Lee, S. (2005). Up Against Whiteness: Race, School,
and Immigrant Youth. New York: Teachers College
Press.
Pp. vii +141
$21.95 (Paperback) ISBN 0-8077-4574-X
$46.00 (Hardcover) ISBN 0-8077-4575-8
Reviewed by Paula McAvoy
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Stacey Lee’s provocative, ethnographic study of first-
and second-generation Hmong-American students examines how they
transform their cultural and personal identities in response to
experiences with the dominant, White, middle-class culture of one
of America’s top high schools. In the home, students from
this little-known refugee group are taught to uphold tradition
and resist “negative” American influences such as
questioning parental authority, participating in unsupervised
dating and identifying with pop culture. At school they confront
economic inequality, racism and cultural prejudice all of which
impede their ability to succeed academically and socially.
Lee’s work identifies the ways in which schools perpetuate
White hegemony while simultaneously examining how these immigrant
students respond to conflicting messages about how to be Hmong in
America.
Lee observed and interviewed sixty Hmong students in a
Midwestern high school and at community events over an eighteen
month period. In addition, she spent time with the
“University Heights” staff, conducted semi-structured
interviews and examined school publications. Divided into five
parts, the book begins by placing her research within the larger
discussion of race, gender, immigration and Americanization,
giving the reader a thorough overview of relevant literature. Lee
also provides us with a compelling history of the Hmong people
beginning with their flight from China, settlement in Laos and
finally cooperation with the United States during the Vietnam
War, resulting in resettlement to various parts of the United
States. This background highlights the unique experiences of the
Hmong who have historically lived as outsiders within another
country and now enter the United States not as voluntary
immigrants, but political refugees.
Lee next places these students within the context of their
high school experience, painting a critical picture of how the
school privileges whiteness and marginalizes the Hmong as
culturally deficient. Lee adds complexity with each chapter and
differentiates between the experiences of the more traditional,
“good” Hmong who find shelter within the ESL program
and the “Americanized” second-generation students who
have adopted the “bad” characteristics of gang/hip
hop culture. Lee argues that defiance against traditional Hmong
culture and school authority through identification with urban
youth works to “blacken” Hmong in the eyes of the
school and community. As with many students of color, the Hmong
must choose the side of America’s Black and White divide on
which they are going to land, a decision that carries long
lasting academic and personal consequences. What teachers and
administrators often fail to realize is that adopting an urban
aesthetic is not a simplistic desire to resist authority, but an
attempt by marginalized students to express feelings of injustice
and regain a sense of control in a situation in which they feel
powerless. Lee uses the voices of her subjects to show that they
are both aware of and frustrated by the fact that their class and
race relegates them to the lower rungs of the school
hierarchy.
Gender adds another layer of complexity to the Hmong
experience. Lee argues that the “hegemonic masculinities
and ideal femininities” within high schools reward
whiteness, affluence, academic success and participation in high
status activities. She explains that, “in” boys at
University Heights High are tall, athletic, loud, and take up
figurative and literal space in the school, while
“ideal” girls are stylish, socially popular and
viewed by the staff as “smart, trustworthy and sweet”
(90). These gender norms are reinforced in the media, shopping
malls and widely read romance novels. Lee shows that Hmong
students internalize these racialized and gendered
characteristics as “American,” placing them, and
other Asian students, as the “perpetual foreigner.”
Most interesting in this chapter is how Lee exposes the divergent
ways that each gender and generation makes sense of these many
messages. Hmong girls are often viewed by the school staff as
victims of cultural sexism, and respond by trying to
“save” them from marrying in their teens, making
girls either ashamed or resentful of their culture. At the same
time, this concern and extra attention contributes to girls
becoming more academically successful than their male
counterparts. Some are caught between a desire to be
“good” Hmong girls and wanting to delay marriage and
parenthood until after graduation, others rebel against authority
and risk being labeled as “bad” by the school and
community. Hmong boys seem to face obstacles in all spheres.
Those who stay “traditional” may be rewarded at home,
but struggle academically because they are either not seen or
feminized by the school staff and also have trouble asking female
teachers for help. Further, these boys often feel the sting of
“Americanized” Hmong girls who chide them for not
being tall, and therefore, unattractive. Those who try to
Americanize “the bad way” become hyper-masculine in
an attempt to be seen and gain social status, but then face
generational conflict at home and are considered troublemakers at
school. Lee unfolds the layers of race, class and the immigrant
experience to expose the multiple gendered experiences that these
young people must interpret. We are left with a deeper
appreciation for the experiences of the Hmong specifically, and
youth of color in general.
Lee concludes by asking us to reexamine what we consider to be
a “good school.” Schools like University Heights High
look to college entrance indicators such as SAT scores and
acceptances to the Ivy League as signs of success, but
Lee’s research shows that this approach allows schools to
ignore, or marginalize, students who do not contribute to this
image. For the good of all students, Lee outlines prescriptions
for challenging White hegemony and moving schools away from the
tendency to simply replicate society’s injustices. Lee
calls for a multicultural curriculum that acknowledges and
examines racial hierarchy, confronts economic inequality and
incorporates Southeast Asian history, especially where it
intersects with American history. Schools must also recognize
that immigrants are particularly vulnerable to manipulation by
the media and take many of their cues about “being
American” from TV and music. As a counterbalance,
classrooms should consciously help young people to interpret
these images and become critical consumers of popular culture.
The ethos of the school in general needs to be one in which
teachers learn about the challenges facing refugee children and
families and respond with compassion, not contempt. Schools as a
whole also must work to ease immigrant students’ transition
into the American educational system by providing parents with
explicit information about the process through high school and
beyond. Finally, Lee challenges the school staff to confront
White privilege and its role in reproducing inequality.
Lee’s curricular recommendations make good sense for a
pluralistic society as they embody the values of individual
autonomy and critical thinking needed for the creation of a just,
democratic community. Good institutions should challenge
students’ assumptions about race, class and gender and work
to disperse social, political and economic power. Less clear is
whether or not this is the best curriculum for the Hmong. It is
not obvious, for example, how Lee’s program would address
the issue of boys being resistant to help from women, nor does
she comment on how schools should respond to married
fifteen-year-old girls. The Hmong are not only confronting norms
of whiteness, but they are also a formerly isolated, patriarchal,
community coming into contact with the value of
individualism. If Hmong adults are working to raise their
children as “Hmong” and understand the values and
beliefs of their people, exposing children to the critical,
multicultural curriculum that Lee describes is likely to
undermine their sense of community, which in turn, as her data
show, causes considerable generational conflict. Lee cites
research that argues immigrant students are more successful when
they selectively acculturate by maintaining cultural traditions
and social capital within the community while acquiring certain
aspects of the dominant culture. With the Hmong, this often
occurs within the sheltered environment of ESL classes where
students are buffered somewhat from the larger, more
individualistic, commercial school culture. This suggests that if
schools want to help students Americanize in the
“good” way, there is more that the teachers and
administrators can do more to assist this particular group. They
could, for example, give Hmong boys male teachers whenever
possible and assign them to male counselors. They might also
create transitional course/s for second-generation and ESL
graduates drawing from all groups on campus, taught with an eye
toward cultural sensitivity and addressing issues specific to the
immigrant experience. Some are sure to argue that this is far too
much accommodation for a school to undertake and that such
practices violate the mission of public schools to prepare
students for life in a pluralistic, democratic society. However,
Lee’s research shows that immigrant cultures have little
choice but to change in response to life in the United States,
and simply walking onto a high school campus and observing how
students behave at lunchtime will cause cultural reflection.
While Lee’s analysis is focused on the construction of race
within high schools and how they perpetuate inequity, her data
suggests that future research ought to look at whether or not an
effective accommodation for new immigrants might be slowing down,
rather than speeding up, Americanization.
Lee’s work is an important addition to, and departure
from, other educational ethnographies that have focused on the
experiences of youth of color within America’s low-income
schools. By researching an immigrant group in a school with a
reputation for academic excellence, she asks us to reflect upon
what we consider a “good” school, and recognize the
ways in which privileging whiteness creates barriers for minority
students. This provocative position coupled with her clear,
no-nonsense style makes this book a powerful read for public
school teachers and administrators. More generally, this research
gives the reader a glimpse into the organic nature of culture and
the ways in which it resists and accommodates when confronted
with the opposing values of a larger, racialized, consumer-driven
society making it an important contribution to those interested
in anthropology, gender studies and multicultural education.
About the Reviewer
Paula McAvoy is a graduate student in Educational Policy Studies at
University of Wisconsin, Madison. She
studies the philosophy of education and is currently researching
how public schools in a
liberal society ought to respond to students from deeply
communitarian cultures.
Copyright is retained by the first or sole author,
who grants right of first publication to the Education Review.
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