User:Prisci8/sandbox

For the Spring 2020 semester, I will be editing the Hmong Americans Wikipedia page. The main points of editing I will focus on is: 1) Adding citations, 2) Adding health disparities subsection. Below, I will be writing out the draft for the edits!

Editing the History section (adding citations):

1976 and 1980[edit]

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Initially only 1,000 Hmong people were evacuated to the US. In May 1976, another 11,000 Hmong were allowed to enter the United States. By 1978 some 30,000 Hmong had immigrated to the US, and by 1998, there were 200,000 Hmong living in the US. This first wave was made up primarily of men directly associated with General Vang Pao's Secret Army, which had been aligned with US war efforts during the Vietnam War. Vang Pao's Secret Army, which was subsidized by the US Central Intelligence Agency, fought mostly along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, where his forces sought to disrupt North Vietnamese weapons supply efforts to the communist VietCong rebel forces in South Vietnam. Ethnic Laotian and Hmong veterans, and their families, led by Colonel Wangyee Vang formed the Lao Veterans of America in the aftermath of the war to help refugees in the camps in Thailand and to help former veterans and their families in the United States, especially with family reunification and resettlement issues.

Four years later, with the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, families of the Secret Army were also permitted to immigrate to the US, representing the second-wave of Hmong immigration (Fact check this previous sentence). The clans, from which the Hmong take their surnames, are: Chang (Tsaab) or Cha (Tsab), Chao (Tsom), Cheng (Tsheej), Chue (Tswb), Fang (Faaj) or Fa (Fag), Hang (Haam) or Ha (Ham), Her (Hawj), Khang (Khaab) or Kha (Khab), Kong (Koo) or Soung (Xoom), Kue (Kwm), Lee (Lis), Lor (Lauj), Moua (Muas), Pha (Phab), Thao (Thoj), Vang (Vaaj) or Va (Vaj), Vue or Vu (Vwj), Xiong (Xyooj) and Yang (Yaaj) or Ya (Yaj).

1990s and 2000s[edit]

Following the 1980 immigration wave, a debate developed over how to deal with the remaining Hmong refugees in Thailand. Many had been held in squalid Thailand-based refugee camps, and the United Nations and the Clinton administration sought to repatriate them to Laos.

Reports of human rights violations against the Hmong in Laos, including killings and imprisonments, led most Thailand-based Hmong to oppose returning there, even as the conditions worsened of the camps in Thailand, because of the lack of funding for the camps.

One of the more prominent examples of apparent Laotian abuse of the Hmong was the fate of Vue Mai, a former soldier. The US Embassy in Bangkok recruited him to return to Laos under the repatriation program, in their effort to reassure the Thai-based Hmong that their safety in Laos would be assured. But, Vue disappeared in Vientiane. The US Commission for Refugees later reported that he was arrested by Lao security forces and never seen again.

Especially following the Vue Mai incident, the Clinton and UN policy of returning the Hmong to Laos began to meet with strong political opposition by US conservatives and some human rights advocates. Michael Johns, a former White House aide to President George H. W. Bush and a Heritage Foundation foreign policy analyst, along with other influential conservatives, led a campaign to grant the Thai-based Hmong immediate US immigration rights. In an October 1995 National Review article, citing the Hmong's contributions to US war efforts during the Vietnam War, Johns described President Clinton's support for returning the Thai-based Hmong refugees to Laos as a "betrayal" and urged Congressional Republicans to step up opposition to the repatriation. Opposition to the repatriation grew in Congress and among Hmong families in the US Congressional Republicans responded by introducing and passing legislation to appropriate sufficient funds to resettle all remaining Hmong in Thailand in the United States. Clinton vowed to veto the legislation.

In addition to internal US opposition to the repatriation, the government of Laos expressed reservations about the repatriation, stating that the Hmong remaining in Thailand were a threat to its one-party communist government and the Marxist government in Vientiane, Laos. In a significant and unforeseen political victory for the Hmong and their US Republican advocates, tens of thousands of Thai-based Hmong refugees were ultimately granted US immigration rights. The majority were resettled in California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The defeat of the repatriation initiative resulted in the reunifications in the US of many long-separated Hmong families. In 2006, as a reflection of the growth of the minority in the state, the Wisconsin State Elections Board translated state voting documents into the Hmong language.

Throughout the Vietnam War, and for two decades following it, the US government stated that there was no "Secret War" in Laos and that the US was not engaged in air or ground combat operations in Laos. In the late 1990s, however, several US conservatives, led by Johns and others, alleged that the Clinton administration was using the denial of this covert war to justify a repatriation of Thailand-based Hmong war veterans to Laos. It persuaded the US government to acknowledge the Secret War (conducted mostly under President Richard Nixon) and to honor the Hmong and American veterans from the war.

On May 15, 1997, in a total reversal of US policy, the federal government acknowledged that it had supported a prolonged air and ground campaign in Laos against the North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong. That day it dedicated the Laos Memorial on the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery in honor of the Hmong and other combat veterans from the Secret War. In 1999 there were about 250,000 Hmong people living in the United States, living in numerous medium and large cities.

Some Hmong remained in refugee camps Thailand at the time of the September 11, 2001, attacks. This resulted in the tightening of US immigration laws, especially under the Patriot Act and the Real ID Act, and the immigration of Hmong refugees to the US has significantly slowed. Most Hmong refugees in Thailand had been engaged in documented armed conflict (although under US sponsorship) during and after the Vietnam War. The anti-terrorism legislation created barriers to such people being accepted as immigrants.

Mental health

Compared to other Southeast Asian refugees in America, Hmong refugees have the highest rates of mental health disorders, with an overall mental illness incidence rate at around 33.5%. This mental health problem has been attributed to traumatic past experiences and problems adjusting to life in the United States.

Gender roles play an integral factor for the mental health of Hmong women. Gender construct of Hmong women, traditionally, socially and politically, have historically been oppressive and marginalizing. Even in traditional Hmong cloth (paj ntaub) and folklore (dab neej) Hmong gender roles are concretely sewn and told, and repeated. Misogyny and patriarchy in the Hmong community is present to this day which calls for Hmong women empowerment initiatives throughout the United States.

In religious and traditional Hmong families the subject of mental health is taboo because of Shamanism, with the belief that remedy to health is through communication and exchanges with spirits. Through spiritual ceremonies, overall health is remedied, not through health facilities or specialists, not through science. In addition, LGBTQ+ Hmong individuals struggle with mental health due to the lack of education and attention on mental health in Hmong communities, deals with depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and suicide.

In other aspects of health, like cancer, Hmong Americans have the highest cancer mortality rates compared to other Asian American groups. Low cancer screenings and lack of interventions to address stigma of utilizing public health services are among some reasons for this trend.

For Fall 2018 semester, I will be focusing my revisions for the Environmental racism Wikipedia page in the following four general categories: grammar, organization, article's length, and neutral standpoint.

A) Grammar: Throughout the article, there is confusing syntax that can lose the attention of a reader. I will edit the article so that the logical order of thoughts presented within sentences is straightforward. I will edit sentences to be succinct and shorten very long sentences such as the one in "Background" that starts with, "In this line of thinking, environmental racism includes...".

B) Organization: Thoughts presented in the article are quite disorganized in that the article does not show a clear line of thinking or logical flow to help guide the reader. The cases of environmental racism are not presented in a logical manner and it seems as if they were added over time by users who specifically researched a specific case, without regards to making it fit into the article as a whole. There is also incoherent introduction of ideas in the article. For example, the article discusses the controversy around the definition of 'environmental racism' under the section "United States" and "Definition." To make the article flow in a logical manner, discourse on the definition of environmental racism should be restricted to the "Definition" section. I will edit the article so that thoughts are presented under the appropriate sections and edit the sections' titles to more specifically reflect what the text in the section talks about.

C) Article's length: There is a section in the Talk page titled "The page is too long." While a Wikipedia page can be comprehensive in presenting a neutral standpoint of a topic, I believe that this article is too long in its wordiness and biased presentation of cases. There are varying paragraph lengths for the different cases. For example, "Electronic waste in Guiyu, China" is significantly longer than "Chevron/Texaco in Ecuador" and "Niger Delta, Nigeria". The user who added the Guiyu, China case did extensive research in this area and caused an imbalance in the article. By cutting down on the examples of environmental racism, a neutral standpoint can be reached.

D) Neutral standpoint: Overall, the article mostly covers examples of environmental racism in communities of color. However, environmental injustice due to economic factors (poor whites in Appalachian Mountains) could be mentioned in the article to voice a neutral standpoint. Text about policy implications and international laws should also be included.

Some sources I will use include:

• Bullard., R., Mohai, P., Saha, R., and Wright, B. (2007). "Toxic wastes and race at twenty 1987-2007." The United Church of Christ. Retrieved from https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/toxic-wastes-and-race-at-twenty-1987-2007.pdf

• Bolin, B., Grineski, S., and Collins, T. (2005). "The geography of despair: Environmental racism and the making of South Phoenix, Arizona, USA." Human Ecology Review 12(2): 156-168.

• Lewis, R., and Willett, R. (2017). "The effect of environmental activism on the long-run market value of a company: a case study." Journal of Business Ethics, 140(3):455-476. doi: 10.1007/s10551-015-2686-1

• White-Newsome, J. (2016). "A policy approach toward climate justice." Journal of Black Studies and Research 46(3): 12-26. doi: 10.1080/00064246.2016.1188353

————————————————————————— Draft for Environmental Racism page.

Editing the Background section

In the United States, the first report to draw a relationship between race, income, and risk of exposure to pollutants was the Council of Environmental Quality's "Annual Report to the President" in 1971. After protests in Warren County, North Carolina, the U.S. General Accounting Office issued a report on the case in 1983, and the United Church of Christ (UCC) commissioned a report exploring the concept in 1987 drawing a connection between race and the placement of the hazardous waste facilities. Thus, the outcry in Warren County was a product of the environmental justice movement which included addressing cases of environmental racism. (https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-environ-082508-094348)

The term environmental racism came into use at a conference held at the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources in 1990. The conference, which focused on race and environmental hazards, brought together scholars and policymakers to discuss the relationship between racism and the environment. In addition, the term environmental equity movement was used in the late 1980s to describe the growing movement to address racial, gender, and class environmental inequalities.

The term environmental racism was first coined in 1982 by Benjamin Chavis, who at the time was the executive director of the Commission for Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ. (https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-environ-082508-094348)

Editing the Definition section

Chavis defined the term as follows "Environmental racism is racial discrimination in environmental policy making, the enforcement of regulations and laws, the deliberate targeting of communities of color for toxic waste facilities, the official sanctioning of the life-threatening presence of poisons and pollutants in our communities, and the history of excluding people of color from leadership of the ecology movements." (https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-environ-082508-094348)

Bullard expands the term: "Environmental racism refers to any policy, practice, or directive that differentially affects or disadvantages (whether intended or unintended) individuals, groups, or communities based on race or color." (https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1460&context=jcred)

Houston Asian American Archive

The Houston Asian American Archive (HAAA) is housed in the Chao Center for Asian Studies at Rice University. In addition to conducting oral histories of Asian Americans in Houston and in the United States, the archive collects any artifacts including photographs, newspapers, and business records from interviewees or organizations. These artifacts are stored in the Woodson Research Center at Fondren Library. The mission of HAAA is to foster a deeper understanding of Asian American history, and to document the cultural legacy of Asian Americans as local, trans(national), and global citizens.