Written by Sou Saechao, a second-year undergraduate studying Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies (AAADS)
As a first-generation Iu-Mien college student I’ve encountered much challenges to college, both financially and academically. Both of which would contribute to the state of my mental health, causing me to feel less value for myself and not putting in as much effort on classes. Entering a prestigious university such as UC Berkeley, I began to explore symptoms of Imposter symdrone, a psychological condition in which a person thinks of his achievements as being nothing more than a fraud and thinks of themselves as undeserving for where they are in life.
At the very beginning of my undergraduate career, I started to develop a sense for how small the Iu-Mien community is. Besides the floormate that I was living in the dorm with, I did not encounter any other person who is the same ethnicity as me. As a result, I began to feel lonely and took my education more seriously. It wasn’t until I was invited into a space on-campus called the Southeast Asian Student Coalition where I would meet even more Iu-Mien college students at Berkeley, such as Lily, Fahm, and Shadie. I felt more grounded and I was relieved there there were even more people whom I would feel connected to culturally.
The following year, I re-registered the Iu-Mien Student Union at Berkeley in order to recruit Iu-Mien students to campus and retaining the Iu-Mien students that are currently in Berkeley. This was sparked by the lack of data for the number of Iu-Mien students that are enrolled at UC Berkeley. For those who don’t know, the UC system does not include any data on the number of Iu-Mien students that are enrolled for each campus within the UC system. They are lumped up under the category “Other Asians.” This pisses me off because it meant that these institutions do not consider the Iu-Mien to be an ethnic group. As a result, it’s tough to gauge how many Iu-Mien students there are exactly in a huge institution like UC Berkeley.
Living in a concentrated Mien community in Oakland, there are elders who do not realize how important the census is. In fact, in the past many did not fill out the census at all due to the lack of involvement in politics and language barriers. However, I am proud of the efforts of many API organizations that are pushing for citizens, including the Iu-Mien, to fill out the census so that they can be better represented. I don’t know what the future will hold, but I understand where I am at socially, which compels me to organize for my communities.