ជនជាតិខ្មែរអាមេរិកាំង | |
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![]() Cambodian American women at a Cambodian New Year celebration in Lithonia, Georgia, 2010 | |
Total population | |
376,096 (ancestry or ethnic origin, 2022) [1] (0.1% of the U.S. population) | |
Regions with significant populations | |
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Languages | |
Khmer, American English, Cham, French | |
Religion | |
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Related ethnic groups | |
Khmers, Vietnamese Cambodians, Chinese Cambodians, Asian Americans |
Cambodian Americans, [lower-alpha 1] also Khmer Americans, are Americans of Cambodian or Khmer ancestry. In addition, Cambodian Americans are also Americans with ancestry of other ethnic groups of Cambodia, such as the Chams and Chinese Cambodians.
According to the 2010 US Census, an estimated 276,667 people of Cambodian descent reside in the United States, with most of the population concentrated in California, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. [3]
After the fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge regime in 1975, few Cambodians were able to escape; it was not until after the regime was overthrown in 1979 did large waves of Cambodians begin immigrating to the US as refugees. Between 1975 and 1994, nearly 158,000 Cambodians were admitted. About 149,000 of them entered the country as refugees, and 6,000 entered as immigrants and 2,500 as humanitarian and public interest parolees. [4] To encourage rapid cultural assimilation and to spread the economic impact, the US government dispersed the refugees into various cities and states throughout the country. However, once established enough to be able to communicate and travel, many Cambodians began migrating to certain places where the climate was more like home, they knew friends and relatives had been sent, or 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; Philadelphia; Cleveland, Ohio; Lynn and Lowell in Massachusetts; and Seattle and Portland in the Pacific Northwest.
Since 1994, 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 can be attributed to American-born children of Cambodian immigrants or of newer people of Cambodian descent. Although the Cambodians were spared from the destruction of their home country, whose tragedies maintained a lasting impact into the 21st century, they would come to face newer adversities and hardships in America.
The 2010 census counted 276,667 persons of Cambodian descent in the United States, up from 206,052 in 2000. Of them, 231,616 (84%) are all-Cambodian and 45,051 part-Cambodian. [5]
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). [5]
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. [6] Long Beach, California, has the highest population of people of Cambodian ancestry outside of Cambodia itself. [4] 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. [7] 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. [8] [9]
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. [5] [10] There are also growing Cambodian American communities in Las Vegas, Nevada; Phoenix, Arizona; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Denver, Colorado. In Utah, there is a community of Cambodians in West Valley City.
Lowell, Massachusetts, has the second highest population of Cambodian Americans 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. [11] [12] 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, New York City, 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. [5]
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. [5] [13] There are some Cambodian Americans in Marietta, Georgia, Stone Mountain, Georgia and in Riverdale, Georgia. In Riverdale, Georgia they have a Cambodia Town. There is a nonprofit organization in Georgia called the Cambodian American Association of Georgia.
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. Denver, Colorado, has a growing population of Cambodian Americans with a population of 2,399 and growing as of 2016. 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.
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, such as Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community by Nancy J. Smith-Hefner. [14] The 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. [15] 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. [16]
Not Just Victims: Conversations with Cambodian Community Leaders in the United States, by Sucheng Chan, is a collection of oral history interviews. The interviews, mostly collected in the 1990s, describe the challenges faced by the Cambodian community, and the various organizational efforts to assist with refugee resettlement, cultural assimilation, and social services. It also provides a brief history of the Cambodian genocide and diaspora, and a chapter about the Khmer Krom in the United States. [17]
According to the 2000 census, Cambodian American populations had a lower 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 19.6% of all Americans. [18]
In 2000, Cambodian American families reported a median household income of $36,152. [18] A 2008 NYU study reported that 29.3% of the Cambodian American community lived under the poverty line. [19] That was higher than the American average of people living below the poverty line, which, in 2011, was recorded as 16% of all Americans. [20]
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%. [21] That was a little over twice the average of America society as a whole, which was 16% according to a 2011 study by the government. [20]
In 2014, a factfinder census, with Americans' per capita income being divided by ethnic groups, Cambodian Americans were revealed to have a per capita income of only $20,182, below the American average of $25,825. [22]
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996, resulted in many legal immigrants losing the federal aid that they had been receiving from the Social Security Administration. That especially affected Cambodian immigrants and other Southeast Asians, who 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. That was intended as a temporary measure until they integrated, but by 1996, they had been stripped of their refugee status. However, nearly 80 percent of California's Southeast Asian population was living in poverty and/or welfare-dependent. That made the law have a large impact on Cambodian Americans and other citizens of Southeast Asian descent. That is a contributing factor to the high poverty rates of Cambodian Americans since the first major wave of Cambodian refugees emigrated to the United States in 1975. [23]
Cambodians faced many difficulties upon settling in the United States, such as having few transferable job skills, lack of English, and having experienced trauma as refugees and genocide survivors. The factors greatly impacted overall household income after resettlement. Many refugees arrived without formal education since the educated and professional classes were targeted during the genocide. That contributed to the difficulty in learning to speak English and in assimilating to the American educational system. [24]
Another common phenomenon experienced by some Cambodian American refugees is a lack of familiarity with the history of their homeland. That is prevalent among refugees who were young children when they emigrated to the US and are now adults. Because of their age, they are not able to remember or understand the history of Cambodia that led to their family's migration. Cambodian history is only rarely taught in American public schools which contributes to that unfamiliarity, which is worsened by the resistance of older refugees to discuss the horrors that they witnessed in Cambodia. [25] Their racial and ethnic identity has also provoked social barriers between them and other immigrant groups and American ethnic groups.
It was estimated in 1990, five years after most arrived to the US, [26] 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. [27]
One study conducted among Cambodian Americans residing in Long Beach, California, found that 13.0% of the adult respondents were current cigarette smokers. When the study was broken down by gender, 24.4% of men included in the study were smokers, and 5.4% of women included in the study were smokers. 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 US around 9.6%, with men and women combined. [28]
Cambodian culture is preserved in the various Cambodia Towns throughout the United States, in Cambodian owned restaurants, businesses, and pharmacies. [29] In Cambodia Town in Long Beach, California, the Homeland Cultural Center offers classes in Khmer martial arts. [30] Khmer language classes are offered at the Mark Twain Neighborhood Library. [31] Smot, a traditional form of Buddhist chanting, has been taught at The Khmer Arts Academy. [32]
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 National Cambodian 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. [33]
In 2012, 62% of registered Cambodian Americans voted in the presidential election, of which 75% voted for Barack Obama. [34] In the 2016 presidential election, 78% of Cambodian Americans voted for Hillary Clinton. [35]
Vietnamese Americans are Americans of Vietnamese ancestry. They comprise approximately half of all overseas Vietnamese and are the fourth-largest Asian American ethnic group following Chinese Americans, Indian Americans, and Filipino Americans. There are approximately 2.3 million people of Vietnamese descent residing in the U.S. as of 2023.
The Khmer Krom are ethnically Khmer people living in or from the Mekong Delta, the south western part of Vietnam known in Khmer as Kampuchea Krom. The Khmer Krom people are considered as the Indigenous people of Southern Vietnam and having the oldest extant recorded history of inhabiting in the region. In Vietnam, they are recognized as one of Vietnam's fifty-three ethnic minorities.
Chinese Cambodians are Cambodian citizens of Chinese ancestry or Chinese of full or partial Khmer ancestry. The Khmer term Khmer Kat Chen (ខ្មែរកាត់ចិន) is used for people of mixed Chinese and Khmer descent; Chen Khmer (ចិនខ្មែរ) means Cambodian-born citizen with ancestry from China. The Khmer constitute the largest ethnic group in Cambodia among whom Chen means "Chinese". Contact with the Chinese people such as envoys, merchants, travelers and diplomats who regularly visited Indochina verifiably existed since the beginning of the common era. However, the earliest record of a Chinese community in Cambodia dates to the 13th century.
Cambodia Town is the official name for a business corridor along Anaheim Street between Atlantic and Junipero avenues in the Eastside of Long Beach, California. The area has numerous Cambodian restaurants, clothing stores, jewelry stores, and donut shops, as well as churches, Khmer temples, and service centers for Cambodian Americans. There are many other businesses in the area, such as auto repair shops, which are Cambodian-owned. Long Beach has the largest concentration of Cambodians of any city outside of Cambodia.
Hmong Americans are Americans of Hmong ancestry. Many Hmong Americans immigrated to the United States as refugees in the late 1970s. Over half of the Hmong population from Laos left the country, or attempted to leave, in 1975, at the culmination of the Laotian Civil War.
Burmese Americans are Americans of full or partial Burmese ancestry, encompassing individuals of all ethnic backgrounds with ancestry in present-day Myanmar, regardless of specific ethnicity. As a subgroup of Asian Americans, Burmese Americans have largely integrated into the broader Southeast Asian and South Asian American communities.
Cambodians in France consist of ethnic Khmer people who were born in or immigrated to France. The population as of 2020 was estimated to be about 80,000 making the community one of the largest in the Cambodian diaspora. The Cambodian population in France is the most established outside Southeast Asia, with a presence dating to well before the Vietnam War and subsequent Indochina refugee crisis including the horrors of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge who took over in Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975. A few numbers of Cambodian people were able to escape and migrate to France before the Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia as the Cambodian Civil War came to an end and overthrow U.S.-backed military dictatorship of Lon Nol and the Khmer Republic. His brother Lon Non and the other Khmer officials were arrested and executed by the CPK, the Marxist-Leninist dictatorship that seized power in Phnom Penh. 13 days before the Fall of Saigon and the Second Indochina War ended on 30 April 1975.
Albanian Americans are Americans of full or partial Albanian ancestry and heritage in the United States. They trace their ancestry to the territories with a large Albanian population in the Balkans and southern Europe, including Albania, Italy, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Montenegro. They are adherents of different religions and are predominantly Muslims and Christians, while some are irreligious.
Lithuanian Americans refers to American citizens and residents who are Lithuanian and were born in Lithuania, or are of Lithuanian descent. New Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has the largest percentage of Lithuanian Americans (20.8%) in its population in the United States. Lithuanian Americans form by far the largest group within the Lithuanian diaspora.
Iraqi Americans are American citizens of Iraqi descent. As of 2015, the number of Iraqi Americans is around 145,279, according to the United States Census Bureau.
California is the most populated U.S. state, with an estimated population of 38.9 million as of 2023. It has people from a wide variety of ethnic, racial, national, and religious backgrounds.
Congolese Americans are Americans descended from the peoples of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo, which consist of hundreds of ethnic groups.
Nepalese Americans are Americans of Nepalese ancestry. Immigration from Nepal to the United States began in the 20th century, and many have been able to establish themselves as American nationals. The history of immigration from Nepal to America is more recent in comparison to other South Asian ethnic groups. Major community groups of Nepali Americans consists of Khas, followed by minority Newars, Tharus, Tamangs, Gurungs, Limbus, Rais, Magar, Madhesis, Lhotshampas, Sherpas, and others, as of American Nepalese Convention Survey of 2018.
The Asian Boyz, also known as ABZ, AB-26, or ABZ Crips, are a street gang based in Southern California. They were founded in the late 1980s to protect Cambodian refugees from other American gangs. According to the FBI, the gang has about 12,000 members, who are predominantly Southeast Asian and especially Cambodian. Many Asian Boyz are also members of the U.S. military, some of whom use their position to traffic drugs. According to the FBI's 2009 National Gang Threat Assessment, the Asian Boyz are active in 28 different cities in 14 different states across the U.S.
Ted Ngoy is a Cambodian American entrepreneur and former owner of a chain of doughnut shops in California. He is nicknamed the "Donut King".
Little Cambodia or Cambodia Town is a term that refers to an ethnic enclave of people from the country of Cambodia.
Asian Californians are residents of the state of California who are of Asian ancestry. California has the largest Asian American population in the U.S., and second highest proportion of Asian American residents, after Hawaii. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, there were over 6 million Asian-Americans in California; 15.5% of the state's population. If including those with partial Asian ancestry, this figure is around 17%. This is a jump from 13.8% recorded in 2010.
The Tiny Rascal Gang, is a primarily Cambodian-American gang based in Long Beach, California. During the 1990s, Mexican Mafia "green light" hit lists began including the TRG during the 1990s, and Sureños were soon at war with them. The Mexican Mafia ordered the West Side Longo gang to put aside its rivalry with the East Side Longo and support their former rivals against the TRG.
Sucheng Chan is a Chinese-American author, historian, scholar, and professor. She established the first full-fledged autonomous Department of Asian American Studies at a major U.S. research university and was the first Asian American woman in the University of California system to hold the title of provost.