4/25 Laotian Daughters


In the reading called Laotian Daughters, Shah addressed some of the issues that the Laotian community had to face in Contra Costa County. One of them being an incident in which there was an explosion at Chevron. The safety warnings/ alerts/ announcements were in English. The problem with this is that many of the Laotian folks could not understand English. As a result, many Laotian folks were not aware of the fire as everyone else. This reiterates the fact that Laotians are one of the most underrepresented groups of people. Many other Asian subgroups look down on Laotians for being “ghetto and uneducated” [not my words]. In regards to achieving higher education, this is difficult for Laotian folks because their communities lack the resources needed to help Laotion students succeed. One of my good friends told me that underrepresented groups tend to not do as well as well represented groups because of the amount of resources available to these groups. This reminds me of the poverty trap in developing countries. Developing countries experience little economic growth because they lack the exposure to advance technology and don't have much to grow from so they're basically trapped in poverty. I think that's the same for underrepresented ethnic groups such as Laotians. Society keeps bashing on Lao folks for not being as educated and well off as East Asians and even some Southeast Asians, such as Vietnamese folks, but also fail to provide Lao folks with useful resources to help them be successful.

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