Berens and Beyond: Here’s What It Means to Be a Wisconsinite (interview with Prof. Lor)

Pao Lor, a longtime school administrator and coach in northeastern Wisconsin who’s now an education professor at UW-Green Bay, saw many of his fellow members of the state’s immigrant Hmong community feel welcomed to Wisconsin and adopt many facets of the Eurocentric Sconnie culture. They became deer hunters, Packers fans. “People were friendly to a great extent. Those are some of the things that we were defined by,” he says. There was a confidence that Wisconsin’s long-established progressive culture would carry the day over the challenges any immigrant community faces.But, Lor says, that began to change recently. “I think the political climate in the last 10 years revealed certain aspects of Wisconsin that were not as welcoming,” he says. “I think it’s hard for someone from a minority background to regain that trust.”

Source: Berens and Beyond: Here’s What It Means to Be a Wisconsinite