A state bill would require state educators to create a model curriculum on Laotian history and cultural studies. Requirements like these, columnist frankshyong writes, and the new ethnic studies graduation requirements in California are decades overdue.
One recent weekday in southeast San Diego, in a barbershop tucked behind an auto repair business, Jumbo Chanthamart, 26, recounted being thrown out of class in high school during a unit on the Vietnam War.
Perhaps it’s unsurprising that a conflict called the Secret War has been so obscured by history that even Laotian Americans struggle to find out about it. Chanthamart himself says he learned the history as a teenager only after reading about it on the internet. I’m embarrassed to admit I learned about it only a few weeks ago.
But we need to remember that ethnic studies exist because the histories taught in schools are embarrassingly incomplete. And the exclusion of those histories not only leaves many of us ignorant but also forces people like Chanthamart to fight for acknowledgment of the basic facts of their existence. At first, the community was small and intimate. The temple was a rented, renovated one-story ranch home with the interior walls knocked down to make space for everyone to gather for important holidays and events.
“Pretty or not pretty, it’s important that Americans understand why we have immigrants and why we have refugees,” Kongphouthone said.
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