Presentation 3 Reflection (Inter-ethnic and Intra-ethnic Conflicts)

Mimi Dao

May 16, 2012

ASA 150E

Reflection

            I was one of the presenters for this week’s presentation concerning inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic conflict.  I worked along the side of Tri-Thien Nguyen-Lam and Christina Nguyen and we presented our article, Where Do We Stand?, in correlation of this week’s theme.  Our article touched upon inter-ethnic conflicts in South Boston high school in the year of 1993.  During a riot that occurred in May 1993, a riot between Black and White students broke out which affected all the students of different ethnicities.  Although all ethnic students were affected by the riot, the problem was only seen through a Black-and-White context.  The Vietnamese American students were already heavily mistreated and oppressed that the riot created stronger feelings of invisibility among the Vietnamese students in South Boston high school in 1993. 

            Although this article and this week’s theme do not match the topic for my research paper, I still found it to be an interesting and important topic to discuss in curriculum for Southeast Asian American experiences.  After the influx of Southeast Asian American migration to the United States after the Viet Nam war, there has been several cases of Inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic conflicts that the Southeast Asian American ethnicities deal or have dealt with.  I think it is an important process to discuss these issues because they are still prominent today and greatly deals with the experience.

            I think my presentation of Where Do We Stand? with Tri-Thien and Christina went a little better than I expected.  The presentation could have been better if it was a little more organized because there were moments of repetitive information such as the limitations.  There was slight miscommunication which resulted for two of us to have the same information.  I also think we did not meet enough times to clearly plan out and organize the roles and which each presenter was going to present.  I don’t think meeting briefly before the weekend to finalize our decision on an article and an hour and thirty minutes the day before the presentation was sufficient amount of time to fully get everything together.  Besides those flaws, I think we did a good job of not just reiterating and summarizing the article.  I think we did a successful job of bringing in some discussion and it was very interesting on my part to hear everyone’s opinions.  It was a bit difficult to decide on which questions to ask for discussion because some of the presenters have so many personal opinions of the article.  Overall, I was very much content with our presentation despite some of its short comings.

            I was a little confused with Jason’s presentation because it did not follow along with this week’s theme, but none the less, it was very interesting.  I was told that most donut shops in California were owned by Cambodian Americans and I always wondered why and Jason’s presentation and article about Ted Ngoy cleared up that for me.  Although the research topic of Cambodians and doughnut shops is very intriguing, I found Jason’s research topic a little too board.  I think he had the right ideas by providing us with the background information and focusing on doughnut shops within Yolo country, but I think he can narrow his findings even deeper.  I think he should create a deeper research and find out why the Cambodians continue to pursue the doughnut business and how much of them are actually stirring away from that business?  How much are the Cambodian doughnut owners related?