multilingual: not synonymous with "has no command of English."

[glass_icarus]

So today's post was going to be another poetry post, because I've got lots more of the pretty to share, but no. I am now too pissed off to do so.

I meant to post about Lori Phanachone last month, but I never got around to it. Lori is a Laotian-American, 3.9-GPA-wielding National Honors Society student who refused to take the English Language Development Assessment test because it was demeaning and racist. The reason she had to take it?

The school district's curriculum coordinator, Lori Porsche, said taking the test is mandatory because Phanachone indicated on her school registration that English was not the first language spoken in her home. Her parents are Laotian and still speak little English.

Phanachone, who was born in California and lived in upstate New York before moving to Storm Lake with her family in 2006, said she has never been enrolled in any English Language Learning or English as a Second Language program.

"Someone told me I should have put English as my first language when I registered for school," Phanachone said. "But I refused. I will not deny who I am. And I will not disrespect my culture or my mother."

Well. Despite the school district's claims when working with AALDEF, who is representing Lori, that her scholarships and National Honors Society membership would not be threatened by her protest, that NHS membership got revoked last Friday "due to her failure to maintain 'standards of scholarship, leadership, service and character[.]'"

Are you fucking kidding me? That girl could have been me. Lori Phanachone worked hard for years to get to where she is, just like any number of high school students, and her academic future is being threatened because she had the balls to stand up and say "No, that's racist. No, I won't play your games by your rules, because they are unfair." Post-racial society, my fucking ass.

Comments

[glass-icarus.livejournal.com]

i know; i keep feeling astounded by her strength! i find that on the whole, Asian Americans have a tendency to not make waves; i think that the older generations' philosophy is something like "keep quiet and work your way up to a position of relative power so that you can become untouchable." to fight that sort of just-shut-up-and-work-harder mentality is incredibly difficult, especially when speaking out is obviously harming her future prospects.

[secretsolitaire.livejournal.com]

*nods* Good point. On that note, I wonder what her parents think of all this?

[glass-icarus.livejournal.com]

i'm hoping her parents, at least, are supportive- i can't imagine that they don't know what's going on, considering she's got legal representation and all.