Cambodians didn’t just appear in Long Beach, CA out of nowhere. Long before Long Beach, CA became the epicenter of a very large Cambodian population, Cambodians migrated from Cambodia, a country in Asia that sits next to Thailand and Vietnam. In the early 1960s Cambodians began arriving in various cities within California, Long Beach in particular witnessed mass numbers of Cambodians flooding into the area in Southern California. One year later, President John F. Kennedy established the U.S Agency for International Development (USAID), which was the very first assistance/aid organization set up for a foreign country (Impact of U.S Refugee Policies on U.S Foreign Policy/Carnegie Endowment for International Peace). The USAID program sponsored students from Cambodia to several universities located all around the U.S, assisting these individuals in training for various industrial arts and agricultural practices. In fact, Long Beach State University welcomed four Cambodian students into the University, specializing in the Industrial Arts Program. Since the initial arrival of Cambodians in Long Beach, the Cambodian population has increased exponentially, allowing these Cambodian migrants to make a new home for themselves. In 1975, Cambodia was taken over by a harsh dictator, Khmer Rouge also known as “Pol Pot” by Americans, who was a radical communist regime (Khmer Rouge History/Cambodia Tribunal Monitor). Khmer Rouge was very much similar to Hitler, enslaving its country’s inhabitants into doing tedious tasks. Once again, there was another large flow of Cambodians pouring out of Cambodia. The
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Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in December of 1978, resulting in nearly 130,000 more Cambodians to migrate into California, catching the atten...
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...have become so successful that it has become sort of a tradition to open up Cambodian owned shops, illustrated by several highly successful shops not only in Long Beach but other cities as well. Cambodians have also made impacts on other places as well, proved by successful family owned restraint cuisines. Being Cambodian and experiencing the religion, I can account for all the claims. My mother and other family members were a part of the thousands of refugees who migrated into America during the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese invasion. My families have shared their traumatic stories with me so I can relate with the research I’ve done.
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To wrap it up, Cambodians have a significant cultural impact with the city of Long Beach, CA and will truly play a role in Long Beach’s society for years to come, not only increasing its population but also enhancing Cambodia Town.
...y to America was not an easy one for Hmong refugees. Prior to their arrival in America, they encountered starvation, illness, death of loved ones, and inhumane conditions. The elder Hmong watched helplessly as Hmong culture and traditions dissolved away. Once in their new home, life for the Hmong would be a constant struggle to assimilate into American culture, and most families depended on their children as translators and guides. For first-generation Hmong immigrants, escaping poverty seemed impossible, and most could only hope that education would provide their children a better life.
How would it feel to flee from post-war Communist forces, only to face an ethnocentric population of people in a new country? In Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, a portrait of a disquieting, often times touching, ethnography (i.e. a book that details particular data of an extended period of time an anthropologist spent living closely with a community of individuals during his or her field work) of Fadiman's experience living in Merced, California, which was home to the largest population of Hmong refugees, such as the Lee family, from Laos who suffered mass confusion when trying to navigate the American health care system. Because the Hmong could not speak sufficient English until the children gained language skills native to the United States, residents of California were not accepting of the Hmong community. Fadiman aims to better understand how knowledge of illness among Hmong and Western medical practitioners differ, which pushes the reader to understand how the complicate medical treatment in the past as well as the present from a perspective of an American observing a Hmong family's struggle with the system. In America, it isn’t uncommon to be judged for your clothing, your house, or the amount of money your family makes, so it is easy to believe that the Hmong people were not easily accepted into American society. As a whole, ethnocentrism, or the tendency to believe that one's culture is superior to another, is one of America's weaknesses and this account proves ethnocentric behavior was prominent even in the 1970-80's when Fadiman was in the process of doing her fieldwork in post-Vietnam War Era California.
I chose Cambodian Americans for my target culture because it was a place I knew very little about. My ignorance of that side of the world is laughable to say the least. Cambodian American was a great choice because both the people and the culture are very captivating to me. While some Cambodian Americans become very westernized, accepting most of America’s cultural norms, some hold strong to their Cambodian traditions and way of life. Through Geert Hofstede’s Taxonomy, I will explore the dynamics of the Cambodian American culture. Through Identity, Hierarchy, Gender, Truth and Virtue I will attempt to describe a culture previously virtually unknown to me. I chose Hofstede’s Taxonomy over Bond’s because Michael Bond himself told me to. “Charlotte, I did this work in the 1980's, and found that 3 of my 4 nation-level dimensions overlapped with Hofstede's and one was distinct.” said Bond to me when I asked him to elaborate on his taxonomy.
The Hmong Culture of South Asia is a very interesting ethnic group. Between 300,000 to 600,000 Hmong live in Southeast Asian countries, such as Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar. About 8 million more live in the southern provinces of China. Since the Vietnam War ended in 1975, Hmong refugees from Southeast Asia have settled in Australia, France, Canada, and the United States. The largest Hmong refugee community lives in the United States with a population of about 110,000. The U.S. Department of state has tried to spread Hmong refugees out across the country to reduce the impact on any one region. Because Hmong families tend to be large in numbers, the community grows rapidly.
Expressions of Cambodia: The Politics of Tradition, Identity, and Change. By Leakthina Chan-Pech Ollier and Tim Winter. London: Routledge, 2006. 86-100. Print.
The Cambodian Genocide has the historical context of the Vietnam War and the country’s own civil war. During the Vietnam War, leading up to the conflicts that would contribute to the genocide, Cambodia was used as a U.S. battleground for the Vietnam War. Cambodia would become a battle ground for American troops fighting in Vietnam for four years; the war would kill up to 750,00 Cambodians through U.S. efforts to destroy suspected North Vietnamese supply lines. This devastation would take its toll on the Cambodian peoples’ morale and would later help to contribute that conflicts that caused the Cambodian genocide. In the 1970’s the Khmer rouge guerilla movement would form. The leader of the Khmer rouge, Pol Pot was educated in France and believed in Maoist Communism. These communist ideas would become important foundations for the ideas of the genocide, and which groups would be persecuted. The genocide it’s self, would be based on Pol Pot’s ideas to bring Cambodia back to an agrarian society, starting at the year zero. His main goal was to achieve this, romanticized idea of old Cambodia, based on the ancient Cambodian ruins, with all citizens having agrarian farming lives, and being equal to each other. Due to him wanting society to be equal, and agrarian based, the victims would be those that were educated, intellectuals, professionals, and minority ethnic g...
The focus of our group project is on Chinese Americans. We studied various aspects of their lives and the preservation of their culture in America. The Chinese American population is continually growing. In fact, in 1990, they were the largest group of Asians in the United States (Min 58). But living in America and adjusting to a new way of life is not easy. Many Chinese Americans have faced and continue to face much conflict between their Chinese and American identities. But many times, as they adapt to this new life, they are also able to preserve their Chinese culture and identity through various ways. We studied these things through the viewing of a movie called Joy Luck Club, conducting interviews with Chinese Americans, and doing outside research.
an Asian American perspective of how a community is viewed in today's society.. For many years,
After reading the novel Children of the River, I have learned some customs that people in Cambodia practice in their country. In this essay, I shall describe some examples of their traditions and contrast them with the American culture as shown in the novel and Honduran culture of which I am most familiar.
Families changed overtime by becoming more Americanized as they resided here. Few families still carried normal Cambodian traditions, but they had the
The pain and the suffering, the oppression, and the exclusion all describe the history of Asia America. When they arrived to the United States, they become labeled as Asians. These Asians come from Japan, China, Korea, Laos, Thailand, and many other diverse countries in the Eastern hemisphere. These people wanted to escape from their impoverished lives as the West continued to infiltrate their motherland. They saw America as the promise land filled with opportunity to succeed in life. Yet due to the discrimination placed from society and continual unfair treatment by the government, the history of Asian American was being defined and written every day they were in America, waiting to be deported because of the complexion of their skin. Striving everyday to conform and mix with society, the Asian American faced constant rejection and exclusion from the American way of life, defining the history of Asian America.
Trinh Vö, L. (2008). Constructing a Vietnamese American Community: Economic and Political Transformation in Little Saigon, Orange County. Amerasia Journal, 34(3), 85-109.
Addressing a theme that is related to the growth and development of Buddhism is Asian immigration and Asian American communities. I analyzed immigration between Asians and Latinos immigration. Furthermore, I will be focusing on the growth and how it helped develop Buddhism in America. The impact of immigration could have help Buddhism in America grow and have individuals interest in Buddhism. To conclude, I will determine if the impact of immigration helped Buddhism in America grow.
To have a modern look, the district was flooded with a myriad of lifestyle retailers, fashion boutiques, restaurants and cafes. This urban development means a lot more for Singapore’s Malay-Muslim community, as Kampong Glam has been their cultural centre for many years (Imran, 2005).