Minnesota's Hmong Fight Racist Media Portrayal
November 8, 1998 - 0:0
MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota Long derided as submissive and a drain on taxpayers, Minnesota's ethnic Hmong are fighting back against what they see as racist media portrayal of their community. When Tom Barnard, Minneapolis-St. Paul's top-rated radio Shock Jock, told Hmong-Americans to assimilate or hit the ... road, the radio station apologized on the air Thursday under pressure from a Hmong-led protest group.
A lot of Hmong people are happy about what we have done. They now know they shouldn't be afraid to speak out if someone has offended them, said Xis Vwj (pronounced see voo), a University of Minnesota senior and member of Community Action Against Racism (CAAR), which coordinated the protest. In June, after a 13-year-old Hmong mother from nearby Eau Claire, Wisconsin allegedly smothered her baby, Kqrs-Fm's Barnard denounced the crime but also joked about a possible civil fine for the girl: $10,000? That's a lot of egg rolls.
More than 60,000 Hmong live in the twin cities (as the Minneapolis-St. Paul area is known) believed to be the largest such concentration in North America but the Southeast Asian community is having a hard time assimilating. Many older Hmong do not speak English and suffer from mental health problems while many young Hmong families live sequestered in public housing projects.
A tight-knit family-based clan system transplanted from the Hmongs' native Laos has also reinforced a feeling of separateness from the American mainstream. The Hmong, many of whom had helped the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in its covert war against communists during the Vietnam war, began resettling in California and Minnesota in the 1970's with the help of Lutheran-sponsored refugee organizations. In recent years, a group of young, Americanized Hmong students and professionals has banded together with Hispanics, blacks, whites, and non-Hmong Asians to form CAAR. The people who led this thing (the protest) are really the first generation of Hmong who have grown up in American school systems, said Roy Magnuson, a CAAR member and St. Paul teacher who taught many of the group's leaders.
They are very sophisticated honors students and presidential scholars. CAAR organized a letter-writing campaign and set up a phone line for twin Citians to hear Barnard's remarks. Major local and national corporations either pulled commercials from the show or said they would not begin new ad campaigns due to the controversy. CAAR insisted on four conditions including a full apology and the elimination of a pidgin-English-speaking show character known as Tak. The group and Hmong clan elders rejected an original offer from Kqrs for a $5,000 scholarship, a $5,000 grant to Hmong social service organizations and $150,000 of free air time as bribery.
In October, Barnard defiantly announced he would attack who I want to attack, prompting more advertisers to drop out. Last week, Kqrs capitulated to CAAR's demands, including an on-air apology read on Barnard's show. One competitor said he doubted Kqrs lost any revenue during the protest, given the high demand for commercial time as Christmas approaches. However, the competitor added, the controversy may have put the morning show on a blacklist of politically controversial programming that many large corporations will not sponsor.
ABC Radio Group president Mark Steinmetz denied such a motivation. Money was not the primary factor for settling, he said. Kq desires to build a bridge between the radio station and community, and beyond that to all peoples of color. (AFP)
A lot of Hmong people are happy about what we have done. They now know they shouldn't be afraid to speak out if someone has offended them, said Xis Vwj (pronounced see voo), a University of Minnesota senior and member of Community Action Against Racism (CAAR), which coordinated the protest. In June, after a 13-year-old Hmong mother from nearby Eau Claire, Wisconsin allegedly smothered her baby, Kqrs-Fm's Barnard denounced the crime but also joked about a possible civil fine for the girl: $10,000? That's a lot of egg rolls.
More than 60,000 Hmong live in the twin cities (as the Minneapolis-St. Paul area is known) believed to be the largest such concentration in North America but the Southeast Asian community is having a hard time assimilating. Many older Hmong do not speak English and suffer from mental health problems while many young Hmong families live sequestered in public housing projects.
A tight-knit family-based clan system transplanted from the Hmongs' native Laos has also reinforced a feeling of separateness from the American mainstream. The Hmong, many of whom had helped the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in its covert war against communists during the Vietnam war, began resettling in California and Minnesota in the 1970's with the help of Lutheran-sponsored refugee organizations. In recent years, a group of young, Americanized Hmong students and professionals has banded together with Hispanics, blacks, whites, and non-Hmong Asians to form CAAR. The people who led this thing (the protest) are really the first generation of Hmong who have grown up in American school systems, said Roy Magnuson, a CAAR member and St. Paul teacher who taught many of the group's leaders.
They are very sophisticated honors students and presidential scholars. CAAR organized a letter-writing campaign and set up a phone line for twin Citians to hear Barnard's remarks. Major local and national corporations either pulled commercials from the show or said they would not begin new ad campaigns due to the controversy. CAAR insisted on four conditions including a full apology and the elimination of a pidgin-English-speaking show character known as Tak. The group and Hmong clan elders rejected an original offer from Kqrs for a $5,000 scholarship, a $5,000 grant to Hmong social service organizations and $150,000 of free air time as bribery.
In October, Barnard defiantly announced he would attack who I want to attack, prompting more advertisers to drop out. Last week, Kqrs capitulated to CAAR's demands, including an on-air apology read on Barnard's show. One competitor said he doubted Kqrs lost any revenue during the protest, given the high demand for commercial time as Christmas approaches. However, the competitor added, the controversy may have put the morning show on a blacklist of politically controversial programming that many large corporations will not sponsor.
ABC Radio Group president Mark Steinmetz denied such a motivation. Money was not the primary factor for settling, he said. Kq desires to build a bridge between the radio station and community, and beyond that to all peoples of color. (AFP)