My friend just brought me over a copy of the Hmong Today newspaper. It’s a local (St Paul, MN) publication for the Hmong community. The newspaper has as its cover story the recent tale of the Hmong hunter that killed 5 other hunters last month and the community’s reaction. (There was a pit thread about this as well).
That’s all fine and dandy. Except for the HUGE fact that the cover story has a large picture of a truck with an across the gate bumpersticker that states “Save a deer, kill a Hmong”. “Holy crap!” I thought when my friend handed me the newspaper. “Who would have the audacity and out & out racism to put that on their truck?” I read the article, which didn’t mention the bumpersticker or the truck at all, which I thought was a bit curious. Then I scanned back up to the picture to see an asterisk followed by the following in small print: “*photo is a dramatization”.
I can’t believe this paper thinks this would be a responsible thing to do. Or is it just the most sensational to get more advertising reveunue? Nothing worse than creating an evisceral reaction to heighten the tensions already out there. (Where there shouldn’t be any to begin with, dammit.) The paper does have a copy of this article with the picture and the title of the article mentions it as a “dramatization based upon”. Except for the fact that I can’t find where the end of that sentence is. Based upon what, exactly?
So fuck you, Hmong Today, for trying to make the world a little worse than it was already.
A very little known race of asians whom lived in the mountains in Laos? or was it cambodia? I forget. They became war refugees and were distributed around the nation. For some reason I don’t know why, but alot of them spread across the nation made a trek to Merced CA.
A Hmong is a race of person without a precise political country and as m-w.com defines “a member of a mountain-dwelling people inhabiting southeastern China and the northern parts of Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand”. A majority of the Hmong have immigrated to Saint Paul as refugees. Here’s more info.
While the sticker was doctored and what the newspaper did was GROSSLY unethical, you seem to have a faith in the goodness and sense of humanity that I don’t. I have personally seen such blatantly racist bumper stickers as “If we knew it’d be this much trouble, we’d have picked the damn cotton ourselves!” on, you guessed it, pickup trucks in central Illinois. Not quite as bad as “Kill all niggers,” but I’m sure there are many out there who would put on a bumper sticker like that without hesitation.
I seriously doubt that you could call the Hmong a “race,” unless you are willing to call Italians, Irish or New Yorkers a “race.” However, they can be called an “ethnic group,” I believe.
[quote]
[ol][li]A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.[*]A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race. [/ol][/li][/quote]
The Hmong (members of the “blue” tribe I have met in northern Vietnam - very different looking to the ethnic Vietnamese) fulfil both of the above.
Mmmm. I’m tempted to think this is an urban legend. A little Googling finds other reports of the event in your link, where it’s clear that the woman in question is repeating something her neighbor saw. In other words, a news report about a woman who says that her neighbor told her that she saw this bumper sticker, once.
I’m not saying the sticker doesn’t exist, but the evidence is tenuous.
“The twin cities are home to the largest Hmong population in North America, about 60,000 people. They began arriving from Laos and Thai refugee camps in the late '70s, initially placed here by local church-based refugee relief groups. And while this community has plenty to celebrate, social workers and educators say it’s been a struggle.”
The Hmong (and Montagnard, and others) were allies of the U.S. during the Vietnam war…
Aye, the Hmong Today paper is not quite up to the standards of the Pioneer or Trib. It is what it is, a small paper for a small percentage of people. Kinda puzzles me as to why they would do that when flying under the radar seems more practical at this point.
Where I live in Saskatchewan we receive CBS from Minneapolis (WCCO). (ABC and NBC come from Detroit.) Last night on the Minneapolis news they ran a story about fall-out from the shooting. I had never heard of the Hmong community before. So this thread, in the Pit or not, has proved educational to me. Thanks.
Let’s hope it doesn’t, zut. I guess. Put it this way, I’d rather think that someone’s making up inflammatory stories than there’s an actual nutjob with that pasted on their truck, but either way, it doesn’t reflect well on somebody.
However, at the very least it’s clear the paper didn’t make up the story out of whole cloth.
This isn’t strictly correct. “Montagnard” was a generic name meaning “mountain people” given by the French colonists to the Degar tribe of the Central Highlands; however the name ended up being attached to several other hilltribes, including the Blue Hmong and the Red Thai.
The proper term for this group would be a “stateless nation”, much like the Kurds in Iraq/Turkey/elsewhere. For example, Italians are a nation of people that DO have a state.