Trinh Nguyen
Julie Mao
Victory in Massachusetts!
Local Advocates in Massachusetts Push Data Disaggregation Policy Forward
On Wednesday the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight voted to establish an inclusive commission tasked with updating the initial placeholder bill to expand statewide racial and ethnic data collection through disaggregation to all racial and ethnic groups. This expansion will help to highlight disparities in other ethnic communities and provide policymakers with more accurate information to address all of our needs and challenges.
We look forward to supporting our local Massachusetts advocates and the commission to develop more accurate data collection practices for all our communities.
SEARAC Applauds Bipartisan ASPIRE Act to Increase Access and Completion in Higher Education
Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the AANAPISI Program
This week, we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution (AANAPISI) program, which provides support for degree-granting higher-education institutions, including community colleges, that serve at least 10% Asian American and Pacific Islander students. Overall, AANAPISI institutions enroll 41% of the nation’s AAPI college students. The AANAPISI specifically funds programs that support low-income, first-generation AAPI students.
The AANAPISI program recognizes the challenges that Southeast Asian American (SEAA) students face. Our community has significantly lower college attainment rates compared to the rest of the nation. Nearly two-thirds of Cambodian Americans, Laotian Americans, and Hmong Americans have not attended college, and this is true for half of Vietnamese Americans. In the California State University system in 2013,
85% of Hmong and Laotian freshmen, 76% of Cambodian freshmen, and 71% of Vietnamese freshmen were the first in their family to go to college. SEAA students are entering higher education in greater numbers than ever before, but programs funded by AANAPISI help make sure our students have the support they need to graduate.
Our path forward – building and protecting our civil rights and self-determination
Presenting SEARAC’s Strategic Plan
Register Now
In this month’s community call, SEARAC Executive Director Quyen Dinh will discuss SEARAC’s new five-year strategic plan, developed in consultation with community members across the country. Quyen will announce SEARAC’s key priorities moving forward for state and federal policy advocacy, leadership development, and community engagement and mobilization. Bring your questions, suggestions, and concerns to discuss with Quyen.
Quyen will also reveal some highlights from our inaugural Equity Summit: Moving Mountains on October 12-14, and give an update on recent campaigns.
Community Call: Our Path Forward – Building and Protecting our Civil Rights and Self-Determination
Tuesday, August 29, 2017
12pm Pacific / 3pm Eastern
How strong love can be
Hello! My name is Vanuyen Pham, and I’m the California Policy Intern for SEARAC this summer with a focus on health. I am a rising senior at Stanford University majoring in History.
People always ask me how I became interested in history, and I think I can trace it back to when my grandma would tell me stories about her life in Vietnam. It was so strange for me to reconcile images of my family, as I knew them, with their lives that they were uprooted from. My grandma’s stories were my only glimpses into this different world, as my parents were not too keen on talking about the past and were focused instead on our futures.
Growing up in this culture of silence, I wanted to figure out a way to fill out the gaps in my knowledge. In school, my history textbook painted Vietnamese people either as enemies or victims and relegating them to the sidelines in their own country, clearly a skewed perspective that masked years of colonialism. Where were the stories of people like my grandparents and parents?
That is what I love about history: trying to discover people’s stories, especially those who have traditionally been marginalized and whose voices are not heard in those high school history textbooks.
Coming to college, I’ve been lucky to have learned so much from the incredible people around me. I’ve found a home in the Asian American community on campus, meeting fierce activists who have been my friends and role models. In spite of many struggles, what has stood out to me is how strong love can be. It can be easy to get lost in frustration and anger, but by channeling this into our resolve to act and by working collectively, we will keep moving forward. I have so much hope.
I am excited to work at SEARAC on health issues, because growing up I witnessed how important access to healthcare has been for my family. As a child of nail salon workers, I’ve seen how a lot of my parents’ health concerns have been tied to their work and the little choice they had in this, given the circumstances of their immigration to this country. Through my time at SEARAC, I hope to learn more about the challenges and strategies in advocating for health policies that benefit Southeast Asian American communities, and to better understand the connection between institutional-level policymaking and grassroots-level needs and interventions.
Being political and advocating for change is not exactly what my parents wanted for me. What they don’t understand is that I want to do this because they can’t. I want to be sure their stories and the stories of my community are heard. I am honored to be here at SEARAC, where I am surrounded by people who also care deeply about advocating for their communities.
In terms of just fun facts, I’m from the Bay Area (Fremont) and off the top of my head, I love food (but am allergic to avocado), musicals, classic Hollywood movies, binge-watching Netflix, bookstores and coffeeshops. I’ve never lived in Sacramento before, but am excited to explore this summer!
Discovering my roots in DC
My name is Emily Short and I am the immigration policy intern for SEARAC this summer! Originally from the Midwest, I am a second-generation biracial Vietnamese American. My mother and her family came to Michigan as political refugees from Vietnam in 1990 and were sent to stay at the home of a minister. She fell in love with the minister’s son and they moved to Indiana to raise a family. Growing up, my family was the only Asian American family in our small town. Any Vietnamese community we had were our relatives. I was raised to be proud of my biracial identity and to know and respect both of my cultures. I grew up eating chả lụa and rice noodles for breakfast and then learning how to bake apple pie with my white grandma after school.
I am a recent graduate of Vassar College with a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies with concentrations in History and French and Francophone Studies. I entered college thinking that I would dedicate my life to being a foreign service officer. I got my dream internship at the U.S. Embassy in Paris and spent the following semester studying at Université de Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle.
But throughout these six months in Paris, I became acutely aware of my racial identity. From street harassers shouting at me that they loved Chinese girls to my host family forbidding me from cooking Vietnamese food because of its smell, I decided that I couldn’t live in France again. Near the end of my time in Paris, the November 2015 attacks occurred. I spent three days locked in an apartment until it was declared safe enough to go outside. The next weekend, I relived this experience again during a poorly timed trip to Brussels. During the aftermath of these events, what upset me the most was how quickly American politicians were to (falsely) blame these attacks on refugees. I needed a way to productively channel my anger about all of the negative things that had happened while I was abroad, so my best friend suggested that I join the AAPI political community in Washington, D.C.
I had never been part of an Asian American community before, in part because I was worried that I would not be accepted because I was “only half,” but I decided to take that chance. I interned at OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates last summer, where I worked on public policy and civic engagement. For the first time, I felt accepted by an AAPI community and passionate about the work that I was doing. I met many wonderful and inspiring people who helped me decide to continue doing AAPI advocacy work. I spent my senior year working on my thesis, which was an examination of Hmong refugee resettlement in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area and the importance for the United States to not only accept refugees but to help them build their own communities so that they can thrive. I also spent my senior year connecting to my roots by learning and perfecting recipes from both sides of my family. For Christmas, I made pies and dozens of cookies like my grandma had taught me. And for Tết, I finally perfected my mother’s phở recipe (and made a few hundred chả giò to go with it). I am so honored and excited to be working for SEARAC because of their deep commitment to improving the lives of Southeast Asian Americans and their continued support of refugee rights.
Reclaiming my parents’ story
My name is Tigana Văn Lê and I am SEARAC’s Education Policy Intern this summer! I am a second-generation Vietnamese American born in Saint Paul and raised in Cottage Grove, Minnesota. Currently, I am an incoming senior studying Communications with an Asian American Studies and Social Justice Minor at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. I am the middle child of three, all of which are loud, rowdy boys named after soccer players.
As refugees fleeing the atrocities of the Vietnam War, my parents endured unimaginable hardship as they crossed oceans coming to America. Facing harsh discrimination and racism in a completely new country and with limited English proficiency, they had to work extremely taxing jobs while attempting to improve their quality of life.
Their heartbreaking story of struggle was a narrative that they did not want for their children. They saw the value of being born in America, and the vast opportunities it held. So they assimilated quickly by omitting much of their own history, customs, and language as my brothers and I grew up. This decision created a cultural struggle for me in identifying what it meant to be a second generation Vietnamese American, let alone Asian American.
It wasn’t until college where I began to explore my identity and became involved with Asian American organizations on campus. I found communities that shared similar struggles, who looked like me and celebrated diversity. Soon after, I decided to declare an Asian American Studies Minor in order to reclaim the piece of history and identity I had lost growing up. It was in these spaces that my political consciousness grew and I learned about the struggles that Asians and Pacific Islanders have endured in the past and the obstacles they face today. As I learned more, I realized how imperative it was for our communities to be heard.
My call to action came after SEARAC’s press statement denouncing Executive Order 13769, also known as the “travel ban.”
“Together with my community of 3 million strong, we will exercise our responsibility, voice, and power to uphold and protect democracy for all future generations of Americans,” stated Quyen Dinh, Executive Director.
I remember how powerless and voiceless my parents were coming to this country as refugees and their experience trying to survive in America. That is why I’m extremely proud to be working at SEARAC, which has been a champion for Southeast Asian communities for decades. While my parents didn’t want their story to become mine, it has become a foundation on which I find inspiration to be a voice for those who are unrepresented.
