Up Against Whiteness: Race, School, and Immigrant Youth

by Stacey J. Lee, Lois Weis (Foreword)

Pushing the boundaries of Asian American educational discourse, this book explores the way a group of first- and second-generation Hmong students created their identities as “new Americans” in response to their school experiences. Offering an opportunity to rethink the “norm,” this important volume pays particular attention to how race, class, and gender informed their experiences. Revealing the complex dynamics between immigration and Americanization, this engaging

Genres: Education, Anti Racist, Race, Nonfiction, Social Justice, Teaching

168 pages, Paperback

First published May 31, 2005

Reviews

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent academic study on Hmong refugees attending a higher income White school district in the 2000s. Made me miss a time when actual legitimate educational research was done pretty fairly. It was pretty much stopped during the Bush era and NCLB. The plight of the Hmong is pretty easy to predict. The White students are by far at the top of the school culture and the educational curriculum and activities are based on what they find valuable. The Hmong, a much smaller number, are broken into two groups, one labeled “Traditional” and the “Americanized”. The Traditional group are newcomers in ESL classes and protected from the general curriculum and population. They have good relationships with their ESL teachers but feel the general education teachers don’t care much for them. The Americanized group are out of ESL and take the general curriculum without help. They tend to not be fluent in reading and writing English but are fluent in colloquial English. These students tend to struggle in school. They see ESL as a negative and author Stacey J. Lee states as they are fluent orally, they need other help. But as a TESOL educator, I know that ESOL education is supposed to include reading and writing to the 50th % so this attitude isn’t right. Having ESOL classes completely separate teaching grammar and vocabulary isn’t much help in education but teaching content and often working in the classroom is important and needed. Reading teachers are remedial, ESOL is developmental, meaning the students are understood to still dearly their academic English reading and writing, not behind and trying to catch up. The Americanized students also struggled with chronic poverty in their families. The newer families were still hopeful to gain wealth. The Americanized students had realized they might always be poor or for a generation or more. They adapted the “ghetto” culture of poorer classes in the USA. This put more tension in the wealthy white school system. A huge issue was child marriage in the Hmong culture. Another was the loss of masculinity that Hmong males who often dreamed of returning to Laos. I’ve experienced this tension with other refugee groups. It’s dicey and relates to many tensions in American culture now. Altogether, it’s a very accurate portrait of the culture clash that happens in wealthy white districts taking in refugees. It’s still in my opinion, the best opportunity for refugee families, moving into poorer districts often causes more problems and less opportunity. A huge criticism of the school district is the inability of the educators to relate to the refugees. Kids being taken care of as newcomers and then left to their own devices after becoming orally fluent. No attempts to mix the students in with the general population and the students being unable to mix in educationally and socially. Good study.

[Briana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great overview of some of the school struggles faced by Hmong youth as they go through acculturation in Wisconsin schools. Very much appreciated the chapter about the intersection between gender roles and acculturation.

[Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

A portrait of Hmong students in a prestigious Wisconsin high school and the school's failure to attend to their needs.
Lee explores how divisions form between youth and the dominant society. How each side seeks to define itself in opposition to the other. The role of hip-hop fashion in Hmong youth culture is interesting, and the reactions of white adults to this culture is sadly predictable.

[Natalie]

White Fragility rec. Do library book.

[Erin Reilly-Sanders · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really thought this one was just okay, but didn't feel like it should get lower marks just because I was not particularly interested in it. The study, almost an ethnography of Hmong American students at a highly ranked high school in Madison, Wisconsin, seems to have been well done and come to interesting conclusions along with useful connections to other reputable literature. I really thought the chapter on gender was interesting but am still a little confused as to what I was supposed to specifically get out of this book as part of a class on diversity and equity issues in education. I'm just not getting the point. I feel like we could have read any number of other books and had a more pointed discussion about something. On the other hand, I'm sure that Lee's work goes beyond interesting and is useful to someone out there, maybe you.

[Empanadani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Setting the writing style aside, the message and information in this book are pretty powerful. The author is trying to give a voice to youth who are immigrants in the US, who are a racial minority, and economically impoverished. It shows how their needs are ignored in a "good" American high school because it caters to the dominant, highly-educated, white community. It's about the Hmong-American youth navigating two cultures and constructing a new identity where being Asian doesn't necessarily equate to the "model minority" label and where society lumps you into whitened or blackened categories.

[JodyReads · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book for background information for my dissertation, but I thought it was an interesting look at how we "race" people, especially those who are not black or white. Lee's look at Hmong high school students showed subtle (and not so subtle) racism at a prestigious high school in the Midwest. While Lee doesn't outright offer solutions, I think this is a good book for educators, especially those in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and California, to read and reflect on their own practices, to make sure they are meeting the needs of their diverse Hmong students.

[Jill Madsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just finished reading this book as I am using it in the Education and Cultural Diversity class I am teaching this fall. Does a great job of blending together the theory behind racial dominant and subordinate groups with the real life experiences of Hmong youth to explain how dominant and subordinate relationships play out and are maintained in our schools.

[Erendira]

Main F590.H55 L44 2005