Think about moments of realization in your life. The realization of being accepted to a university. The realization of achieving the goal you had been working towards since graduation. Or the realization of being in love for the very first time.

Steven Lee, a 21 years old Hmong student at Fresno State University, believes that every moment of your life...every memory you cherish or every realization you come to should be remembered as a lesson to be learned and shared. "Hmongs" are tribal warriors from the mountains of Laos in Southeast Asia. They fought on the side of the United States during the Vietnam War.

The realization Lee had learned from an early age and would like to share with us is the helplessness, frustration and confusion of being a minority, a first-year generation Hmong-American.

"I had never been called a minority," says Lee, "before coming to the United States, as a refugee in 1980." Lee lost count of how many times he was called a "jap", "gook" or a "dog eater," by white boys at school, in the street or in his own yard. "They would stare at me as if I had grown two heads and laugh behind my back as I passed them in the hallways," Lee says, staring into space with glazed eyes-remembering.

"Angie Wallace was my first white American friend. Everyday, I would go over to her house and play. Mrs. Wallace was okay, she was polite but I was always uncomfortable around her. She never looked at me directly or called me by my given name. Sometimes she looked at me as if I didn't even exist. Other times, she would talk very slowly, pronouncing each word in my presence as if I was stupid. There was always this tension between us that Angie could not feel," he says.

This "tension" is racism. Racism, define by the Scott Foresman Advanced Dictionary, is the belief that a particular race, especially one's own, is superior to other races. Lee was only seven years old when he came to this realization.

Remembering where he was, Lee smiled-hiding the old childhood hurts and regrets, and said, "the vibrations sent to me from Mrs. Wallace made me feel less a human being and after a while, I believed it. I stopped going to Angie's house."

Another realization in Lee's new life in America came when Lee and his family moved to Illinois in the fall of 1982. Here, in the ugliest run-down government apartments, Lee saw blacks for the first time. "I witnessed their humiliation of being treated like a criminal, a lesser being where ever they went and for the first time, I realized, I was not alone. From this realization, I learned that the equality of human beings between blacks, yellows, reds and whites in the United States of America was just an ideology.

"While living in Illinois, Lee also came into contact with other minorities. "In school, students were separated and kept in segregation" says Lee, "by this 'tension' that we, the students of color all felt. Most blacks would hang out with blacks, Latinos with Latinos, Asians with Asians and whites with whites. I hated the whole cast, but I was powerless to change it. It was just one of those unbroken rules that no one dare to bend."

In the fall of 1984, Lee and his family moved again. They choose California and settled in Fresno. Here, Lee came to his last and most important realization since coming to the United States.

"Because of my background," Lee says, looking way, " I was put into the English as a Second Language (ESL) classes. There were no white students in ESL, only students of color like myself. I was bored to death in these classes because all the lessons were the same. I asked to be transferred but was denied so many times by my counselors. Finally after so many times of bugging the principle, I was given a test. I passed and was transferred into the normal classes, but things there were the same. There were a diversity of students but not in the quality of teaching and I began to hate going to school."

In high school, Lee got into a Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) class by mistake and saw for the first time how the majority of white children were educated. "They were given choices and rooms to explore personal interests. They were encouraged to be individuals and to speak their minds," Lee says.

Despite being the only Hmong student in the class, Lee stayed. The next semester, Lee took all GATE and Advanced Placement (AP) classes against his counselor's advice. "In these classes," says Lee, "I learned how to inspire, influence and wound people as deeply as I want through the usage of words. By being able to freely express myself, I was able to see my worth as a Hmong-American and by understand my worth; I learned how to create a place for myself in the American dream."

"However, this 'tension' between the white society and I will never go away, no matter how intelligent or important I become. It will always be there forcing me to think twice about everything I am about to say or do, no matter where I am " says Lee.

My Mother & I

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Background by Francesca Benvenuti (Francy)