Racial+Identity

Racial Identity
//(Compiled by Lydia Sarraille)//

Because the Hmong people come from geographically diverse areas located across several countries, their racial identity is closely tied up in the small communities they establish within the larger cultures of their host nations as well as maintaining their traditional customs. In America, large populations of Hmong immigrated to Minnesota, Wisconsin and California just after the Vietnam war. Since the Hmong had helped the Americans during the conflict, they were no longer safe amongst the communists and were granted refugee status by the U.S. government. Once they got to the U.S, many Hmong found that it was much more difficult to maintain the close social ties they had enjoyed in Vietnam, China, Thailand and Laos (Schien).



Minnesota State Representative Cy Thao, a Laos-born Hmong, said that the cold weather precluded much of the outdoor strolling, markets and other social activities that Hmong were used to participating in in their home countries. Thao went on to say that the isolation had a profound effect on many Hmong when they first immigrated and lacked a geographical center to congregate in. Some of the older men, despondent at the separation from their communities and homelands, actually died in their sleep of what Thao describes as "hopelessness." This documented increase in "SUD" or Sudden Unexplained Death (a classification used on death certificates when no cause of death can be established) shook the Hmong communities. Thao says that some Hmong men who were shaken awake by their frantic wives in the middle of the night report experiencing vivid dreams in which they flew over their old homelands. These men maintain that they would have died had their wives not woken them; the dreams were their souls longing for home so badly that they were actually fleeing from their bodies in order to return. In response to the SUDs and the terrible isolation felt by these Hmong groups, Thao and other Hmong community leaders have helped establish indoor markets and other mainstays of traditional Hmong daily life in an effort to replicate the frequent social interactions that are a staple of Hmong life in Asia (Fry).



Because the Hmong people have no single geographical origin, there are discrepancies in their history as a people and many conflicting reports of their ethnic origins exist. That being said, mitochondrial DNA evidence suggests that matrilineal lines of Hmong and Miao-speaking populations occupied northern regions of China for at least the past 2,000 years (Bo Wen). Whether they originated in China or elsewhere, the Hmong have historically been an underclass in many of the countries they inhabit. They were persecuted by the communists during the Vietnam war, especially, and China does not officially acknowledge their race, instead grouping them in with a larger ethnic minority called the Miao, which is itself a derogatory term with connotations of barbarism (Tapp).



In American, Hmong racial identity is often associated with prejudiced assumptions made by non-Hmong. Because Hmong traditionally have large families with many children and work as subsistance and cash-crop farmers, many Hmong who immigrated to America became economically disadvantaged. In Merced county, California, the average Hmong woman has 8.5 children in 1990 and a disproportionate number were placed on welfare. Hmong tend to stay in family groups or clans, and individuals rarely go off on their own. In 1990, Merced was 1/5 Hmong, making it the place with the highest concentration of Hmong people in the U.S., with more than fourteen clans living there (Reiter).


 * Hmong Children in Public Education:**

Hmong children in the public education system face many risk factors including language barriers, low socio-economic status, low parental education levels, bullying and bigotry from other racial groups and low self-image as a result from these and other factors. Hmong children usually speak Hmong in the home, have parents who advocate traditional gender roles and are interested in maintaining biculturalism rather than assimilate completely into American culture. Hmong parents tend to value obedience and good school attendance. Hmong parents also tend to be understanding when their children adopt American customs and have adapted their traditional values to reflect a more modern American ideology mixed with traditional Hmong values and culture (Adler).

Works Cited:
Adler, Susan M. "Home-School Relations and the Construction of Racial and Ethnic Identity of Hmong Elementary Students." The School Community Journal. Retrieved from [] November 26, 2011.

Bo Wen, et al. " Genetic Structure of Hmong–Mien Speaking Populations in East Asia as Revealed by mtDNA Lineages ." Molecular Biology and Evolution 2005 22(3):725–734.

Fry, Stephen. "Stephen Fry in America: Fifty States and the Man Who Set Out to See Them All." William Morrow, London: 2009.

Reiter, Carol. " Hmong seeking life in Merced, Ca ." //Merced Sun Star// at // Suab Hmong Radio //. January 29, 2008. Retrieved on November 20, 2011.

Schien, Louisa. "Hmong/Miao Transnationality: Identity Beyond Culture." in Hmong or Miao in Asia. 274–5.

Tapp. Nicholas. "Cultural Accommodations in Southwest China: the "Han Miao" and Problems in the Ethnography of the Hmong." Asian Folklore Studies, Vol. 61, 2002: 97.