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I used to ride my bicycle down the block from my childhood home where the earthquake-fractured cement gave way to a collection of colorful blooms. I would admire the innately resilient wildflowers, surely planted unintentionally, before racing back to where my grandfather stood looking on.
My grandparents left Phnom Penh on 16 April 1975, hours before the Khmer Rouge captured the city. In fact, they were initially turned away at the border, but ultimately escaped with the help of a brave and compassionate government official. They, along with their five young children, spent the next two years in a refugee camp in Thailand before relocating to Australia and, eventually, the United States. I grew up hearing snippets of this story and stories like these, but it was not until early adulthood that I truly understood the repercussions of this trauma, particularly among firstgeneration Cambodian Americans today.
First-generation Cambodian Americans are a highly underserved and underprivileged group in our country. As such, they would benefit from more recognition and representation in order to overcome the barriers that hinder their socioeconomic success.
Cambodian Americans as a group rank among the nation's poorest, with some of the lowest educational attainment rates across demographics. According to the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, 23.9 percent of Cambodian Americans live in poverty.1 The Center of American Progress reports that fewer than 15 percent of Cambodian Americans hold a bachelor's degree or higher.2 The Cambodian American population's low educational attainment stagnates its social mobility and perpetuates the cycle of poverty for its younger generations, who struggle with their own unique set of issues, including gang violence,3 poor mental health,4 and for those that do pursue higher education, low retention rates.5
Communities of color are often shallowly portrayed in American society. The Cambodian American population is one of many that fall victim to harmful mischaracterizations, namely the model minority myth,6 which is often applied broadly to the general Asian American population. Positive stereotyping of Asian Americans as a group places those who do not fit the mold of high achievement in positions of alienation and heightened social stigma. On a practical level, because their unique challenges remain unacknowledged, these outliers do not receive the assistance they need to advance....