Asians find Phila. schools an unexpected experience

In the years before Ming Chen came to the United States, he imagined his American education:

His school would be a place of learning and knowledge, where students helped one another achieve.

Chen arrived here from China in August and enrolled at South Philadelphia High School the next month. On Dec. 3, he was attacked in the lunchroom during a daylong assault on Asian students by groups of mostly African American classmates.

Today, he struggles to reconcile how he could be physically assaulted - he suffered a bloody mouth and bruises - in what he was certain would be a center of scholarship and friendship. "School should be a place to learn, to study, not a place to fight," Chen, 21, said through a translator.

The Dec. 3 violence has spawned three separate, official investigations by federal, Philadelphia School District, and human-relations officials. Asian immigrant students say what has not been discussed is their profound sense of shock, the disconnect and disparity between the reception they envisioned from a far shore and what they actually experienced in school.

In interviews with The Inquirer, eight students described that chasm between expectation and reality.

"Sometimes, I wonder what's wrong with me, that I don't get accepted," said Bach Tong, a 16-year-old 10th grader from Vietnam. "School is supposed to be the safest place, besides home."

Tong, like most others interviewed, has been in the United States less than three years, his parents having left behind everything in hope their son could snare the gold ring of a U.S. education. Before immigrating, students said, their knowledge of U.S. schools came from watching movies and TV.

Mu Lin Liu, 18, had no idea what he was walking into when he arrived at South Philadelphia High on what he said was either Dec. 6 or 7.

He expected he and the American students would "all become friends." It never entered his mind he might be a target. But on his first day, in the aftermath of the Dec. 3 violence, the building practically vibrated with anxiety.

"I was very, very surprised and shocked," the ninth grader said through a translator.

His father had left Fuzhou, China, for the United States, to work and save money so the family could follow, when Liu was 3. Liu was 16 when they met again. That kind of separation is typical among families of Chinese immigrant students.

In countries such as China, many struggle to pay school fees and view free public education as an exceptional benefit.

Through the first months of school, Liu said, he and his brother managed to avoid trouble. But this month, he said, his brother was exiting a bathroom stall when a student on the outside deliberately kicked the door inward, slamming it into the youth.

Regarding Dec. 3, the School District inquiry attributed the violence to rumors that sprang from an altercation involving Asian and African American students the previous day. It said most of the victims were recent immigrants, but found insufficient proof to conclude Asians were attacked solely because of that status.

Community advocates and student leaders, however, say that Asian and particularly Asian immigrant students are routinely slapped, tripped, and punched - and that administrators ignored years of complaints.

The Dec. 3 violence sent seven Asians to hospitals and led to a seven-day boycott of classes by about 50 students. Nineteen students were suspended, and 14 transferred to alternative schools. Five transfers were overturned.

In Philadelphia, Asians comprise a small minority, 5.7 percent of the population, and they account for roughly the same percentage of total district enrollment. But that figure more than triples inside Southern, as the high school is known, to 18 percent.

The neighborhood has been changing since the 1980s, when large numbers of Southeast Asian refugees resettled. Now it's a frequent first stop for Asian newcomers, who enter a school that is 70 percent African American, 6 percent Hispanic, and 5 percent white.

Some Asian students traveled here to be reunited with parents they barely knew. Others found themselves largely on their own, their sponsoring relatives having left for other cities.

"In some sense, they have a great deal more opportunity than they did at home. In some cases, they face barriers here they never thought they'd face," Amanda Bergson-Shilcock of the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians said of the Asian students.

She supervises the agency's five-year-old program at Southern, which helps 200 students, 60 percent of them born overseas. Most of the foreign students have been in the country less than two years.

They are simultaneously trying to learn English, grasp the content of their studies, and adapt to a new culture where the slightest social interactions can be fraught: How much eye contact is polite? How close should they stand to someone?

The act of leaving everything - country, language, food, family - is itself traumatic, said Godelive Muttu, a coordinator for Lutheran Children and Family Services.

"When they're in school and experience violence, that is re-traumatizing," Muttu said. "There is no safe place. That is the message to them. There is no safe place."

Experts say that these days, the United States offers a harsh climate for immigrants of all ethnicities. Groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center say immigrants often are victims of violence and routinely are blamed for crime, unemployment, and terrorism.

"First-generation Asian kids really, really work hard - there's no other way to say it," said Fariborz Ghadar, a Pennsylvania State University professor who directs the Center for Global Business Studies. "Their SAT scores are good, their grades are good. And there is backlash by American kids who see these guys as major competitors in the classroom.

"All of a sudden, here are kids that work their butts off, don't really play well on their Xboxes, are not particularly athletic - criteria that our teenagers think are important."

The district inquiry, issued last month, said race was a factor in the attacks. Other investigations are proceeding through the Justice Department, the result of a complaint filed by an Asian legal group, and the state Human Relations Commission.

"We went to America to get an education, not to be in violence, not to be victims," said Duong Nghe Ly, an 18-year-old junior from Vietnam.

Ly's parents fled from Vietnam in 1990, making their way to Thailand. Ly was born there, in a refugee camp, two years later. When he was 4, the United Nations cut off funding for the camps and his family was forced to return to Vietnam.

In Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, Ly's parents survived by running a noodle stand in front of their home. They scraped to pay for their son's schooling, while undertaking a 12-year effort to move to the United States.

"I expected I would have a lot of American friends as my English improved, like I saw on TV," he said. "I found it was not that easy."

In interviews, students said that they generally believed their teachers cared about them - and that they were learning. Several cited the English-language teachers as particularly kind and helpful.

The second floor of Southern, where those classes are centered, has been a refuge, students said. They fear district officials will pursue discussions about breaking it up.

Phuong Truong, a 17-year-old junior, said that on his first day in school he saw Asians in the lunchroom pelted with anything that could be thrown - food, trays, oranges, milk.

In an interview, he struggled to convey his disbelief.

"I thought of it as someplace very safe, with friendly teachers and friendly friends," said Truong, who came from Vietnam in 2008.

Before immigrating, Tong, the 10th grader, lived in Tra Vinh, a city in the Mekong Delta region. His father was a farmer, his mother a cashier.

His parents told him they were moving to the United States the night before the family got on the plane. The couple had feared that alerting their son in advance would upset his schoolwork.

The family arrived in April 2008, and Tong enrolled at Southern that fall. He sought American friends, but found language a barrier. Then, in October, several Asians were attacked at the Snyder Avenue subway stop.

Tong was astonished. His parents were so upset they scouted possible new homes in New Jersey.

Now Tong doesn't tell his parents when Asians are harassed. He worries they'll move, and he wants to stay with his Vietnamese friends. He just wishes his school was more what he had imagined: "Nearly perfect."