Cambodian American
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Cambodian American is an American who is of ethnic Cambodian (Khmer) descent. They make up the bulk of Cambodian people who do not live in Cambodia. Prior to 1975, most of the few Cambodians in the US were children of upper class families sent abroad to attend school. After the fall of Phnom Penh to the communist Khmer Rouge in 1975, large waves of Cambodians began immigrating to the US as refugees. In order to encourage rapid assimilation into American culture, the US government settled the refugees in various towns and cities throughout the country. However, once established enough to be able to communicate and travel, many Cambodians began converging on certain localities where the climate was more like home, where they knew friends and relatives had been sent, or where there were rumored to be familiar jobs or higher government benefits. Consequently, large communities of Cambodians took root in cities such as Long Beach, Fresno and Stockton in California, and Lowell, Massachusetts.
Cambodia is the traditional English transliteration, taken from the French Cambodge, while Kampuchea is the direct transliteration, more faithful to the Khmer pronunciation. The Khmer people are the predominant ethnic group in Cambodia, accounting for approximately 90% of the 13.9 million people in the Cambodia. A citizen of Cambodia is usually identified as "Cambodian" in countries outside of Cambodia. "Khmer", a term which refers to ethnic Khmer, is what “Cambodian people” recognized as their identity before situating in the U.S. Majority of Khmer refugees and children learned to identify themselves as “Cambodian” in the United States. So often the term “Khmer American” is often used interchangeably with “Cambodian American.”
Today's Cambodian Americans are these refugees and their children and grandchildren. While many Cambodian Americans have finished school, obtained degrees and integrated into American society, large, culturally isolated enclaves still exist in many cities across the United States, including Los Angeles, Houston, New York City, Philadelphia, Oakland, Seattle, and Boston. The largest population in the United States is in California, with Long Beach having the highest density of Cambodian Americans in the U.S. There is also a large population in Massachusetts, concentrated in Lowell, and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Cambodian Americans are quickly growing in numbers in the entire Northeast, but more so in the states of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. Michigan and Illinois have also seen growth in the Cambodian American population.
Few books have been dedicated to studying Khmer American population in the U.S such as Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community by Nancy J. Smith-Hefner. This book is an anthropological study of Khmer refugee families , largely from the perspective of the parental generation, residing in metropolitan Boston and eastern Massachusetts. This book was one of the early books among the few, circulating, that talks about this diasporic community. It somewhat portray some understanding of both traditional Khmer culture and contemporary American society, but it is not at all an historical study of Khmer Americans. A more recent book is, Buddha Is Hiding written by Aiwha Ong, an ethnographical study that tells the story of Khmer Americans and their experiences of American citizenship. The study was largely investigating Khmer refugee in Oakland and San Francisco Bay Area. It accurately portrayed what most Cambodian refugees experience with American institutions such as health, welfare, law, police force, church, and school. The book revealed extensive ethnographic dialogues showing how Khmer refugees interpret and negotiate with American culture, oftentimes at the expense of their own cultural Theravada Buddhist cultural upbringing. This book revealed the contradictions in how Khmer American encounters with American citizenship as they negotiate with service providers, bureaucrats, and employers on how to be autonomous while the system and American cultural citizenship limits them within terms that labeled them as refugees in the context of ethnicity, race, and class. Survivors: Cambodian Refugees in the United States written by Sucheng Chan, is a multidisciplinary study of Khmer American, drawing on interviews with community leaders, government officials, and other staff members in community agencies as well as common Khmer American to capture the perspectives of Cambodian Americans from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds.
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