Cambodian Americans

Cambodian Americans

Cambodian Americans at a New Year celebration, 2010
Total population
(330,259 (ancestry or ethnic origin, 2015)[1])
Regions with significant populations
California (Long Beach, Stockton, Fresno, Oakland, Modesto) Massachusetts (Lowell) Minnesota (Twin Cities) Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) Rhode Island (Providence) Washington (King County)
Languages
Khmer, American English, Cham
Religion
Theravada Buddhism
Related ethnic groups
Khmer people, Vietnamese Cambodians, Chinese Cambodians, Southeast Asian Americans, Asian Americans

Cambodian Americans are Americans born or raised in (or descended from those born or raised in) Cambodia, the majority of which are of Khmer descent. Other ethnicities in the U.S. native to Cambodia—including Chinese Cambodians, Vietnamese Cambodians, and Cham people—are also Cambodian Americans.

As of the 2010 U.S. Census, there are 276,667 people of Cambodian descent living in the United States. The Cambodian population is concentrated in the states of California and Massachusetts.

History

Prior to 1975, most of the few Cambodians in the United States were children of upper income families or those having government-funded scholarships sent abroad to attend school. There was no history of immigration from Cambodia into the United States. After the fall of Phnom Penh to the communist Khmer Rouge in 1975, a few Cambodians managed to escape, but not until the Khmer Rouge was overthrown in 1979 did large waves of Cambodians began immigrating to the United States as refugees. Between 1975 and 1994, nearly 158,000 Cambodians were admitted into the United States. About 149,000 of them entered the country as refugees, whereas approximately 6,000 entered as immigrants and 2,500 as humanitarian and public interest parolees.^[2] In order to encourage rapid assimilation into American culture and to spread the economic impact, the U.S. 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 migrating within the U.S. to 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;Providence, Rhode Island; Cleveland, Ohio; as well as Lynn and Lowell in Massachusetts; and Seattle and Portland in the Pacific Northwest.

Since 1994, any Cambodians admitted into the United States have entered the country as immigrants and not as refugees, but the number per year is small. Most of the increase in the ethnic Cambodian population in the United States can be attributed to American-born children of Cambodian immigrants or people of Cambodian descent.

The 2010 U.S. Census counted 276,667 persons of Cambodian descent in the United States, up from 206,052 in 2000. Of them, 231,616 (84%) are Cambodian alone and 45,051 part-Cambodian.^[3]

Areas of concentration

The states with the highest concentration of Cambodian American residents are Rhode Island (0.5%; 5,176), Massachusetts (0.4%; 25,387), Washington (0.3%; 19,101), California (0.2%; 86,244), and Minnesota (0.2%; 7,850).^[3]

West coast

In Southern California, there is a large Cambodian population in Long Beach, and smaller yet significant communities of Cambodians are present in Los Angeles and San Diego metropolitan areas. Four percent of Long Beach's population is of Cambodian descent, mainly concentrated on the city's east section, where there is a Cambodia Town neighborhood.^[4] Long Beach, California, has the highest population of people of Cambodian ancestry outside of Cambodia itself.^[2] The Pueblo Del Rio housing projects in South Los Angeles were home to around 200 Cambodian families in the 1980s, and as of 2010, remains a smaller but sizable Cambodian American community.^[5] The Los Angeles Chinatown has more than 600 Cambodian residents. Santa Ana, California, is 0.5% Cambodian American. The City Heights neighborhood in eastern San Diego has a large concentration of Cambodians.^[6][7]

In Northern California, Stockton, Modesto, and Oakland have significant Cambodian populations, while San Jose, Santa Rosa and Sacramento have sizable communities as well. Outside of California, the Pacific Northwest is home to another large Cambodian settlement, specifically in cities such as Tacoma, where Cambodians enumerate at thousands, or 1.6% of the population.^[3][8] There are also growing Cambodian American communities in Las Vegas, Nevada; Phoenix, Arizona; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Denver, Colorado, as the Asian American population continues to rapidly increase in Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado.

East coast

Glory Buddhist Temple, one of many examples of Cambodian-American culture in Lowell, Massachusetts

Lowell, Massachusetts, has the second highest population of Cambodian Americans of in the U.S., and is a center of Cambodian population on the east coast. 13% of its population is of Cambodian descent. Cambodian immigrants settled in Lowell during the mid-1980s, where they opened dozens of small businesses.^[9][10] Lynn, Massachusetts, which is nearby Lowell, has the third largest Cambodian American population. Within New England, Providence, Rhode Island, and Portland, Maine (647 residents; 1%), also contain sizable Cambodian American populations. Outside of New England, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area have many residents of Cambodian descent. 480 people of Cambodian descent reside in Utica, New York.^[3]

South

In the South, there is a sizable community of Cambodian Americans in Jacksonville, Florida. 1,700 people of Cambodian descent live in Jacksonville. In Spartanburg County, South Carolina, there are 1,123 Cambodian Americans (0.4% of the county). There are very sizable Cambodian American communities in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the Atlanta metropolitan area. There is a Cambodian community in the New Orleans metropolitan area, especially in the town of Buras, Louisiana, which is 9% Cambodian. Many Cambodian immigrants in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, are employed as shrimpers and fishermen.^[3][11] There are some CambodianAmericans in Marietta, Georgia, Stone Mountain, Georgia and majority in Riverdale, Georgia. In Riverdale Georgia they have Cambodian Town. There is a nonprofit organization in Georgia called, Cambodian American Association of Georgia.

Midwest

The Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Minnesota, metropolitan area has been a home to many Southeast Asian refugees, mainly Hmong, but also have thousands of Cambodian American residents. Rochester, Minnesota, is 1.2% Cambodian American. As of 2010, there were 1,600 Cambodian Americans living in Columbus, Ohio (0.2%), many of whom live in the Hilltop neighborhood. In Chicago, Illinois, there is a Cambodian community in the Albany Park neighborhood.

Cambodian American studies and culture

Aside from personal memoirs of coming to America, such as those by Loung Ung, a few books have been dedicated to studying the Cambodian 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 exhibits some understanding of both traditional Khmer culture and contemporary American society but it is not a historical study of Khmer Americans. A more recent book is Buddha Is Hiding, written by Aiwha Ong, an ethnographic study that tells the story of Cambodian Americans and their experiences of American citizenship. The study primarily investigated Khmer refugees in Oakland and the San Francisco Bay Area. The experiences portrayed in the book exemplify what most Cambodian refugees face when dealing with American institutions such as health care systems, welfare, law, police force, church, and school. The book reveals, through extensive ethnographic dialogues, how Cambodian refugees interpret and negotiate American culture, often at the expense of their own Theravada Buddhist cultural upbringing.

Survivors: Cambodian Refugees in the United States, written by Sucheng Chan, is a multidisciplinary study of Cambodian Americans drawing on interviews with community leaders, government officials, and staff members in community agencies as well as average Cambodian Americans to capture perspectives from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds.

Museums

Two museums in the US are devoted to the story of Cambodians in America, the Cambodian Cultural Museum and Killing Fields Memorial in Seattle and the Cambodian American Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial in Chicago, both founded in 2004.The Seattle museum was founded by Dara Duong, a survivor of the Cambodian genocide.^[12]

Community issues

Lack of education and high dropout rates

According to the 2000 census, Cambodian American populations had a disproportionately low level of education compared to other populations in the United States, with 53.4% of Cambodian Americans over the age of 25 not possessing a high school diploma – compared to the average of American society as a whole at 19.6% lacking a high school diploma.^[13]

Poverty

In 2000, Cambodian American families reported a median household income of $36,152.^[13] A 2008 NYU study reported that 29.3% of the Cambodian American community lived under the poverty line.^[14] This was higher than the American average of people living below the poverty line which, in 2011, was recorded as 16% of all Americans.^[15]

In 2014 it was reported that Cambodia Town, Long Beach, California, the only officially recognized ethnic enclave of Cambodian Americans, had a poverty rate of 32.4%.^[16] This was a little over twice the average of America society as a whole which stood at 16% according to a 2011 study by the government.^[15]

Assimilation

Cambodians faced many difficulties upon settling in the United States, such as possessing few transferable job skills, not knowing how to speak English, and having experienced trauma as refugees. These factors greatly impacted overall household income after resettlement. Many refugees arrived with a lack of formal education, since the educated and professional classes were targeted during the Khmer Rouge genocide. This contributed to the difficulty in learning to speak English and in assimilating to the American educational system.^[17]

Poor mental health

It was estimated in 1990, a mere five years after the majority of Cambodians arrived in the US,^[18] that nearly 81% of Cambodians in America met the criteria for major affective disorder (which encompasses depression and generalized anxiety), accounting for the largest subgroup of Southeast Asians afflicted by mental health problems at the time.^[19]

Physical health

One study conducted among Cambodian Americans residing in Long Beach, California, found that 13.0% of the adult respondents were current cigarette smokers. When broken down by gender, 24.4% of smokers included in the study were male and 5.4% of smokers were women. The prevalence of smoking was found to be higher in Cambodian American males than in other males residing in California. Additionally, smoking rates are estimated to be higher among Cambodian Americans than among other Asian American groups, with the prevalence of cigarette smoking among the aggregate Asian population in the U.S. around 9.6% (with men and women combined).^[20]

Deportation

Contemporary situation

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996, resulted in many legal immigrants losing federal aid they had been receiving from the Social Security Administration. This especially affected Cambodian immigrants and other Southeast Asians, who at the time were the largest per capita race or ethnic group receiving public assistance in the United States. Under the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1975, many Southeast Asian refugees were placed on federal welfare rolls as a temporary measure in order to integrate them into United States society, but by the time PRWORA passed they had been stripped of their refugee status. However, in 1996, nearly 80 percent of California's Southeast Asian population was either living in poverty and/or welfare-dependent. Because of this, the welfare cuts under PRWORA had a large impact on Cambodian Americans and other citizens of Southeast Asian descent. This is a contributing factor to the high poverty rates of Cambodian Americans that still exist today, and have existed since the first major wave of Cambodian refugees emigrated to the United States in 1975.^[21]

Another common phenomenon experienced by some Cambodian American refugees is a lack of familiarity with the history of their homeland. This is prevalent among refugees who were young children when they emigrated to the United States and are now adults. Because of their age, they are not able to remember or understand the historical developments in Cambodia that led to their family's migration. The quality of historical education in American public schools contributes to this unfamiliarity, as well as the resistance by older refugees to discuss the horrors witnessed in Cambodia.^[22]

Notable Cambodian Americans

See also

• Asian Americans
• Diaspora studies
• Demographics of Cambodia
• Deportation of Cambodian Americans
• Hyphenated American
• List of Cambodian Americans
• List of U.S. cities with large Cambodian-American populations

References

Further reading

• Tang, Eric. Unsettled: Cambodian Refugees in the New York City Hyperghetto. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2015). xiv, 220 pp.
• Wright, Wayne E. 2010. "Khmer as a Heritage Language in the United States: Historical Sketch, Current Realities, and Future Prospects" (Archive). Heritage Language Journal, 7(1). pp 117–147

External links

• Cambodian American Resource Agency
• Bankston III, Carl L (2000). "Cambodian Americans". Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America. 
• Tang, Shirley. "Challenges of Policy and Practice in Under-Resourced Asian American Communities: Analyzing Public Education, Health, and Development Issues with Cambodian American Women" (Archive). Asian American Law Journal. Volume 15, Article 5. p. 153-176. January 2008.

Asian Americans1, 2
Central Asian3	Afghan Mongolian Uzbek
East Asian	Chinese Hong Kong Tibetan4 Fuzhou/Hokchiu Hokkien/Hoklo/Minnan Hakka Japanese Korean Taiwanese
South Asian5	Bangladeshi Bengali Bhutanese Indian Indo-Caribbean Bengali Punjabi Tamil Nepalese Pakistani Baloch Pashtun Punjabi Sindhi Sri Lankan Tamil
Southeast Asian	Burmese Cambodian Filipino Hmong Indonesian Laotian Malaysian Mien Singaporean Thai Vietnamese
Other	Afro-Asian Amerasian Asian Hispanic and Latino Americans Eurasian Multiracial American Punjabi Mexican
History	General Immigration Military
Topics	Arts and Entertainment Demographics Politics Stereotypes
Religion	Buddhists Christians Catholics Protestants, etc. Hindus Jainism Muslims Sikhs
Notes  1 The U.S. Census Bureau definition of Asians refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent. 2 The United States Government classified Kalmyks as Asian until 1951, when Kalmyk Americans were reclassified as White Americans. 3 The U.S. Census Bureau considers Mongolians and Uzbeks as Central Asians, but a specific Central Asian American group similar to Middle Eastern American does not yet exist. 4 The U.S. Census Bureau reclassifies anyone identifying as "Tibetan American" as "Chinese American". 5 Bengali Americans may be classified as Bangladeshi or Indian. Punjabi Americans may be classified as Indian or Pakistani. Tamil Americans may be classified as Indian or Sri Lankan.

Cambodian diaspora
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