Opinion | The danger of pitting Hmong and Somali communities against each other

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I came across a recent episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” not because I am a regular listener, but because it began circulating in my social media feeds — shared by Hmong community members across Minnesota.

Many of the posts expressed pride. People were pleased to hear Hmong people spoken about “positively.” They celebrated how far Hmong families have come since arriving as refugees in 1975. After generations of being invisible or misunderstood, it can feel validating to hear your community named at all — especially in a national forum.

But what I heard in that segment did not feel like praise. It felt dangerous.

History — and psychological science — show us that the comparison between Hmong and Somali communities was not offered to understand either group. It was used to divide: to pit one community against another, to elevate one as “better” and to cast the other as suspect, undeserving or fraudulent.

This is not new. It is an old strategy.

In Africa, one tribe would be told that its people were smarter, more advanced and more deserving of partnership and resources, while a nearby tribe was told that its neighbors believed themselves superior. Once conflict took hold, colonizers no longer faced a united people. They swept in more easily, extracted resources and claimed control.

American Indian nations were drawn into alliances with colonizers and encouraged to fight one another, only to be betrayed once they had served their purpose.

In the Southwest, Mexican soldiers were used to advance U.S. territorial ambitions, only to be stripped of power, dignity and land once victory was secured.

Hmong soldiers of the CIA’s Secret War during the Vietnam War era also experienced this betrayal, fighting and dying for a country that failed to protect them. Asian Americans have borne the harmful effects of the “model minority” myth. Once portrayed as immoral, criminal, foreign and undesirable — opium addicts, gamblers, sexual objects — Asians were later rebranded as quiet, hardworking, good at math, family-oriented and compliant. The implication was clear: This is the kind of minority America prefers.

That myth was never accidental. It ignored the laws that shaped Asian immigration, including policies that selectively allowed entry only to scholars, professionals and merchants while excluding laborers and families. It erased the reality that Asian Americans are not a monolith but many distinct ethnic communities with different migration histories. The underlying message, however, remained the same: If they can succeed, why can’t you?

The “Hmong versus Somali” framing in the podcast follows this exact playbook.

It invites Hmong people to feel momentarily validated while quietly reinforcing that we are still construed as “other” — measured against whiteness and never fully able to meet that standard. It casts Somali communities as the foil: the group to fear, scrutinize or scapegoat. And it pits two communities with shared histories of displacement and trauma against one another.

This narrative does not serve Hmong people. It does not serve Somali people. It serves power.

We are living in a moment when division is accelerating — when attacks on diversity efforts, civil rights and basic protections are no longer subtle. Hate has grown louder and more overt, increasingly reinforced by the actions and rhetoric of our own federal government.

When minoritized groups begin turning on one another — when we start believing that being “better than” another group will protect us — we are already losing.

Ask yourself: Who benefits from this comparison? Who gains when communities that share histories of displacement, trauma and resilience are encouraged to compete rather than stand together?

Resist narratives that tell us one group’s worth depends on another’s suffering.

If we do not, we will find ourselves fighting each other — while those who profit from our division quietly take more power, more rights and more freedom away from all of us.

History has already shown us how that story ends.