Uncustomary Hiccups

The Issue
During Thanksgiving, an event occurred. A horrible event, guns were fired, people lost there lives, and an entire race was labeled. No it was not Iraq and it wasn't anywhere in Europe. It was right in the good ol' US, in Wisconsin.

A man who was hunting, and ended up shooting 6 other people to death when caught trespassers on someone's land. I love that phrase, trespassers on someone's land while hunting. How clearly are the boundary lines marked is what I ask.

The day after the event, news paper articles splashed the news everywhere and a good majority of them splashed "Hmong Hunter" as part of the main title. That wasn't the worse part. The worse part is the meat of the articles. They sensationalize the news and only present a very one sided story. Many articles go on to label what a Hmong is, like it is a thing, what IT does, where IT is from and so on.

Important key leaders in the Hmong community have already apologized for this man's actions. And also asked for a restraint on the backlash in the Hmong community. 1) Why does any act done by a minority seen as a representative act of the whole community? 2) And backlash is just too late, as seen from the photo and the fact that many in the Hmong community are not going out to hunt anymore.

I don't understand how people could be selling this bumper sticker. Actually, I don't understand how people cannot empathic. I would be so angry if I saw a bumper sticker that said "Save a deer, kill a Chinese/Taiwanese." And I wonder how white people would feel if they saw a sticker that said "Save a deer, kill a white." -> I'll post the pic of the truck as soon as I figure out the pic things *cough* "Aaron".

The Background
Hmong, pronounced "mong", are a minority in the Asian population. Even many Asians have never met a Hmong. They are the portion of the Asian population that I STRONGLY feel deserves more support from the government and affirmative action. They are very marginalized and often have lower education and socioeconmic levels than compared to the "average asian" (whatever that term means).

To give you a better picture of the Asian population in America, I will give some background. Overall, Asians are doing well for themselves, as many "people" fall all over themselves to point on. They even go further to say that you might as well include asians with whites. However, they do not look at the data which shows that the Asian population in the US is BIMODAL.

This means that there are two bumps in the distribution line. Most distribution lines are normal, meaning it only has one bump and really only fall 3 standard deviations above and below the mean. So for the Asian pop. that means there are some that are doing extremely well and some that are doing extremely poor.

The ones doing well, are still doing dealing with hardships. Although their education level is higher than whites, they are making the same amount as whites.

But the ones doing poorly, are dealing with even more hardships. Not only are their life chances significantly lower than others just due to their race, they are being ignored by the government and schools because they are part of the 3% of Asians. And yet the University of Michigan treats all Asians as the same and does not apply any sort of affirmative action to Asians anymore. Because the percentage of Asians on campus is greater than that in the population. MINORITY STATUS IS NOT ALL ABOUT NUMBERS, IT IS ABOUT POWER POSITION.

I just find this situation particularly upsetting because it reminds me in a lot of ways that there are still many people out there that are unaware and makes me feel that my work has been for nothing.

I am included a recent email that I received relating another side of the story:
Folks: I just got off the phone this morning with Senator me Moua fromthe Minnesota Senate. She has been in contact with Mr. Chai Soua Vang's (thedefendant in the case) 19 year old daughter, who is the only family member thathe has in the Minnesota area. His version of the story was that he came off thetree and these white folks starting circling him in the ATVs, then startedyelling racial slurs at him, and then begin shooting at him, and that's when hestarted shooting back in self defense. In today's LA Times article: "Suspect Says Hunters Targeted Him WithSlurs -- and a Bullet": "James McLaughlin, Vang's public defender, said Tuesdaythat he had been trying to meet with his client, hoping to consult with himbefore he spoke with investigators. "We've been denied access," McLaughlin said.But investigators said Vang, a naturalized citizen who came to the United Statesin 1980 and spoke excellent English, repeatedly told jailhouse authorities thathe wanted to talk without a lawyer present and signed a form to waive hisrights." Until the LA Times story today, there really weren't as much coverage asto Mr. Vang's side of the story, since the press has been covering this totallyone sided from the white victim's perspectives. So at the same time there issympathy developed in these stories about the victims (e.g. the story abovequoted neighbors of the victims in suggesting that they would never use racialslurs or shoot at a man,...), there is certainly an element of dehumanizationoccurring in the portrayal of Mr. Vang (he's an immigrant [foreigner], (but hespeaks 'excellent English' -- so he can waive his rights), he was asharpshooter, he 'snapped',...). The story above indicated that Vang "wanted to talk without a lawyerpresent and signed a form to waive his rights", this alone should raise some eyebrows, especially in light of the public defender's assertion that he is deniedaccess to his client. The other dimension that is happening here is not just the case againstMr. Vang, but against the whole Hmong community. Senator Moua pointed out thegreat unfortunate potential here of backlash against the Hmong community. I don't know what resources the PD's office has, but to the extent thatany of us have any local contacts in the Wisconsin area it would certainly nothurt to make sure that Mr. Vang's rights are not trampled upon. In such cases,especially with the way that the press has played things out, there is thetendency for us to look the other way in lieu of making sure that the defendantis being treated fairly. Even if we, individually, do not want to commentdirectly on the case, there is a role for us to comment on the press coverageand its association of guilt between Vang and the Hmong community. I have included the senator's email above in case any one of us havecontacts, or suggestions that we want to make on the case, or ideas about how todefend the Hmong community.