O.C. School Official to Get Art Leaders’ Ear : Cultural diversity: Laotian native who directs Indochinese programs in Santa Ana will address the state’s largest arts service organization on multicultural understanding and enrichment.

Khamchong Luangpraseut hesitated when he was asked to speak at this week’s annual convention of the California Confederation of the Arts.

As the Santa Ana Unified School District’s supervisor of Indochinese Programs, a man with no particular arts expertise, he felt slightly unqualified to address the state’s largest arts service organization.

Nevertheless, Luangpraseut has some definite ideas about the topic he was invited to discuss. Seeing an opportunity to reach arts leaders from throughout the state, he agreed to speak Friday at 9 a.m. About 300 arts-world movers and shakers are expected at Los Angeles’ Biltmore Hotel for the four-day conference, which started Wednesday and is focusing on California’s cultural diversity and interdependence with the global economy.

Luangpraseut intends to go beyond the theme suggested by the panel, “Working for Cultural Equity: What’s Next?”

“I’m more interested in working for the multicultural and pluralistic enrichment of our society than to engage in competition (among ethnic groups) for equitable reparation of funding for the arts,” said Luangpraseut, a Laotian native who established a program to improve instruction and assimilation of the large community of Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian students in Santa Ana.

“I’m interested in what the cultural equity will produce or bring to us, so that our American youngsters, all our youngsters, will be better equipped to face and take part in the global partnership.”

To launch his discussion, Luangpraseut said he will cite figures showing that there are more than 100,000 Indochinese kindergarten through 12th-grade students in the state. In Santa Ana Unified School District, he said, Indochinese total 9% of the student population, representing the second largest ethnic group after Latinos, who make up 81% of the district’s students.

Second, he will discuss misconceptions about Indochinese people that lead others to “put all Asians in one basket,” and talk about a lack of effort to get to know and understand the distinct cultures of the Indochinese.

Luangpraseut received a master’s degree in economics from Poland’s Warsaw University, then was the Laotian government’s minister of information in the mid-’70s before moving to California in 1979. From World War II through the Korean and Vietnam wars, he said, the United States has been heavily involved with Asia “at the cost of thousands of human lives and billions of dollars.”

“But we are surprised to see so little has been done to improve the possible and desirable understanding among our peoples,” he said. “Almost nothing in today’s (public school) art curriculum would help our kids to enrich themselves with the feelings of people coming from different heritages.”

By way of a solution, Luangpraseut will suggest that art educators introduce their students to the culture and ways of the Indochinese, rather than focus only on Western-European cultures, he said.

In addition, Indochinese artists who are living here but who are cut off from arts circles should be sought out so they may contribute to the educational process as well as gain greater exposure for their artwork, he said.

“There are some artists who have survived the devastation of war, but they are not known,” he said.

“The best thing is to set up a small committee to go out there and search for them, and explain to them that there’s a way to have them continue their art here and how to go about it. Somebody has to take a lead, and I think (arts officials at) the Congress should help form the committee. This is the right forum.”