

must attain two levels of linguistic proficiency (in the primary and secondary language) before

cognitive benefits are obtained. While learning in their primary language, language-minority

students can reach fluent conversational skills in English (their secondary language) after two

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years, in the early elementary grades. But mastery of the academic subjects in English requires

five or more years, after the fifth or sixth year of bilingual instruction (Cummins & Neely, 1978).

These programs take time—time that the school is lacking in funding for proficient instructors

and materials to teach these children with.

Failure to Implement Bilingual Education Acts

The Federal Government passed the Refugee Act of 1980 in attempts to revise policies

for Southeast Asian refugees, allowing refugees to be given special considerations by local

school districts:

to make grants, and enter into contracts, for payments for projects to provide special educational services

(including English language training) to refugee children in elementary and secondary schools where a

demonstrated need has been shown (U.S. Congress, House, 1980:14)

With the act, a few school districts with large populations of refugees began bilingual education

for Vietnamese and Khmer refugee students. Yet, funds for bilingual education fell 47%

between the years 1980-1986 (Jennings, 1987). As of 1986, non-English speaking students

included 29,990 Vietnamese and 16,730 Cambodian. Ten years prior, in 1976, the state of

California passed its first mandatory bilingual education law as a response to the growing

population of students who had difficulty understanding and speaking English as it was not their

primary language. State law in California mandated that a bilingual teacher be available for

every 10 students of a particular language group in each district. According to the state report,

this goal was not met: were only 12 certified Vietnamese bilingual teachers were working while

the law required 213 Vietnamese bilingual instructors. For the required 74 Khmer instructors

needed, none were certified (Harrison, 1986).

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Why was the issue of finding certified and qualified instructors for Vietnamese and

Cambodian students such a difficult one? The quota for bilingual teachers was extremely

difficult to fulfill due to many factors. Southeast Asian languages were difficult for Westerners

to learn, and Southeast Asian immigrants that were teachers had difficulty in passing the

examination necessary for a teaching credential. Moreover, Southeast Asian teachers had little

incentive to instruct in these programs. In most Southeast Asian countries, the teaching

profession was highly revered and well compensated. In America, school teachers are usually

given a low social status with low income salaries. Some districts made up for this disparity by

hiring teachers who teach in English a waiver to teach bilingual classes as they worked towards

proficiency in the second language; bilingual teacher aides were used in the meantime for

interpretations (Harrison, 1986). Furthermore, the state bilingual education law (called AB507)

was “impossible to implement” Khamchong Luangpraseut, a state consultant in the needs of

Southeast Asian refugee LEP (Limited English Proficiency) students, stated. No one had found

the time or skill to implement writing materials in the classrooms for the bilingual education of

Southeast Asian students. Publishing companies believed the market was too small to invest in,

and the State Board of Education did not consider providing the learning materials necessary

(Harrison, 1986).

Implementation of ESL Programs

Due to policymakers’ lack of implementing bilingual instructors, as well as lack of

funding necessary for the upkeep of bilingual education, monolingual language programs such as

ESL were more prominent in instructing Southeast Asian refugees. As mentioned, although $29

million was spent on the education of Southeast Asian children and adults in 1978, most of the

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money was spent on the ESL program (Taft, North, & Ford, 1979). But were these monolingual

programs sufficient in teaching refugee youths how to assimilate into the English classroom?

Through interviews with six different Cambodian and Vietnamese students, findings indicate that

the ESL curriculum for these students was not effective. Many factors included lack of funding,

as well as insensitivity to the cultural needs of Southeast Asian refugees (or their children).

Delaney (1976) discussed the steps necessary for the appropriate ESL program within the

Syracuse, New York district for Southeast Asian refugee student during the 1975-76 school year.

Using a tutorial approach, students were to split the day: half in ESL classes, and half in the

regular classroom. This was done so that refugee students could interact with peers in the

classroom, and also to keep from legally segregating the refugee students. Within the classroom,

the ESL instructor used vocabulary identification the refugee students had used at home. The

learning of vocabulary in the everyday context, Delaney believed, would result in better retained

information, and would expand into constructing sentences. Students, feeling more comfortable

with the English language at this point, would begin to speak spontaneously, and make

comparisons between phonologies in their own language with that of English. After this

confidence boast, Southeast Asian refugee students would then be able to move on to reading

and writing (Delaney, 1976)

Yet, of all the students I interviewed—in which all had received ESL instruction early in

their life, none followed this ideal program. Of the six interviews, all were placed into ESL

education during the mid-1980s during their early primary years, ranging from kindergarten to

second grade. All were taken out of the classroom and placed into another classroom to “better

concentrate” their efforts into learning English, but only for a span of 45 minutes to an hour,

rather than the ideal half a day of ESL instruction. This was due most likely to the lack of

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training of these ESL instructors. Four of the six students had white instructors (Students A, C,

D, and F), who believed that speaking slowly to these children would make then better

understand the language. The curriculum was far from ideal. Instead of building up vocabulary,

most of the students were unable to remember specifics of the instruction, but some had specific

memories on activities they had to participate in. Student A recalled having to memorize her

phone number as a means of learning English; Student C recalled having to read a Clifford the

Red Dog book, in which one of the kids started the book reading in English and ended reading in

Spanish; Student F recalled drawing instructions in which the ESL instructor would read out

directions for drawing an animal, and according to how much English she was proficient in,

would draw accordingly. All but one (Student B) felt that the vocabulary learned, and the

activities they were involved in did not really help in gaining understanding in English, nor was

it a stepping stone in obtaining further education; the curriculum was set and there seemed to be

no progression.

Delaney (1976) furthermore believed that the most important aspect of ESL instruction

was an individual approach, in which the ESL instructors needed to work closely with parents

and the actual school instructor for the classroom the child was enrolled in. In working with the

parents, ESL instructors needed to be culturally sensitive as they were to learn about the

student’s cultural, occupational, and social background; this was useful in understanding the

student and for encouraging the student to be more comfortable in the ESL environment. Of the

ESL instructors who did not know about the student’s culture, Van Hooft (1976) believed that

instructors who did not have to deal with the cultural differences before gained new skills and an

appreciation of Southeast Asian refugee student as well as becoming a better teacher overall. In

addition to satisfactory instructors, effective ESL programs needed proper materials. Teachers

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had to be able to adopt materials designed for the languages and cultural background of

Southeast Asian refugee students (Knop, 1977).

For the students interviewed, none of the above beliefs of needs required for Southeast

Asian refugee students (or their children) were meet. After placing them into these classrooms,

all but Student B interviewed did not believe their parents were notified of the ESL program.

Of these students, none told their parents. Reasons were varying, but a general consensus was

that parents had little to no involvement in the child’s schooling other than in the outcome of the

child (grades); most were busy with jobs, with Student C revealing his mother was too busy

working minimum jobs to establish a life in America to worry about the education her son was or

was not receiving. Also, most parents believed that the educational system would be sufficient

in caring for the child’s education. Student B had to send a permission slip home for his parents’

signature approving being placed into the classroom; they signed, but were unaware of what

document they were signing was.

Furthermore, in addition to the parent oftentimes not aware of the ESL program the child

was enrolled in, the ESL instructor was most often white, with no desire to teach students, nor an

understanding of the cultural background the Southeast Asian refugee came from (Student A, C,

D, and F). Student C recalled having a white female instructor who intended to obtain a teaching

position in the school for one of the regular classes, and kept mentioning to her students that she

might be leaving before the end of the school year. Student D further recalled having a white

instructor who oftentimes seemed frustrated by her Southeast Asian students. Of the two who

had ethnic instructors who perhaps would be more understanding of culture, Student B, who is

Cambodian, had a Filipino ESL instructor who was patient in their teaching; and Student E, who

97

is Vietnamese, had a Vietnamese instructor, who although patient and nice, did not help the other

Vietnamese students in furthering their education in English.

And lastly, although having proper materials designed for the languages and cultural

background of Southeast Asian refugee students seems logical (Knop, 1977); this was much

more difficult to implement. As mentioned, the market for writing Southeast Asian course

material is small, with publishing companies unwilling to invest, as well as a lack of qualified

personnel able to write the material (Harrison, 1986). This lack of usable course materials

results in reading materials such as the experience Student C encountered, where an old and used

Clifford the Red Dog book was used for reading; the book had notes on the side written in

Spanish and Chinese, inappropriate for his Southeast Asian background.

Programs for Southeast Asian Students Today

Language programs implementation of today have shown little progress. In 1993, LEP

students in California public schools of Cambodian heritage numbered 21,040 and 48,890 for

students of Vietnamese heritage. Although these numbers have dropped in 2000, with

14,720 LEP Cambodian students and 39,447 LEP Vietnamese students (Yang, 2003), this

number is still higher then in 1986, where non-English speaking students included 29,990

Vietnamese and 16,730 Cambodian (Harrison, 1986). Furthermore, after the implementation of

passing the first mandatory bilingual education law, although the number of certified bilingual

instructors has increased, the number of certified bilingual instructors needed has also increased.

Instead of the 1:10 ratio mandated of instructor to student, as of May 1997, California only has

72 certified bilingual Vietnamese instructors for 47, 663 Vietnamese-speaking students (ratio of

1:662) and 5 bilingual Khmer instructors for 20, 645 Khmer-speaking students (ratio of 1:4,129)

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(Chu, 1997). This contrasts with only 12 certified Vietnamese bilingual teachers for 213

bilingual instructors needed, none for the 74 Khmer instructors needed (Harrison, 1986). As

seen, although the number of certified bilingual teachers has increased, the number of certified

bilingual teachers has also increased.

Why then the increasing disparity seen as the level of education should increase with a

familiarity of the language programs throughout the years, rather than an increase of Southeast

Asian students who are still unable to succeed in school?

Lack of Support and Misdiagnoses

As consensus data shows, the majority of first generation Southeast Asian refugee parents

had little to no formal education. Others face challenges by their limited English Proficiency

(LEP), and by their limited understanding of America’s educational system (Um, 2003). It is not

surprising then that refugee children also face such challenges. Even Southeast Asian children

born in America have difficulty with the English language, as their parents do not speak English.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (1999) reported that in 1998, 7,706 Cambodian

and 5,712 Vietnamese youths were identified as Primary Language is not English (PLINE) and

were placed into LEP or bilingual classes. Likewise, these Southeast Asian refugee parents, as a

result in lack of English proficiency, cannot relate to the problems that their children face in

school nor help to ease their problems. This is apparent in the interviews, where all but one of

the student’s parents (Student B) was unaware of their children being placed in an ESL program.

Moreover, Southeast Asian students continue to be inappropriately placed in academic

programs; some are misdiagnosed and placed into special education programs because they lack

English proficiency (Trueba, Jacobs, & Kirton, 1990). Likewise, the decision by the Board of

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Education to discard objective standards used to determine when an LEP student is ready to

transfer to English-only classrooms, resulting in the decisions left to individual instructors to

make further exasperates the problem. This subjective decision-making has created a shortage of

language assessment tools for Southeast Asians—used to identify and reclassify LEP students,

and in the process, have hurt Southeast Asian students (Harrison, 1986). Not only are Southeast

Asian students misdiagnosed and placed into special education programs, a lack of language

assessment tools has resulted in failure to reclassify LEP students whose academic progress has

now been delayed. As in Um’s (2003) interviews with students who were misplaced in LEP

courses in spite of the fact that English may be their first language, all but one of the students

(Student B) were misplaced into ESL classes unnecessarily.

Due to the subjective decision-making given to teachers, all but one (Student B) was

negatively affected by the Board of Education; all but Student B felt they were put into a

program they did not need. For the majority of the students (Student A, C-F), teachers placed

them into these programs because they assumed these Southeast Asian students had limited to no

understanding of English. In the case of Student B, a Southeast Asian refugee, although he felt

that the ESL class did help with understanding English grammar and word structure, ultimately,

ESL was not successful in all aspects—he was not able to retain vocabulary and it did no help

him in reading. Student A was a United States citizen but was placed with Southeast Asian

refugees because her teacher did not believe she understood English. Her parents were not

notified of her placement, and she eventually had to convince the ESL instructor to give her

written and oral tests to be placed out. Student C was placed due to a misunderstanding; his

mother bragged to the teacher that he was fluent in both English and Khmer, but the teacher

misconstrued that as he was not prepared for English. Students D, E, and F were also placed into

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the ESL, although there was clear evidence of a grasp of English by these three students. All

spoke English in the classroom: Student D sometimes would argue with the teacher that she did

not need to be in ESL, and believed she spoke English better than Khmer at the time; Students E

and F also felt that they spoke better English than Vietnamese and spoke only English in the

classroom. Clearly, these children, through subjective decisions that were upheld, were placed

into ESL without reasons that were legitimate.

Continual Change in Hopes of a Better Future for Southeast Asians

There is hope. Although ESL is still the mostly widely used program for Southeast Asian

students, and bilingual language programs are still slow in reaching Southeast Asian students,

Southeast Asians are gradually earning a place in higher education. Yet, continual needs of

Southeast Asians must be met to obtain their potential. The 1990 Consensus shows that of the

percentage of people aged 25 and over who hold bachelor’s degrees, the figures for Americans

overall is at 21%. Vietnamese Americans come in at 17% and Cambodian Americans at 6%.

These figures show that although Southeast Asians are reaching higher education, much needs to

be done still, especially in the case of Cambodian Americans. One important legislative act

passed in recent years, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) under Title III has made headway

in improvements for the educational needs of Southeast Asian students. This act helps states,

local school districts, and institutions of higher learning in assisting LEP students by assisting

schools in revising their instructional curriculum and providing training opportunities for

teachers. With the passing of NCLB, states are now required to set English language

development standards, and annually assess LEP students with an English proficiency test. This

is unduly important due to past misdiagnoses by teachers.

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Yet, even this act is under scrutiny and constant under-funding. Supporters of Title III

believe schools need more funding to meet the requirements under NCLB to show yearly

progress, annual testing, and adequate qualified teachers. Furthermore, an increase in budget is

needed to fulfill the quota of having qualified teachers, including bilingual and ESL teachers, by

2005-06 (Pompa, 2003). With the President threatening a $20 million dollar cut, SEARAC

(2003) recommends some solutions for better understanding the needs and situations of

Southeast Asian students, who desperately need funding: the need for further disaggregation of

data, which would be passed to decision-makers such as policymakers, teachers, and community

leaders; decision-makers needing more information on Southeast Asians in lower and higher

education, in order to make better informed decisions; and the promotion of Southeast Asian

American courses and personnel to further educate the American system on Southeast Asians.

With these beginning improvements, there is hope for the future.

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Works Cited

Augusta, D., & Hakuta, K. (1998). Educating language-minority children. Washington, D.C.:

National Academy Press.

Cummins, J., & McNeely, S. (1987). Language development, academic achievement and empowering minority students. In S. Fradd & W. Tikunoff (Eds.), Bilingual education and bilingual special education: A guide for administrators (75-97). Boston: College Hill Press.

Delaney, P. (1976). The Syracuse ESL Center for Refugee Children. Unpublished manuscript. Harrison, L. (1986). The state of bilingual education: Asians fit awkwardly in state. Asian

Week (1983-1989), 8(14), 3. Jennings, J. (1987). The sputnik of the eighties. Phi Delta Kappan. 69(2), 104-109. Knop, C.K. (1977). Videotape Inservice Program on Teaching Second Language,

Instructor’s Manual. Unpublished Manuscript. Massachusetts Department of Public Health. (1999) Southeast Asians. In Refugees and

Immigrants in Massachusetts: An Overview of Selected Communities. Boston, MA: Office of Refugee and Immigrant Health, Bureau of Family and Community Health, Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

Peal, E., & Lambert, W.E. (1962). The relation of bilingualism to intelligence. Psychological

Monographs, 76(546), 1-23. Pearson, B.Z., & Fernandez, S.C (1994). Patterns of interactions in the lexical growth in two

languages of bilingual infants and toddlers. Language Learning, 44, 617-653. Pompa, D. (2003). National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE) (A testimony by

Delia Pompa from the Evaluation of Asian Pacific Americans in Education Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Community Series). Washington, D.C.: National Coalition Of Asian Pacific American Organizations (NCAPA).

Taft, J., North, D., & Ford, D. (1979). Refugee Resettlement in the U.S.: Time for a New

Focus. Washington, D.C.: New TransCentury Foundation. Trueba, H.J., Jacobs, L., & Kirton, E. (1990). Cultural and Adaptation: The Case of Hmong

Children in American Society. New York, N.Y.: The Farmer’s Press.

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Um, Katharya (2003). A Dream Denied: Educational Experiences of Southeast Asian Youth, Issues and Recommendations (An issue paper based on findings from the first national Southeast Asian Youth Summit, University of California-Berkeley, December 9, 2000). Washington, D.C.: Southeast Asia Resource Center (SEARAC). Retrieved April 10, 2004 from http://www.searac.org/search.html.

U.S. Congress, House. (1980). Refugee Act of 1980. Pub. L. 96-212, 96th Congress, 2d session. Van Hooft, G.E. (1976). A Broad Look at Programs that Serve Vietnamese Refugee Children.

Unpublished Manuscript. Yang, K. (2003). Southeast Asian Americans and Higher Education. (Prepared for the

Congressional Forum Entitled: Evaluation of Asian Pacific Americans in Education, June 17th, 2003). Washington, D.C.: Southeast Asian Resource Research Center (SEARAC.) Retrieved on April 10, 2004 from http://www.searac.org/search.html.

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Southeast Asian UC Berkeley Student Views of Affirmative Action

Rema Aburahma


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Throughout history and at our present state, racial politics has played a huge role in the

educational system of the United States. As the demographics of our country are constantly

changing, the vast variety of racial issues, such as racial identity, race relations, etc. become

more and more permeate in American society, politics and culture (Takagi, 3). Affirmative

action is one strategy of racial politics that has developed into a complex debate among

employers, employees, the institutions of higher education, students, politicians and the

general public. In 1977, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights defined affirmative action as

“any measure, beyond simple termination of discriminatory practice, adopted to correct and

compensate for past or present discrimination or to prevent discrimination from recurring in

the future” (Arredondo, 440). In other words, it is a “narrowly-tailed race-conscious remedy”

that is used to overcome the social, political and economic problems U.S. minorities, mainly

people of color and women, face as a result of historical discrimination (Lew, 13). This race

and gender-conscious strategy has been applied to three different areas: employment, higher

education, and contracting opportunities (Lew, 13). 1978 was a significant year in which

these policies were first applied to the admission practices of higher educational institutions.

In the case of Bakke v. University of California, the Supreme Court issued its first major

decisions on affirmative action, “upholding the right to use race as a factor in university

admissions, but prohibiting quotas” (Lew, 14). Since then, racial politics have played a major

function in admissions, especially at the most highly selective competitive colleges and

universities.

While according to most liberals the reasoning behind affirmative action appears to make

the college admission process a more fair and equal competition, most conservatives have a

different opinion. “Affirmative action, says its critics, privileges the “less qualified” at the

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expense of the “more qualified” on the basis of race” (Takagi, 4). In addition to this view, the

conservative approach defends its claim by saying that affirmative action does a dis-service to

the “less qualified” minorities by “helping” them in, because once they enter a college or

university, “they find they cannot succeed in the competitive work of undergraduate academics”

(Takagi, 4). Thus, because these minorities do not receive the type of education these

conservatives view as necessary for college/university success, they will automatically fail.

Therefore, according to this belief, allowing them into an institution of higher education is

actually not helping them, but hurting them.

When looking at affirmative action, it is important to examine the role that Asians take

part in. For the most part, the Asian American experience is not defined by racial politics, which

is seen more as a black-white issue. “Racial politics in higher education are determined and

shaped by black experiences on the one hand, and white experiences, on the other. Asians are

perceived to be either like whites or not like whites; or, alternatively, like blacks or not like

blacks” (Takagi, 11). Thus, in this intensive debate, the educational experiences of Asian

Americans have been used to defend the agents of both sides, both for and against the issue of

race and admissions. However, Asian Americans make up the fastest-growing minority group in

higher education, encompassing one-fourth to one-third of the enrollment of several of America's

most competitive public and private schools, including the University of California, Berkeley.

From 1976 to 1996, the number of Asian Americans in higher education increased by over 400

percent (Inkelas, 602). Affirmative action not only affects them, but in turn holds consequences

or implications for others as well - blacks, whites, Hispanics and Native Americans (Takagi, 11).

Therefore it is crucial to examine and analyze the attitudes and perceptions of Asian Americans

in discourses about race in higher education.

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As the enrollment of Asian Americans enlarges, knowledge of their views and positions

of affirmative action is a critical importance for the improvement of an institutions effectiveness

and research. Many studies have concluded that the racial climate of a campus along with its

racial/ethnic diversity are correlated to the college environment which improves the outcomes of

students-learning (Inkelas, 603). In addition, from a research standpoint, when studies involving

diversity and racial issues are conducted, generalization across racial/ethnic groups must not be

made (Inkelas, 602). Diversity research must examine all aspects of Asian American students’

perspectives, a vast category which includes different ethnic groups, such as Vietnamese, Korean,

Chinese, Filipino, East Indian, etc. Therefore in order to give light on the racial views of Asian

Americans, this study will focus specifically on the attitudes on affirmative action of Southeast

Asian students here at the University of California, Berkeley.

In 1991, a study was conducted at UC Berkeley of Asian Pacific American opinions

regarding the diversification of the student body and organization of students. The results of this

study showed that “Asian Pacific American students opinions were the most “conflicted” and

“complex” (Inkelas, 604). This claim is also supported by a survey given by the University of

California showing that in the group of Asian American students 48.5 percent strongly or

somewhat agreed with affirmative action, while 52.5 percent disagreed. These studies suggest

that Asian American students hold multifaceted views when it comes to this specific item of

racial politics. Focusing in on this research, specifically of the views of Southeast Asian students

at UC Berkeley, we can see that they make up a very small percentage of the entire racial group.

The most recent data of 2003 reports that Southeast Asian Americans are under-represented in

institutions of higher education. The undergraduates of UC Berkley are made up of 41 percent

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Asian Pacific Islander American, and out of this statistic, 7 percent are Vietnamese and it is

estimated that less than 50 students are of Cambodian or Laotian heritage. (Niedzwiecki, 3)

The research I have conducted was through a survey in which I pose questions about

oneself -their major, involvement in organizations/clubs, their ethnic and cultural identity- and

about their beliefs, ideologies and attitudes concerning affirmative action. I handed out 15

surveys to Southeast Asian UC Berkeley students that I was able to get into contact with through

social networks (friends, and friends of friends) and through classmates. Of the 15 sent out, I

received eight back. Of the eight respondents, two are Mien, and six are Vietnamese. Hereafter,

I shall refer to them as students A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H. Of the eight students, students A, B,

E, and F had a good understanding of the definition and policies of affirmative action, while

students C, D, G and H held vague views about the policy. After being given the definition,

provided by the United States Commission on Civil Rights, the students were asked if they agree

with both the practices of affirmative action, and with it being put into practice.

Research shows that among the Asian Pacific American (APA) student population, 98%

of APA students tend to agree with affirmative action in principle, but considerably fewer

students agree with it being put into practice. Almost 30% of these students were opposed to

affirmative action practices. Comparing these students to their racial/ethnic peers, APA students

are among the most likely to support affirmative action in principle, exceeded only by African

Americans, but are also among the most likely to oppose affirmative action in practice, exceeded

only by whites (Inkelas, 614). Of the eight respondents, students A, B, C, and H agreed with the

principles and practices of affirmative action. Student D was the only respondent who agreed

with its principles but disagreed with its practices; students E agreed with the principles, but was

not certain about its practices; student F agreed and disagreed with both, and student G omitted

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the questions because of lack of knowledge on the issue. (Because student G did not give his/her

opinion of whether he/she agreed or not with affirmative action, I have excluded this survey from

the data.) Looking at past studies on affirmative action and Asian American students, I will be

looking and analyzing four different factors that have shown to influence attitudes of affirmative

action. The factors are as follows: Ethnic and cultural identity, student involvement in

ethnically focused and diverse student groups and organizations, the student’s major and lastly,

their beliefs of our society concerning wealth and poverty. From this research, I will compare

the information to the primary research conducted to see whether these factors apply to Southeast

Asian UC Berkeley students as well.

Of the seven respondents, students A and B, who both agreed with the policies and

practices of affirmative action, felt they manifested a more ethnocentric identity. Student F, who

agreed and disagreed towards affirmative action, identified more with the dominant American

culture. Students C, H, D, and E all identified with both identities, and of the four students

respectively, two agreed with affirmative action and two agreed solely with its policies, but not

its practices. Studies show that APA students who embrace a more minority-orientated

perspective are more likely to agree with affirmative action. Those who identify with the

dominant American culture, representing mainly white culture, are more likely to oppose the

policy. Among all racial groups, whites have the highest opposition rate towards affirmative

action, a large part being because the policy not only does not benefit them, it also hinders their

opportunities into higher education (Arredondo, 441). Therefore, for students who identify more

with this dominant culture, their views are influenced by these beliefs. The data from the

research conducted can illustrate this point to some degree. The two students, A and B, who

identified more with their ethnic identity both agreed with affirmative action. Students D, E, and

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F identified as either bi-cultural or with the dominant American culture, and all three disagreed

with affirmative action to some degree. Therefore, while the sample size of this research is

rather small, a trend is noticeable that connects one’s identity with their views and beliefs.

A second factor is the student’s involvement in ethnically-based or diverse student groups

and/or organizations, specifically those that have to do with social welfare (Inkelas, 607).

Studies have shown that when a student is involved in these types of groups, it increases their

understanding of race, ethnicity, and racial politics, such as affirmative action. Students in these

groups also tend to have more liberal attitudes, which are usually pro affirmative action. This is

based on the evidence that people who have and promote racial understanding are more likely to

believe that racial discrimination is still a problem in the United States today. Thus, they would

view affirmative action as a remedy to this problem (Arredondo, 453). The data collected,

however, does not support this claim. Six out of the seven respondents are involved in some

type of these organizations. Of these six, five of the groups are ethnically-based such as the

Vietnamese Student Association, Southeast Asian Student Coalition, and Laotian American

Students Representatives. The only student who is not involved in any student

groups/organizations is student F, who held views both for and against affirmative action.

Therefore, since the majority of the students are involved in these types of groups, and they hold

different views, both in favor of and oppose to affirmative action, no strong conclusion can be

drawn relating their involvement as an influence to their beliefs. However, seeing that no

student was completely against affirmative action on the whole, it can be said that their

involvement has given them a greater understanding of race and racial politics, causing them to

be for affirmative action to some degree.

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Another influential factor is the student’s major. APA students who major in humanities

or social sciences disciplines are significantly more likely to be in support of affirmative action

because they are less likely to subscribe to the dominant ideological belief that poverty is at fault

of the individual. The research from this model demonstrates that APA students in these majors

think about the potential imperfection of the dominant ideology and the racial climate around

them, and that these perceptions directly influence their views on affirmative action principles.

While the relationship between these majors and affirmative action views is not direct, this

affiliation can illustrate the “complex ways through which curricular, personal ideological, and

perceptual influences combine to impact students’ racial attitudes” (Inkelas, 13). The majors of

the seven respondents are as follows: Interdispclinary Studies Field, Social Welfare(2), Legal

Studies, Cognitive Science, South and Southeast Asian Studies and Development Studies. It is

difficult to deduce that major affects attitudes on affirmative action, because the majors of all

respondents are in humanities and social sciences. An important point to note is that despite the

fact that these students learn about the discrimination and inequalities of our society through

these mediums, some are still against the politics of affirmative action. However, as stated

earlier, since no student is completely against affirmative action, both its policies and practices, it

cannot be concluded that a student majoring in humanities/social sciences does not contribute to

attitudes of affirmative action.

A fourth factor is ones ideologies and beliefs about the structure of opportunity in our

society, focusing on two aspects. The first is wealth and how it is accumulated, and the second,

poverty and how it is attributed. Americans, specifically white Americans, tend to oppose

affirmative action because of “an abiding personal conviction in a construct called the dominant

ideology also known as the “American Dream” ideology (Inkelas, 605). This belief asserts that

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opportunity and success should be obtained through hard work and merit, and not through

redistributed social interventions. African Americans, however, tend to view our society as

racially stratified, causing the economic and social opportunities for black Americans to be

impeded because of structural obstacles that hinder minority success (Inkelas, 605). Thus, more

African Americans tend to support interventions such as affirmative action, as a means of

opening access to social and economic upward mobility. In this manner, if an American sees the

discrimination and inequality of our nation, they would see how the “American Dream” is

problematic, in that it does not take solely hard work and initiative to achieve wealth. In addition

to that, one must be at the top of the social, economic and political hierarchy, or at least

achieving upward mobility. However, if one believes in the “American Dream” as a valid

ideology, and an American does not achieve this dream, the fault is blamed on the individual,

and not social biases.

How a student feels towards these issues can affect their attitudes towards affirmative

action. If one believes that the structure of opportunity in the U.S. is limiting, which affects

one’s access to wealth or drives them to poverty, they are more likely to be for affirmative action

which would be seen as a measure to bring equality into the system. However, if they take on

the “American Dream” principle, and believe that one is in poverty exclusively because of

his/her own failings, they are more likely to be against affirmative action. According to this

attitude, if an individual is at fault, they should not receive any assistance to help them out of

poverty. Among the seven respondents, six students believe that wealth can be accumulated

through hard work and initiative, however, they also believe that there are larger obstacles that

stand in the way such as racism, classism (discrimination based on ones socio-economic status),

lack of resources and a glass ceiling that minorities cannot surpass, specifically in employment.

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When asked if the students believe poverty is attributed to individual failings or social bias, all

seven respondents indicated both. A correlation can be assumed with this factor and the student

attitudes: All of the students believe that the structure of opportunity in American society is

limiting, and that living in poverty is not entirely the fault of an individual. In addition, all the

students, while on different levels, agreed somewhat or entirely towards affirmative action.

A major drawback in the research conducted was the small pool of respondents which led

to a small collection of different views on affirmative action. However, because the Southeast

Asian population at UC Berkeley is undersized to begin with, this study can give a minor

representation of the attitudes on affirmative action of Southeast Asian UC Berkeley students.

From this study, we can see that a large number of students are for affirmative action, and an

even larger number agree with its principles. While Southeast Asians are a minority in this

institution, their views are essential to maintaining and improving an effective university. Asian

Americans cannot be generalized into one large racial group, because of the diversity in their

histories, experiences and even their positions in our society today. The views of each ethnic

group must be studied individually so that there can be an improved perception of the racial

climate of the University of California, Berkeley, which could then be used to create a more

healthy and effective learning environment.

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Works Cited

Arredondo, Marisol and Sax, Linda J. “Students Attitudes Toward Affirmative Action in

College Admissions.” Research in Higher Education 40.4 (1999); 439-458. Inkelas, Karen K. “Diversity’s Missing Minority: Asian Pacific American Undergraduates’

Attitudes Toward Affirmative Action.” The Journal of Higher Education 76.6 (2003); 601-629.

Lew, Gena A. “Perspectives on Affirmative Action...and Its Impact on Asian Pacific

Americans.” Common Ground (1996); 1-41. Magner, Denise K. “College’s Asian Enrollment Defies Stereotype.” The Chronicle of Higher

Education. (1993); A34. Niedzwiecki, W.R. “Southeast Asian Americans and Higher Education.” Southeast Asia

Resource Action Center (2003) Takagi, Dana Y. The Retreat From Race. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998.

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Social and Psychological Implications of Student Organizations on Southeast Asian Students:

A Case Study at University of California, Berkeley

Denis Lam


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A.M., 19, a second generation Vietnamese American from San Jose and first year student

at University of California, Berkeley double majoring in Molecular Environmental Biology and

Microbial Biology contemplates joining the campus Vietnamese Student Association, Asian

American Association, and Asian Business Association next year so she can “meet more people

and share common interests by culture.” (M., A.) Q.P., 19, a second generation Vietnamese-

Chinese American from San Francisco and second year intended Business major at the same

institution is currently an active member in the campus Asian Pacific American Theme House.

He joined the theme house his freshman year so he can secure affordable housing, stay in touch

with his friends, who also live in the theme house, and meet new people with “similar

backgrounds and culture.” (P., Q.) How can we understand the motives behind the decisions of

these students for joining ethnic group specific student organizations in college? What roles do

these organizations play in these students’ college lives?

Memberships in student organizations have become so commonplace among students that

the significance of memberships in these organizations has often been overlooked. The recent

influx of Southeast Asian immigrants and soaring populations of Southeast Asian communities

throughout California corresponds to the increasing flux of Southeast Asian youth entering our

nation’s education pre and postsecondary education system. Consequently, the vast network of

student clubs and organizations must play a significant role for Southeast Asian youth within the

education infrastructure.

This article explores the motives of Southeast Asian students for joining Southeast Asian

student organizations and examines a strand of the academic, social, and psychological

implications of ethnic/cultural and service these organizations impose within the community of

University of California, Berkeley. In this article, I interpret “ethnic/cultural and service student

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organizations” as recognized student groups in leadership positions advancing the academic

mission of the University through promoting the awareness of ethnic cultures and/or community

service projects. Refer to the adjacent section of this article for specific campus organizations

that constitute as an ethnic/cultural or service group. To understand the students’ views about

these organizations, I conducted ethnographic research through surveys and interviews with a

variety of undergraduate Southeast Asian students from UC Berkeley. The data will be then

compared to the theories generated by the results of alternate nationwide studies. Although this

research is limited to campus-wide studies, the scope of this discussion draws from the multiple

perspectives of individuals who are members, non-members, and officers of various on-campus

ethnic/cultural student organizations.

SEA Student Organizations: Context and Purpose

Of the over 800 approved student organizations currently present in University of

California, Berkeley, there exist only eleven Southeast Asian organizations recognized by the

South/Southeast Asia Library at Berkeley (SSEAL). (“Southeast Asia Student Associations at

U.C. Berkeley”) Such under-representation correlates to recent findings presented by Khatharya

Um at the 2003 Evaluation of Asian Pacific Americans in Education Congressional Forum

suggesting that student population statistics are misleading and Southeast Asian Americans are

under-represented in institutions of higher education. For example, at the University of

California, Berkeley, over 41 percent of undergraduate students were APIA, but only 7 percent

were Vietnamese and Um estimates that fewer than 50 students were of either Cambodian or

Laotian heritage. She then notes that other universities in the University of California system

demonstrate similar problems with representation, and writes “This relatively low representation

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of, and acute disparity among, the Southeast Asian groups is especially disconcerting in view of

the fact that campuses such as Berkeley, UCLA, and UC Irvine are located in close proximity to

some of the biggest Southeast Asian communities in the United States.” (Um qtd. in Yang,

KaYing)

The eleven sanctioned UC Berkeley student organizations may be categorized in five

subgroups based on their role and purpose: ethnic/cultural, service, ethnic/cultural and service,

professional, and social action. The following list summarizes the organizations and their

intended purposes. Note that I also included Asian American Association (AAA), Oakland

Students Educational Services (OASES) and API Recruitment & Retention Center (REACH!)

under their respective categories due to their pivotal roles toward advancing local Southeast

Asian communities. In this article, I will be predominantly focusing on the organizations within

the “ethnic/cultural”, “service”, and “ethnic/cultural and service” categories, for they represent

the largest organizations with the largest undergraduate, Southeast Asian member base in UC

Berkeley.

Southeast Asian Student Associations at U.C. Berkeley

Ethnic/Cultural (4) • Laotian American Student Representatives (LASR): Ethnic and cultural association. • Pilipino American Alliance (PAA): Promote Pilipino American culture; increase

awareness of Pilipino American issues, academic success, etc. • Singapore-Malaysian Student Association (SMSA): Ethnic and cultural association. • Vietnamese Student Association (VSA): Encourage and assist VSA members and

Vietnamese community in academic matters, preserve & cultivate Vietnamese culture.

Service (3) • Oakland Asian Students Educational Services (OASES): To empower youth who have

limited resources, particularly those in the Asian and Pacific Islander communities of Oakland, to maximize their potential through educational services and social support.*

• Pilipino Academic Student Services (PASS): Committed to recruitment and retention of Pilipinos to higher education.

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• API Recruitment & Retention Center (REACH!): Committed to the service and empowerment of recent immigrant and urban Asian/Pacific Islanders by promoting higher education as a means to empower ourselves and improve the economic and social conditions facing our communities.*

Ethnic/Cultural and Service (2)

• Asian American Association (AAA)*: To be at the forefront of uniting the API and seeks to develop proactive, and community oriented leaders through a social, educational awareness, and service network.

• Berkeley Indonesian Student Association (BISA): Promote unity among Indonesian students, increase community awareness regarding culture and issues, promote sport and community service.

Professional (2)

• Pilipino Association for Health Career (PAHC)s: To act as a support network and resource for students pursuing health careers and to educate Pilipinos about health issues facing the community.

• Pilipino Association of Scientists, Architects, and Engineers (PASAE): To offer academic support and career development for students through social events, academic programs and career-oriented workshops.

Social Action (3)

• Southeast Asian Student Coalition (SASC): To foster awareness of and policy attention to Southeast Asian issues, establish common grounds within Southeast Asian communities in order to create a solid unified voice, and advocate for our representation in higher education; address our needs in K-12 schools; defy racial discrimination; etc.

• Berkeley Southeast Asianists: To strengthening the tradition of Southeast Asian studies on campus through the promotion of scholarly research on and education about Southeast Asia.

• Free Burma at Berkeley: To support the efforts of the Burmese people trying to establish a democratic government in Burma.

* Denotes a student organization not recognized by SSEAL as a Southeast Asian ethnic group specific organization. SEA Organizations: Attitudes and Participation

Over the past 20 years, the racial make up of students in higher education has changed

significantly (Fleming qtd. in Wang et al.). However, according to Olivas (qtd. in Wang et al.), it

is still difficult for minority students in traditionally White colleges to adjust academically and

socially to campus life. Many students from minority groups have reported that they have not felt

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welcome, and have been treated like uninvited guests in a strange land (Parker and Scott qtd. in

Wang, et al.). Consequently, a logical reason for Southeast Asian students to join Southeast

Asian organizations in college is simply to associate with people with similar backgrounds and

culture they can relate to so they can feel “included” and less marginalized.

In a 2000 study, Yuh-Yin Wang, William E. Sedlacek, and Franklin D. Westbrook of the

Counseling Center and the Office of Minority Student Education at the University of Maryland,

College Park found that “Asian-American students, in general, liked the idea of joining groups,

and they believed there were important reasons for participating in minority student groups.”

(Wang et al.) Such findings are undoubtedly consistent with the attitudes and participation of

Southeast Asian students in UC Berkeley student organizations, as the testimonies of UC

Berkeley students A.M. and Q.P. and the mere existence of Southeast Asian ethnic/cultural

organizations already affirm the tendency of Southeast Asian students to coalesce in student

groups of similar ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

SEA Organizations: A Case Study at UC Berkeley

However, the UC Berkeley Office of Student Research reports that Asians constitute 46%

of the student population [Fall 2002]. (UC Berkeley Office of Student Research) As a result, the

experiences of Southeast Asian students should not be lumped together with the experiences of

those in “traditionally White colleges” because of UC Berkeley’s large numbers of Asian

Americans and generally diverse student population. Rather, the unique experience for the few

Southeast Asian students within UC Berkeley’s dynamic, multicultural microcosm must be

examined through a distinct set of lenses.

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Nevertheless, I attempted to uncover the unique motivations for social cohesion among

Southeast Asian students at UC Berkeley by performing a rather simplistic case study. In a joint

effort with Rema Aburahma, UCB undergraduate, a survey consisting of questions about

oneself—their major, involvement in organizations/clubs, and their ethnic and cultural identity

was distributed randomly to 15 Southeast Asian UC Berkeley undergraduates. Of the 15 people

that received the survey, eight responded: two of which identify as Mien and six as Vietnamese.

Three out of the eight students, or 37.5%, mentioned that they were involved with one or more

Southeast Asian ethnic group specific student organization. Three out of the eight students, or

37.5% mentioned that they were involved with a non-ethnic group specific organization that was

significant within the Southeast Asian community. Two out of the eight students, or 25% were

not involved in any organization related to Asian Americans in general.

Combining the pool of students that are involved in both ethnic group and non-ethnic

group specific student organizations, six out of the eight respondents, or 75%, are involved with

one or more organizations related to Southeast Asian culture and community. This astounding

percentage within a random pool of 15 students suggests that most Southeast Asian students in

UC Berkeley particularly favor involvement and activism within their own communities or

ethnic groups. But when asked whether they feel they manifest a more ethnocentric (minority-

based) identity or identify more with the dominant American culture, only two of the six students,

or 33.3%, responded with confidence that they relate more to their ethnic group, while the other

four, or 66.7%, expressed confusion over their identity and culture.

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Identity Crisis and Negotiation

The majority of Southeast Asian students expressing confusion over their identity as

Southeast Asian Americans suggest the existence of multifaceted reasons for joining Southeast

Asian organizations at UC Berkeley—a direct proof that the motivation for these students to

become involved in Southeast Asian organizations are not simply because they feel marginalized

in a Eurocentric society and, as a result, want to associate with their own ethnic culture. Lisa D.

Walker, Coordinator of the Cross Cultural Student Office of Multicultural Student Development

at UC Berkeley, explains the confusion from understanding and seeking one’s identity often

comes from the frustrations and obstacles one experiences during the negotiation of one’s

identity. (Walker) Most of college’s impact on students is the “cumulative result of a set of

interrelated experiences sustained over an extended period of time” rather than the result of any

single experience. (Pascarella et al. 187-188) Since one’s motivations to join an organization is

quintessentially based on the experience one envisions and hopes to acquire, joining a student

organization is essentially an experiment for one to explore his or her personal identity and

culture. For those Southeast Asian students expressing confusion over their identity and groups

they relate with, joining a Southeast Asian student organization allows them to create a social

safety net and comfort zone—a clique of other Southeast Asians that they are certain they can

always feel “included” and rely on for support—while continuing to experiment with other

cultures and groups.

In addition, it is also interesting to note that the two survey respondents that expressed

unwavering confidence and enthusiasm with manifesting a more ethnocentric identity are

exceptionally active in the Southeast Asian community. One of the students is a member of the

Southeast Asian Student Coalition (a social action organization at the forefront of Southeast

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Asian student political activism), while the other is the president of Laotian American Student

Representatives. On the other hand, the two survey respondents that were not affiliated with any

Southeast Asian organization were on the opposite side of the spectrum—both claimed to

identify more with the dominant American culture and do not want to be associated entirely with

their own ethnic group. Such observations suggest a correlation between students’ identities and

their degree of involvement in Southeast Asian organizations.

Inter-Ethnic Marginalization

Another prevalent factor specific to the UC Berkeley community that determines

Southeast Asian students’ degree of involvement in Southeast Asian student groups is a social

phenomena I call inter-ethnic marginalization. Inter-ethnic marginalization may be interpreted as

the stigma and disempowerment that people experience within their own ethnic group due to a

variety of factors such as cultural or age differences. From my research, I have determined two

forms of inter-ethnic marginalization.

The first form involves marginalization within the entire Asian American ethnic group in

general. The under representation of Southeast Asians compared to their Asian American

counterparts takes its toll on the psychological wellbeing of Southeast Asian students at UC

Berkeley. Loo and Rolison (qtd. in Wang et al.) found that the lack of participation in campus

activities usually causes minority students to feel social/cultural alienation which they think may

adversely affect their social/emotional well-being and retention. Carr and Chittum (qtd. in Wang

et al.) also pointed out that students of all racial or ethnic backgrounds feel isolated when they

have no organization of their own, and when there is little done to encourage their participation

in campus life. Therefore, minority student organizations need to exist as an alternative to

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involvement in non-minority groups. Since Southeast Asian students usually have a considerably

different history and cultural background compared to that of the dominant East Asian ethnic

groups such as the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, ethnocentric Southeast Asian students

generally prefer coalescing in their own ethnic organizations to counter the stigma attached to

their on-campus marginalization and differentiate themselves from the East Asian ethnic groups

which are commonly associated with the “model minority” stereotype.

While the first type of inter-ethnic marginalization involves a broader definition of

“ethnic group,” the second form of inter-ethnic marginalization occurs within a specific ethnic

group. According to T.C., this type of marginalization was particularly pervasive throughout the

history of the Vietnamese Student Association (VSA) at UC Berkeley. “[VSA] ran into a lot of

problems because of FOBs versus 2nd and 3rd generation students in the leadership,” said T.C.

“And because of the language barrier, a lot of people did not feel welcome with the FOBs… But

I don’t consider myself a FOB. I guess with me it didn’t feel natural to speak Vietnamese. So I

guess you could say it was hard to get your foot into the door.” FOBs, short for “fresh off the

boat,” is a slang term for first generation immigrants. T.C.’s testimony demonstrates that inter-

ethnic marginalization due to different culture and languages may divide one’s own ethnic

community, thus causing much grief and outcry.

Conclusion

From my ethnographic research at University of California, Berkeley, I have discovered a

correlation between the under representation of Southeast Asian students and their high degree of

activism within Southeast Asian organizations and their own communities. Moreover, although

the linear and generic view that minorities join their own ethnic/cultural student groups because

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they “have not felt welcome, and have been treated like uninvited guests in a strange land” may

be true to some degree, far more multifaceted and sophisticated factors such as personal identity

experimentation, cultural ethnocentrism, and interethnic marginalization influence the extent of

Southeast Asian student participation in on-campus Southeast Asian organizations (Parker and

Scott qtd. in Wang, et al.).

As noted by Carr and Chittum (qtd. in Wang et al.), Asian-American students’ feelings of

marginality are manifested through their participation in groups. The case study performed at UC

Berkeley confirms this claim. Nevertheless, Southeast Asian organizations at UC Berkeley not

only provide Southeast Asian students vital social and academic resources, but also the

opportunity to utilize them as vehicles to develop their personal identities, examine different

cultures, question their ethnocentric values, and maintain their psychological well-being.

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Works Cited C., T. Personal interview. 8 May 2004. M., A. Telephone interview. 30 April 2004. “OSR’s Undergraduate Admissions Statistics, Fall 2002.” UC Berkeley Office of Student

Research. University of California, Berkeley. 2002. < http://osr.berkeley.edu/public/ STAFFWE B/DC/SoNS2002.html> 8 May 2004.

P., Q. Personal interview. 1 May 2004. Pascarella, Ernest T., et al. “Influences on Students’ Openess to Diversity and Challenge in the

First Year of College.” Journal of Higher Education, 67. 2 (1996): 174-195. R., K. Personal interview. 2 May 2004. Southeast Asia Resources: Southeast Asia Studies at Berkeley “Southeast Asia Student

Associations at U.C. Berkeley.” South/Southeast Asia Library at the University of California, Berkeley. 11 October 2002. <http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/SSEAL/ SoutheastAsia/calstu.html> 7 May 2004.

Walker, Lisa D. Walker. Address. Coordinator of the Cross Cultural Student Office of

Multicultural Student Development. 26 April 2004. Wang, Yuh-Yin, William E. Sedlacek, and Franklin D. Westbrook. “Asian-Americans and

Student Organizations: Attitudes and Participation.” University of Maryland. 15 May 2000. <http://www.inform.umd.edu/Diversitydb/General/Reading/Sedlacek/ attitudes1.html>. 11 May 2004.

Yang, KaYing. “Southeast Asian Americans and Higher Education.” Evaluation of Asian Pacific

Americans In Education Congressional Forum. 17 June 2003. Washington D.C.: Rayburn House Office Building, 2003.

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Appendix A: Surveys 1) Joint survey with Rema Aburahma, UCB Undergraduate Relevant questions used for my research: Major: Year: Ethnicity: Please list organizations/clubs/student groups you are involved in at UC Berkeley, and/or in your community. Do you feel you manifest a more ethnocentric (minority-based) identity, or do you identify more with the dominant American culture? 2) Joint survey with Mari Bandoma, UCB Undergraduate. Relevant questions used for my research: Background information:

• Age: • Major: • Year: • GPA • Ethnicity/race: • Personal educational goal: • English proficiency

a. What languages do you speak? b. When did you start speaking English (if born outside US)

College Academic Experience

• Which clubs/organizations are you in and why did you join? • How does the organization you’re involved with impact your college life socially and

academically? • Do you think there should be ethnicity-race specific clubs on campus? • Do you consider yourself politically active or updated on current events? • Do you think the clubs you’re in made a positive difference in your life? Would you care

to elaborate?

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Appendix B: Interviews Excerpts from an interview with A.M. D: Can you tell me a little about yourself—what you identify with, where you’re from, family socioeconomic status, school year etc…? A: I am a first year at Cal double majoring in Molecular Environmental Biology and Microbial Biology. I am Vietnamese American. I’m from San Jose and I consider my family to be middle class. My parents are first generation and I’m second generation. They immigrated here after the Vietnam War. D: Can you tell me more about your hometown community? Demographics? A: A lot of SEA live there, particularly Vietnamese people like me. There’s a lot immigrant families in the area. D: Are you currently in any South East Asian club or organization at UC Berkeley? A: I want to join next semester but I’m not right now. D: So which one do you want to join? A: VSA (Vietnamese Student Association), AAA (Asian American Association), and ABA (Asian Business Association) D: Why do you want to join VSA, AAA, and ABA in particular? A: I want to meet more people that share common interests by culture. D: Why do you choose Asian or SEA specific clubs? How do you know you guys will share a common interest? A: I assume so because VSA’s mostly Vietnamese and we should have a similar background.

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Excerpts from an interview with K.R. D: Can you tell me a little about yourself—what you identify with, where you’re from, family socioeconomic status, etc…? K: I am Pilipino American from Westlake Village. That’s down in LA. I consider my family not be rich or anything… basically middle class. D: Can you describe your hometown community? Demographics? K: There’s not a lot of Pilipino or Asian Americans living in my area. It’s pretty mixed up with the majority being White and Latino. D: Are you currently in any South East Asian club or organization at UC Berkeley? K: Yes, I’m in PASS (Pilipino Academic Student Services) D: So when did you join PASS? K: It was a recruitment and retention center that brought me up for senior weekend, so I knew a lot of familiar faces when I actually enrolled in Berkeley. It is my way of trying to reach out to high schools and give them information about higher education. Excerpts from an interview with Q.P. D: Can you tell me a little about yourself—what you identify with, where you’re from, family socioeconomic status, etc…? Q: I am a second year intended business major. I am a second generation Chinese-Vietnamese American from San Francisco. My parents are the typical traditional Asian parents that don’t speak English very well. I consider my family to be somewhat lower middle class. D: Can you tell me more about your hometown community? Demographics? Q: A lot of Chinese in my neighborhood, but in my local area, there’s also a lot of Blacks and Southeast Asians—especially Laotians and Cambodians. My area is pretty ghetto. There are always drive bys and shootings, etc. There are a lot of gangs so it’s often dangerous. D: Are you currently in any South East Asian club or organization at UC Berkeley? Q: Not specific to SEA, but I’m in APATH (Asian Pacific American Theme House) and I joined that my freshman year. I joined a lot of Asian clubs when I was in high school though. D: So why did you join APATH? Q: I joined it because my homies from San Francisco also applied there and they offered really nice housing for the same price as living in the Units!

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Excerpts from an interview with T.C. D: Are you currently in any South East Asian club or organization at UC Berkeley? Q: Nope. I was in VSA my freshman year though but I quit. D: What your are you now? Q: I’m a third year. D: Why did you quit? Q: Well it’s kind of complicated. We [VSA] ran into a lot of problems because of FOBs versus 2nd and 3rd generation students in the leadership. And because of the language barrier, a lot of people did not feel welcome with the FOBS. The aim then was more of a forum for like Vietnamese students to congregate rather than to expose the campus to Vietnamese culture. That’s why you have the cultural shows and stuff now. I speak Vietnamese fluently so that wasn’t the problem. But I don’t consider myself a FOB. I guess with me it didn’t feel natural to speak Vietnamese. So I guess you could say it was hard to get your foot into the door… D: So what’s happening now? Do you know? Q: It seems that the leadership now is more ABC (not FOB). And as a result, many more people are getting involved that wouldn’t have been. And the culture show this year was about issues caused by the generation gap and it had a lot of English in it too.

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Post-Admission Survival: A Study on the Efficiency of the Retention Programs Offered by UC

Berkeley to Vietnamese American Students

Mari Bandoma


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The University of California, Berkeley prides itself in the diversity of its student

population even though admission rates of students of color have decreased in recent years (UC

Berkeley Office of Student Research). Students of color are not only being declined admissions,

there are also a limited number of retention programs available to ensure that these students are

doing well academically, socially and emotionally. The purpose of this research is to explore the

retention programs offered to students at UC Berkeley. My focus however is the effectiveness of

these programs in retaining specifically Vietnamese American students in higher education. The

retention of students of color is a necessary aspect that is unfortunately rarely assessed by

scholars.

While the focus of this research is the retention of Vietnamese American students at UC

Berkeley, academic preparedness and the mere process of graduating from high school along

with being eligible to attend college are permanently coupled with the retention process. The

preparation for college during elementary up to high school is adheres to the success of students

in higher education. However, there are war related and cultural based disruptions that affect

Vietnamese students’ education. During the war, many were displaced from their homes, and

away from their families. Moreover, many were required to stop attending school for economic

reasons plus “educational opportunities [was further contracting] after 1975 when, because of

familial association with the former regime, children had faced discrimination at school” (Kibria,

154). Although others were able to attend school, their education was still disrupted because

they were required to switch from the French educational system to a revolutionary educational

system. Upon arrival in the United States refugees were often times placed in schools by using

the age-placement system. Because of disruptions during the war, many were not academically

prepared to be in that educational level even though age-wise, they were supposed to be in that

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grade. In addition, literacy and English proficiency became a problem. For these reasons, many

refugee students drop out of school. Another disruption that should be accounted for are early

marriages for cultural reasons. Despite all these disruptions, in 2004 553 South Asian-Pacific

Islander students have been accepted in UC Berkeley, which is a 12.1% drop from 2003 (UC

Berkeley Office of Student Research). The lack of research that goes into the retention of

Southeast Asian students at UC Berkeley and the fact that retention rates, drop-out rates, and

graduation rates of Vietnamese Americans are not available to the public are discrepancies as

evident in the lumping of Southeast Asian students in the “other Asian” category found in the

Office of Student Research website.

There are about 29 diverse groups within the Asian American category, which are not

linked by a single language, religion, social class or national origin (2000 Census). This diversity

is often overlooked when it comes to government policies in education, health care, etc. Asian

Americans are lumped together as if the diversity of the group does not exist. One common

assumption about Asian Americans that needs to be addressed within this lumping is the

application of the model minority myth when it comes to the deceiving success of Asian

Americans in education, as many Asian Americans do not fit the model minority stereotype. The

model minority myth distracts society’s awareness away from the lack of educational

opportunities of more recent Asian American immigrants and refugees who have high poverty

rates or low educational achievement (2000 U.S. Census) Although there are many Asian

Americans in higher education, as evident in the growing population of Asian Americans in

highly prestigious universities such as UC Berkeley with Asian Americans representing up to 40

percent of the undergraduates in Fall 2000, this statistic is flawed as that group highly consists of

Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, and South Asians (UC Berkeley Office of Student

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Research). In contrast to the model minority stereotype, there are overwhelming numbers of

Filipino American and Southeast Asian students who are underrepresented at such elite

universities. Because of this under-representation, student-run groups such as Bridges and

REACH! have been established at UC Berkeley for the purposes of recruiting and retaining

underrepresented groups on campus.

In order to assess the efficiency of retention programs at UC Berkeley, I conducted

interviews with REACH staff, members, and non-members. In addition, I interviewed an SLC

tutor. I also researched other Vietnamese groups. I was able to contact such a wide range of

interviewees due to my connections with REACH as I am a coordinator for another recruitment

and retention program, PASS. Although I made a great effort to randomize my sample, the

majority of my interviewees were exposed to the recruitment and retention programs of REACH.

A problem that I encountered was the efficient measuring and evaluating of the competence of

the retention programs provided by UC Berkeley as student academic success is highly

subjective.

I collected socioeconomic and family background information from my interviewees in

order to assess other confounding factors that may affect the participation or lack thereof in

support and retention services of Vietnamese American students. The majority of my

interviewees, have positive support from home, come from a middle class background where

both parents work in America, speak Vietnamese, know at least one person in their immediate

family who has college and have parents who attended high school but not necessarily have

graduated. Most of their parents left Vietnam around 1975 to 1981. Their parent’s refugee

experiences were similarly traumatizing experiences yet uniquely their own. Research shows

that familial background, refugee experiences, parental education, parental educational and

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career aspirations and expectations, and student fluency in Vietnamese all play a significant part

in the academic success of Vietnamese American Students (Saito 68-111).

Lynn Saito conducted a study on Vietnamese American students in the twelfth grade in

one school district in Orange County, California and found that “students need to be included in

their schools through their involvement in activities beyond the academic day” (Saito, 148).

These findings correlate with my interviews with the internal relations coordinator and assistant

director of REACH! who claim that the community service activities put on by REACH! such as

outreach and mentorship are in a way, retention activities in itself. UC Berkeley helps fund

student run organizations whose primary task is to recruit and retain students of color, hence the

name, Recruitment and Retention Centers (RRC’s) which work under the umbrella organization

called Bridges. One of the RRC’s on campus is the Asian Pacific Islander center is REACH!.

REACH! is “committed to the service and empowerment of recent immigrant and urban

Asian/Pacific Islanders by promoting higher education as a means to empower … and improve

the economic and social conditions facing our communities” through the programs that they

organize on and off campus. A third of the people I interviewed were active members of

REACH and regularly attend REACH events. Under their retention program, they host social

event such as BBQ’s and picnics, games like assassins, and retreats. In addition they host

academic related events such as Grad School information sessions and they maintain a class list

of people who have and are currently taking certain classes in order sustain a network of people

who may be able to help each other. They also participate in the Bridges multicultural study

nights on Tuesdays. Unfortunately, due to the current financial situation, these programs have

undergone enormous budget cuts that limit the programs that they are able to put on. The

internal relations coordinator hosts several social activities which helps build social networks of

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support among other Asian Pacific Islander students on campus who share similar values. C felt

that REACH! provided her with a sense of “place” and “home” on campus that she did not feel

with other Vietnamese groups. Although REACH! is successful in organizing events that bring

Asian American students together, they face many barriers. One limitation that both the Internal

Relations Co-coordinator and Assistant Director have both agreed on is the weakness of the

academic aspect of retention. First of all, they found it difficult to assess the academic success of

member. In addition, the group has a limited budget, which restricts their ability to provide more

programs. Those who are not active members of REACH! such as A and K, have found other

ways of retaining themselves. A is an Incentive Awards Program Scholar who is able to find

retention support and services through her scholarship. The Incentive Awards program is offered

to one student per district where he or she is awarded a full scholarship to UC Berkeley for four

years. In addition, the program requires scholarship recipients to participate in retention

programs offered to them. They have access to financial and academic advisors and they have

full retention support from the university. In addition, scholarship recipients are required to

participate in outreach programs where they mentor and tutor high school students. K is another

exception to my findings. His father who is a radiologist and his mother who is a lawyer had

more education than the average Vietnamese American. He has been more fortunate in terms of

financial support, which gave him more opportunities and more options when it comes to

retention programs. Although K has been exposed to REACH! through Senior Weekend, a

program that REACH! along with Bridges puts on every year to encourage accepted seniors from

high school to attend UC Berkeley, he does not feel the need to join REACH!

Another service that the university has assisted to provide for students is the Student

Learning Center (SLC) located in Cesar Chavez Learning Center. The SLC was established to

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assist minority students at UC Berkeley when affirmative action was still in place. After

Affirmative Action was repealed, the SLC had to compensate and reinvent their programs.

Although their doors are open to everyone, the SLC tutor I interviewed claims that the SLC

actually targets underrepresented minorities as evident in the services that they provide such as

bilingual writing tutorials sessions, drop in tutoring, one on one tutoring, review sessions, mock

midterms, adjunct classes etc. for student in areas such as Mathematics, Business

Administration/Economics, Writing Sciences, and Social Sciences. All tutors and staff meet

with their supervisor for a weekly workshop session on how to become better tutors. Most of

their advisors are “overqualified” for their jobs as one supervisor has a degree in rhetoric and a

minor in history from UC Berkeley who later on attended grad school and law school. 5/8 of the

students that I interviewed did not regularly go to the SLC for assistance. Although a majority

feel like going to the SLC is beneficial, being in synch with the professor and tutors being

unfriendly seem to be a common concern. One positive aspect of the SLC that a couple of the

interviewees commented on is the multicultural environment of the SLC, making it a very

welcoming place for students of color. However, the limited space and number of tutors

available often discouraged these students from regularly attending for assistance. Similar to

REACH!’s limitations, the SLC is restricted to the programs that they provide which is impeded

by insufficient funds.

There are about 1000 Vietnamese American students on campus, but only a few of the

40 active members of REACH! are Vietnamese Americans. There are other groups on campus

such as the the Southeast Asian Student Coalition (SASC) which desires to “foster awareness

and policy attention in Southeast Asian issues” and the Vietnamese Student Association (VSA)

with about 300 members whose programs range from social and cultural activities to academic

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services such as homework forums online, provide job/educational opportunities etc. through

their academic chairperson. However, those who I interviewed had negative feelings about VSA

and were not active members of the group. The question now is what about the other half of the

population? Where are they? Studies show that Asian Americans often times “underutilize

psychological and counseling services” (Mooko). There is also that notion among Southeast

Asians that “we can survive xyz, on our own.” There is a mentality of independence and not

needing assistance especially among the first cohort as they have survived traumatizing events in

their lives prior to moving to the United States. In addition, Asian Americans are generally

lumped together as model minorities, society has embedded the notion that Asian Americans

have fully assimilated and thereby successful special in terms of education. One explanation to

the underutilization of support services is the shame that comes with not fitting in the Asian

American success story. Another explanation is the lack of programs that caters to their specific

needs.

The initial goal of this paper was to analyze the effectiveness of the retention programs

made available to students at UC Berkeley. However, instead of showing me the success of the

retention programs on campus, my findings have shown the failures of UC Berkeley as an

institution to see the importance of these programs. First of all, the retention and graduation

rates of Vietnamese Americans are not available to the public. The Office of Student Research

has decided to lump Southeast Asian students together in the “other Asian” category as

mentioned earlier. Secondly, the very few retention programs that UC Berkeley assists to

provide are always under scrutiny. Although REACH! and the SLC has provided great programs

for students of color on campus, they lack the funds to improve the programs and adjust them to

meet the changing needs of the population that they serve. Moreover, UC Berkeley’s few

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retention programs lack the institutional support. When budget cuts come at hand, the SLC and

the recruitment and retention centers are the first to get cut. More than half of the Vietnamese

American population does not attend retention services for the stigma that comes along with

obtaining academic assistance and the lack of programs that accommodate their needs. The

services that are available have limited resources and cannot fully assist everyone who needs

help. Although the SLC targets minorities, their resources are limited and therefore they are not

able to assist everyone who may seek help. Similarly, REACH! is limited in resources not only

financially but man-power as well as REACH ! is a student run organization with a very limited

volunteer base. In conclusion, measuring the success of the competence of programs such as

REACH! and the SLC is highly subjective. I believe that REACH! has been successful in

retaining students by providing social networks as a support system. However, there are only 40

active members in the pan-ethnic organization while there is about 1000 Vietnamese American

students. Coordinators of the program also pointed out the weakness of their academic retention

programs which thy see as a financial problem more than a structural problem. The SLC offer

great services for minority students. However, although they have qualified tutors who are

trained by supervisors on a weekly basis, we have to keep in mind that this is peer tutoring and a

peer tutor’s ability is not the same as a Graduate Student Instructor’s or a professor’s ability to

teach. In addition, the limited resources have proved to be their biggest challenge as it often

discourages students to return. In both cases we see a recurring theme of not having enough

funds to provide new services and improve on successful existing ones. There is an underlying

problem of the minimal support from the university in these retention programs that needs to be

addressed because the retention and graduation rates because such concerns in education are still

relevant today as continued migration as recent as five years ago still occurs. In addition, the

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successes or failures of retention programs have long-term ramifications that may affect not only

individuals but also the Southeast Asian community as a whole.

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Works Cited

Beevi, Mariam etal “Transforming Curriculum: Incorporatingteh Vietnamese American Experience into K-12 education” Amerasia Journal Vol. 29 Number 1 2003. UCLA: Asian American Studies Center Press

Fong, Timothy(2002). The Contemporary Asian American Experience Beyond the Model

Mionority (2nd Edition). New Jersey: Prentice Hall Hein, Jeremy (1998). From Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia A Refugee Experience in the United

States. New York: Twayne Publishers Kibria, N. (1993). Family Tightrope: The Changing Lives of Vietnamese Americans. Princeton:

Princeton University Press Mooko, Daren. “The Asian American College Student as Model Minority: The Myth, the

Paradox, and the Deception” REACH! website, http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~reach/ Office of Student Research website, http://osr4.berkeley.edu/ SASC website, http://www.geocities.com/berkeleysasc/home.html Saito, Lynne (2002) Ethnic Identity and Motivation Socio-Cultural Factors in the Educational

Achievement of Vietnamese American Students. New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC

VSA website, http://vsa.berkeley.edu/ Zhou, M. & Bankston III, C. (1998). Growing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to

Life in the United States. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 2000 Census http://www.census.gov/

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Appendices

A interview… Background Information:

1. Age: 19 2. Born in LA 3. Second Year 4. Major: intended IB 5. Personal Educational goal: med school 6. English Proficiency: English and Vietnamese (in the household). Learned Vietnamese

first before going to school 7. Educational Background (family): Father finished high school, mother dropped out of

high school to support family, older sister currently and undergrad at UC Davis. Cousin a UC Davis grad, about to go to pharmacy school

8. Parental support ranking 1 9. Immigration/Refugee Experience: Parents arrive in Hong Kong in 1980 by boat, move to

US in 1981. They left Vietnam as lower class peasants because of the economic hardships.

10. Today: dad landscaper, mom manicurist, and they still support family in Vietnam. Retention Programs

1. She didn’t hear about REACH till this year but didn’t have time to join. She is actually very active in the outreaches done with her Incentive Awards Program scholarship, which is a full scholarship to Berkeley that requires scholars to become High School ambassadors, mentors, tutors etc. She says that the group is pretty diverse and is very helpful in her retention as the program provides academic and financial aid advisors.

2. She also goes to the SLC at least twice a week for a group study on top of her studying

there occasionally. Although she believes that the SLC is effective in helping students academically, she does see the problem of limited resources that hinders the program’s effectiveness.

3. Not a member of VSA or SASC or any other ethnic related groups.

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K interview… Background Information:

1. Age: 18 2. Born in Detroit 3. Second First Year 4. Major: pre-med due to parent’s expectations but political at heart (also want to be a

lawyer but want to follow dad’s footsteps to please them) 5. Personal Educational goal: med school 6. English Proficiency: Primarily English and Vietnamese (in the household). Learned

Vietnamese first before going to school 7. Educational Background (family): Father is a doctor, Radiologist, mother is a lawyer, two

other siblings are also lawyers 8. Parental support ranking 1 financially, but 4 in terms of extra-curricular activity support. 9. Immigration/Refugee Experience: Family was of the elite class, great grand uncle was a

supreme court judge who had connections to get parents out of Vietnam in 1975 10. Today: (see 7)

Retention Programs

1. He went to Senior Weekend (program offered by the RRC’s) but upon arrival in Berkeley, he became busy with Theater Rice. He did not really have time to join REACH. He is also in APATH program at the dorms. Basically time conflict hindered his participation with REACH. He’s never been to any of the REACH activities other than Senior Weekend.

2. He used to go to the SLC but the limited number of tutors, space made his visits

unpleasant. He still goes occasionally to the mock midterms, review sessions, and occasional drop in session that they provide but he is a little discouraged because sometimes tutors are not totally in synch with the professors and the classes.

3. He used to go to the Academic Center at the dorms not for academic assistance but just

for the quiet.

4. Not active member of VSA, SASC or other ethnic-related groups. He has negative feelings about VSA.

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C interview… Background Information:

1. Age: 22 2. Born in London 3. Senior 4. Major: Ethnic Studies 5. Personal Educational goal: desires to become a professor but is discouraged due to her

grades. She didn’t know anything about grad school until recently 6. English Proficiency: Vietnamese was her primary language and learned English at school.

She feels like she’s still in between when it comes to her proficiency in both languages as she cannot claim to be a master of both. Her first day of school was traumatizing as she did not understand English.

7. Educational Background (family): Both parents didn’t finish high school. Her parents see education as a “disciplinary” method that prevents their children from getting “ruined” (ruined is her direct translation from a word in Vietnamese that pertains to youths who get pregnant, run away, do drugs etc.). There is also that authoritative pressure, a competition among her parents friends’ children and a good education correlates to how good of parents her parents were. In addition, they also see it as an economic investment. However there is not a big pressure on that as 3 of her older siblings attended college and are doing financially well. Her oldest sister proved to be her biggest inspiration as she was academically successful and paved the way for her and her other siblings. She did everything on her own.

8. Parental support ranking 3 9. Immigration/Refugee Experience: Parents left Vietnam due to the economic hardships.

Her mother had 3 still born babies due to malnutrition. Her grandparents lived by the coast therefore it was easy for them to have access to a boat and escape. They arrived in US in 1990 after living in London for 12 years. They lived in London for sometime because a British boat that claimed that if their family wanted to go to the US, they would take them to a refugee camp where they would wait a long time picked up their boat. They also had the option of going to London right away. However, it still took them a few years to save up to make the trip to the US to meet the rest of their family (grandparents etc.). Reconciling with family is very important as her father was the eldest child and it is expected that he is the one to take care of the grandparents when they are older.

10. Today: dad works for manufacturing and mom is a manicurist. Retention Programs

1. It was very hard for her to find other Vietnamese students at Cal who she can relate to. The ones that she initially met were Vietnamese students who were “white washed” and/or did not want to do anything that has to do with being Vietnamese. REACH however, provided a sense of place for her on campus where she met people who share the same values. She became the community college coordinator for several years (although she’s not a transfer herself). She feels as if the retention program as a whole is effective in providing support for fellow students and sees all the programs offered by REACH is a form of retention in itself. For example, by participating in programs like outreaches, mentorship etc., it provides coordinators, volunteers, interns etc. the chance

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to see the community and remind themselves of what they are studying for. She does see that one of the weaknesses of the retention program is that they do not have anything academic-specific when it comes to retention. She also did not have the statistics on the graduation and drop out rates of Vietnamese Americans on campus.

2. She used to go to the SLC during her freshman year. She participated in the adjunct

course program, and the drop in tutorial, which she deemed helpful. However, she was discouraged when she could not sign up for a writing tutor because there were a limited number of tutors available. Other than the limitation in resources of the program, she feels like the SLC is a very multicultural and comfortable space.

3. As a freshman, she did not feel as if the Academic center was very welcoming.

4. Not active member of VSA or SASC. She has negative feelings about VSA.

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M interview… Background Information:

1. Age: 19 2. Second Year 3. Major: sociology Minor: education & city and regional planning 4. Personal Educational goal: high school teacher, public officer 5. English Proficiency: English and Vietnamese 6. Socioeconomic background (family): dad’s family was pretty well off because his father

was a government official. Mom’s family was poor, living in the rural country fields and made money by harvesting rice.

7. Parental support ranking 1 8. Immigration/Refugee Experience: Parents fled Vietnam and became refugees in Malaysia

in 1980. They came over for different reasons, but both because of the horrible conditions in Vietnam.

9. Today: Father BA in engineering, mother AA and cosmetology license, manicurist who owns her own salon, brother BA in biology. They are of middle class status today when they combine their income.

Retention Programs

1. She was taken aback by the political nature of the organization and REACH was exactly what she was looking for after high school. She was tired of doing community service and felt as if she was getting nowhere with it. REACH is an active agent for change and does not want merely to provide service but also wants to provide change in society. She pretty much attends all the events such as retreats, bbqs, food outings etc. However, she is unsure about the effectiveness of the retention programs, as it is difficult to measure students’ academic success. REACH can usually retain students socially but academics are usually self-regulated. Overall, API students in REACH are quite busy and they could do a better job of retaining them. The main problem is scheduling retention events and the majority of the time; students do not prioritize attending them. Therefore, she believes that retention programs are highly lacking because it’s students that are putting them on. Those students putting on the retention programs are themselves not being retained. There is a great need for getting more resources and university funded retention programs.

2. She goes to the SLC sometimes but she does not really have the time to go. Also, her

past experiences with tutorial services were not very helpful. However she does go there at least once a week for Education 97 training sessions. She does believe that the tutors could be a lot friendlier and less condescending.

3. Not active member of VSA because of time constraints.

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H interview… Background Information:

1. Age: 25 2. Senior 3. Major: ISF 4. Personal Educational goal: Masters or Law 5. English Proficiency: English and Vietnamese 6. Educational background (family): parents finished high school, someone in immediate

family however got a Bachelor’s degree. 7. Socioeconomic background (family): family was in the lower spectrum of middle class.

They were shopkeepers. Father served in the southern army for a short period. 8. Parental support ranking 2 9. Immigration/Refugee Experience: Family arrived in 1977 as refugees. They primarily

settled in New York but moved to San Diego in 1978 when he was born. 10. Today: Parents are of middle class status. Parents own and run a salon and they make a

combined income of 40K to 50K. He also has five siblings who have graduated college and they make about the same if not more.

Retention Programs

1. He is an active member of REACH! and has attended many meetings and events. He actively volunteers as a “let’s rise mentor”. He joined because he initially wanted units and then later on, he felt as if he was part of a movement that is more important than units. He also participated in REACH! retention programs and finds it very helpful. He also sees that the work that he does benefits the students that he mentors and in turn retain them in school as well.

2. He does not go to the SLC because the SLC does not offer help in his area of studies. He

does not attend any other retention programs either and feels that there is not enough support for the social sciences.

3. Not active member of VSA or SASC. He has negative feelings about VSA

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Assistant Director and Internal-relations interview (2 separate interviews with combined findings): Mission Statement: “Commited to the service and empowerment of refugee, immigrant, and underserved Asian Pacific Islanders by promoting higher education to empower ourselves and challenge the economic and social inequalities facing our community” Retention Programs offered by REACH!

1. BBQ’s 2. Scholarship info 3. Social, political events 4. REACH! assasins 5. Tour of REACH! office (Tuesdays 12-1) 6. Flag football 7. Grad School information session 8. Academic Retention: class list, Bridgest study nights 9. Final and midterm packets

Other activities such as mentorship, outreach etc. are retention programs within themselves. Being active in the community encourages and inspires students to be active role models and continue on with their education. Limitations: Budget is limited, coordinators themselves could get burned out, don’t have statistical number of graduation rates and drop out rates. Weak point: academic retention

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SLC tutor interview… He believes that the SLC targets minorities as the SLC as a structure itself, was initially established in response to Affirmative Action. Upon being repealed, the SLC needed to compensate and adjust its programs. Although it opens its doors to everyone, the SLC knows the educational inequalities of societies therefore their programs cater to minorities such as the bilingual writing program, areas of studies that are taken generally by minorities such as the sciences etc. He also believes that even with the limited budget (as SLC is one of the first programs cut during budget cuts), the SLC has been successful and beneficial to students. The multicultural environment provides a comfortable space for minorities. In addition, “overqualified” supervisors train tutors. For example, the Social Science supervisor has a degree in rhetoric and a minor in history from UC Berkeley. He also attended grad school and law school. Weekly workshops are conducted as well to keep in touch with the tutors and continually train them to become better tutors.

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southeast asian education our journeys, our communities (2004)

Documents