Pass or Fail in Cambodia Town

MARIA HINOJOSA: Up next-- Long Beach, California, where a surprising number of Asian Americans don't have high school diplomas.

ALEX PHAM: We're not the Asian that you guys think we are.

SHAMEKA MIN: My mom didn't go to school.

She didn't have the opportunity.

SENG SO: We have come to this country fractured.

Our families physically have been fractured.

SOPHYA CHUM: Our community is struggling.

And a lot of it has to do with how we resettled here and our experiences here.

ALEX PHAM: We come from all that poverty and struggle and stuff, but we want to break that eventually.

We want to be successful.

This is the new America-- black, brown, Asian, LGBT, immigrants.

The country is going through a major demographic shift, and the numbers show it.

The face of the U.S. has changed.

CHRISTINA IBANEZ: We're American.

We care about the same things.

But yet we also want to preserve our culture.

I just see it destroying what we had planned to happen here.

HINOJOSA: By 2043, we will be a majority non-white nation.

NORM GISSEL: We are making, as we speak, a new America.

And it's a marvelous moment in American history.

Everybody's voice is important to this debate.

HINOJOSA: Am erica by the Numbers.

I'm Maria Hinojosa.

Maria Hinojosa : Behind every number, there's a story.

And today's numbers tell a dramatic one.

Asian Americans are the best-educated group in the country, with 54% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, compared to 33% of Americans overall.

But statistics can be misleading.

The category "Asian American" has over 24 different ethnic groups and a startling number of Southeast Asian Americans who aren't making it through high school.

VEEBO: I remember when I was in juvenile hall and I was out there with, like, all the other races from other cities, you know, that wasn't too familiar with Long Beach Asians.

And when they seen us, you know, it kind of trips them out 'cause we're different.

You know?

Like, we don't stay in school.

HINOJOSA: Cambodian Americans are less likely to have a high school diploma than African Americans, whites or most other Asians.

I've come here to Long Beach, California, home to the largest Cambodian population outside of Southeast Asia to find out why this is happening and why no one is talking about it.

In the years after the Vietnam War, 24,000 Khmer-- or "Khmai"-- refugees from Cambodia settled here.

This low-income neighborhood in the city's east side was once the home turf of rapper Snoop Dogg, but today it's known as Cambodia Town.

Shameka Min is a senior at Jordan High School, and she's four months pregnant.

This is her last week of classes, but she still isn't sure if she'll be able to graduate.

SHAMEKA MIN: This year's been tough because of my living situations and problems with my family.

I'm currently living with my boyfriend.

I'm not living with my mom because she's having her problems finding a home.

HINOJOSA: Shameka is the youngest of seven children.

Her parents came to Long Beach in 1981 as refugees.

Only two of her siblings finished high school or earned a G.E.D.

(school bell ringing) SHAMEKA MIN: I'm gonna have a baby.

I feel excited and nervous about it, 'cause it's my first one.

I know I'm not ready for it, but I have to do whatever it takes to be prepared for it.

Shameka's high school counselor, Monica Davis, has been working with her since junior year.

MONICA DAVIS: Shameka had fallen far behind on her credits.

So she comes in beginning of 11th grade year and I'm like, "Oh my, I don't know that we can honestly make this."

To get her to graduate?

To get her to graduate and meet her minimum requirements.

There was one semester where there was no classes passed.

Even this semester, I called her in about a month ago and I said, "Okay, now, if you don't pass everything, there's no graduation at the end of this rainbow."

HINOJOSA: You know, when we tell people that Southeast Asian youth have one of the highest dropout rates in our country, most people just can't...

I didn't know that myself.

That's a new statistic for me, but now that you're mentioning it, I'm thinking of a couple others.

HINOJOSA: With school staff unaware of this community's educational challenges, there's little, if any, institutional support for students like Shameka.

SHAMEKA: When I was around eight years old, my dad went to Cambodia.

And he told me that he would come back around my birthday.

Yeah, he just never came back.

When we found out that he was back in Long Beach and found out where he was living, my mom would go out there and just be so angry and cuss him out and say mean things and I would just cry and just hear all of that, you know?

And it was hard for me going to school dealing with all of it.

HINOJOSA: The final exams Shameka will take over the next few days will determine whether she'll get her diploma.

Alex Pham's parents came to Long Beach as refugees, so they had trouble helping him navigate the American school system.

ALEX PHAM: I always, like, had distractions.

Like, struggling with little kid problems, I guess.

And I just couldn't focus in school, and I failed a lot of stuff like that.

HINOJOSA: When did you decide that you didn't need school?

I always thought I needed it, you know?

I always try to go, but there was always something happening in my life, like... so I just stopped.

HINOJOSA: The Southeast Asian American population came here from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos after the Vietnam War.

ROBERT TERANISHI: Their whole point of origin in America comes from war, comes from their experience as refugees.

This is very different than what we see among other Asian-American immigrants because of their education, their skills and what they can bring in terms of the labor force.

We see poverty rates that are two to three times the national average.

And that in itself presents a lot of challenges for these kids.

These are challenges on a national level, but they become particularly pronounced when you have concentrated poverty.

And that's what we're seeing among a lot of Southeast Asian communities.

HINOJOSA: Sophya Chum, a community organizer, grew up here in Long Beach's Cambodia Town with a single mom who was a refugee.

SOPHYA CHUM: We ate Cambodian food, we spoke Khmer, we listened to Cambodian karaoke.

I didn't know the financial situation that my mom was going through.

But as I got older, I realized that there was a lot of problems in the community.

My sister was involved in a gang, (voice breaking): so that was really hard for me, um, to see her, um, be involved and get into fights and, um, things like that.

That's when I realized that this wasn't normal, because I was around violence.

A lot of violence.

I had a lot of friends and family members who got into drugs and gangs.

It was how people got by, because of the challenges with jobs and money and, like, school and things like that.

So it was kind of like this cycle.

Here's the hood right here.

HINOJOSA: The gang violence in Long Beach reached epidemic proportions when Alex was growing up.

At what point do you begin to kind of realize that this place that you call home might not be necessarily safe for you?

One time when two Hispanics jumped my homie, that's when I realized, like, our race didn't really get along like that.

I was, like, pissed off and mad.

But I was, like, in sixth grade; I didn't know what to do.

From that point on I knew, like, certain areas, you can't just walk to school, if that's not your race and stuff.

In seventh grade, I got incarcerated.

I was on probation in eighth, went to ninth grade.

High school, got incarcerated, like, 11 times.

HINOJOSA: Alex's father, Ricky Muth, fled Cambodia with his family arriving in America when he was just eight years old.

So, what do you remember, like the most vivid memories of your time in Cambodia?

During the war, crossing through the jungle on foot, trying to get to Thailand.

In the Khmer Rouge war, seeing people blown up in front of you as a little kid, you know.

We kind of get past it, gotten used to it.

You got used to seeing... Just people getting killed, getting shot in front of us.

Bloody body everywhere.

HINOJOSA: In 1975, the communist rebel group the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and began a period of massive repression and genocide.

Over the next four years, close to two million people-- nearly a quarter of the population-- were murdered, starved or tortured to death.

Sometimes I still get nightmares from it, you know.

HINOJOSA: But after fleeing the killing fields, Ricky faced another kind of violence, from kids in his American neighborhood.

I can't even go to the store to get milk for my brother and sister.

Come back out, we get beat... pick on by the black or Latino.

Beat up for our money, so...

I keep telling myself, I survived through the Khmer Rouge wars, you know.

I come here for a better life, you know?

They ain't gonna put me through this.

That's when me and my peers just stand up for ourselves.

It's not in our culture to start the gang thing, but we were forced to start it.

To defend for ourself.

And things just get out of hand after that.

ALEX PHAM: My grandma used to tell me stories about trying to hide from the Khmer Rouge soldiers and stuff.

It sounded crazy.

I don't know how I would have survived it.

They went through a lot.

That's why when they come to see the hoods and gangs, Cambodians killing each other over here, they hate it, 'cause they're like, you know, they was killing our people back there.

So, why do it over here?

HINOJOSA: What's the answer?

ALEX PHAM: We don't wanna do it, but we gotta protect ourselves and stuff.

SARA POL-LIM: I talked to one of the former gang member who say, "My parent was exposed to violence "during the Khmer Rouge killing field, "and they project those violence on me, and I project mine out on the street."

HINOJOSA: Sara Pol-Lim is the executive director of United Cambodian Community, a social service organization.

She sees an untreated epidemic of post-traumatic stress disorder among Cambodian refugees.

While less than four percent of all Americans suffer from PTSD, in this community it's over 17 times that rate according to the American Medical Association.

And the cultural stigma against seeking help for mental health issues is eroding traditional values.

SARA POL-LIM: It used to be, if you're Cambodian, family come first and there's no divorce, period, right?

So now what we see in our Cambodian American community a rate of divorce higher than the mainstream community.

And that affects their second generation.

That's why I gave it to you.

HINOJOSA: Shameka's problems at school began with her parents' separation, a rupture that tore her whole family apart.

SHAMEKA: I think when my dad had left, my sisters just rebelled against my mom and just decided to do their own thing and just not finish school and just run around.

Everyone just didn't care no more.

I moved in with my friend to her family's house, but everywhere I went I didn't get along with them after a while.

You know, 'cause who wants to have someone in their home that's not wanted?

It was hard.

I tried to come to school.

I would, like, lose most of my stuff because I was here and there.

And I just lost it because I was moving everywhere, you know?

That's when I was, like, messing up really bad.

HINOJOSA: Shameka's high school counselor is trying to make sure she passes her final exams.

How do you make it as a pregnant high schooler who doesn't have, like, a consistent place to stay?

(sighs) I don't know.

It's gonna be tough for her after this; I really don't know.

I'm really worried.

She has potential.

She can be something, you know?

HINOJOSA: There is a chance she might not graduate this year?

It can happen to anybody based on the finals, yeah.

SENG SO: So these are some pictures I have from my childhood along with some pictures my parents brought with them when they came to the U.S. Yeah, we came in 1989.

HINOJOSA: The organization Khmer Girls in Action, or KGA, works with Southeast Asian youth like Shameka.

KGA organizer Seng So believes that the challenges these students face are a legacy of the Khmer Rouge's class warfare, which demonized anyone with an education.

SENG: You have a lot of refugees that have come to the U.S. without high-school level degrees in education.

So that in itself creates a barrier for parents to really help their young people navigate the education system, let alone an education system that's foreign to them.

HINOJOSA: Sara counsels parents from the community, many of whom have less than a third grade education.

She sees a cultural gap between refugee parents and their American-born children.

POL-LIM: The assumption of parents that came here as first generation is that you listen to your parent, period.

You don't question it back.

But in raising children in mainstream America, they do not listen.

So parents leave the educational system to their second generation, to that kid, even though that kid is six, seven, eight, nine years old.

HINOJOSA: Shameka and her mother, Sinath Keth, have trouble discussing school because Shameka can't express herself in Khmer, and Sinath doesn't speak English.

When I was growing up, yeah, I do remember speaking Khmer to her.

Like very fluently.

As I grew up, it was harder to speak it, 'cause I just forgot about it.

(speaking Khmer): That's one of the reasons why we don't really get along and we bicker and argue is because I can't just have a conversation with her in English 'cause she won't understand.

HINOJOSA: Up to 48% of Southeast Asian Americans aren't fluent in English, compared to nine percent of the general population.

Yet even when there is no language barrier, many parents find it difficult to share their memories of the genocide with their children.

When your mom did talk about what she went through, what are the things that you remember her telling you?

She had my two older sisters.

One was still a baby and my other sister was a toddler.

And she talked a lot about having to keep them quiet because they would cry.

And if the Khmer Rouge soldiers would find her, they would kill her.

I guess what my mom went through in terms of, like, once she resettled here, I'm able to understand, okay, that's why I had to get a job at a early age, that's probably why I struggle in school.

WOMAN: Okay, everyone, welcome to the Khmer Girls in Action end-of-the-year barbeque.

Are you guys excited?

CROWD: Yeah!

HINOJOSA: Khmer Girls in Action supports Cambodian American students by helping them cope with second-generation PTSD.

SENG SO: Growing up in a home where you are witnessing a loved one deal with depression, that is second-hand trauma.

Because as a young person, you are essentially helpless to support your parent.

And at the same time, you have to navigate school, you have to navigate your social life.

There's really no service support at the high school level for young people to deal with that trauma.

So they carry that with them to the classroom.

These are kids who are born here in United States.

They can't remember the trauma of their grandparents or their parents... Two million people.

Two million people perished during the genocide in the most atrocious ways.

You know, babies being bashed against trees, men being kidnapped in the middle of the night, blindfolded, thrown off cliffs.

Some of the most atrocious things that you can't even imagine happened in our country.

I think it's kind of unfair for people to say that we need to get over it, because those things you never get over.

The first step is having young people be able to speak about the trauma.

And then the second step is really figuring out ways that we can cope, heal and move forward.

I'm Nickie, I'm from Compton High School.

(laughter) HINOJOSA: In KGA's young men's empowerment program, Seng helps kids learn to help each other with their problems both inside and outside of school.

Brotherhood!

All right, y'all.

SENG SO: We want to mobilize on Monday.

David's actually going to be testifying.

So we're gonna go there to support David.

But we're also gonna go there and show up in force to show that the district cannot ignore us.

HINOJOSA: David Chhom came to KGA when he was about to give up on high school.

DAVID CHHOM: I learned more about my community, who I am as a Cambodian American.

In a sense, this is my gang.

Not a negative gang, but a positive gang.

This is my second family.

I have a lot of brothers here, a lot of sisters here.

HINOJOSA: Now David is learning to speak up for his community.

At this meeting of the Long Beach School Board, he lobbied for more resources for Southeast Asian students.

We need to invest new school funding directly into programs and resources that will help close the achievement and opportunity gaps for our students.

Investing in us is investing in the future of Long Beach.

Thank you.

I'm fighting for the rights of my... for myself and for others.

Because I don't want us students to get kicked out and, you know, hate school and never go and don't graduate.

HINOJOSA: For Alex, gang ties had trapped him in a cycle of incarceration.

But the last time he was in prison, he found a way to break out.

That last place I was in had a program where it was art, music, poetry, stuff like that.

I just started expressing myself.

So, when I was in there, I was the only Asian, the minority, with all these other blacks and Mexicans.

And when I started rapping, they all liked it.

So, I was like, "Damn, if I can do this in here, I can do it in the world," you know, "in the real world."

And I just started running with it from there.

I rap about the hood.

I let them know that, like, we're not the Asian that you guys think we are.

I'm shining a light on all the Asians that come from where we come from, poverty and struggle... and from the hood.

HINOJOSA: Today, Alex is building his career as a rapper.

He goes by the name $tupid Young.

(rapping): Don't worry bout me, I'm good.

They never seen a young Asian this hood.

So I'ma let 'em know, young professional, flexin' hos, get fresh and dressed in clothes to get the dough, unh.

What you know 'bout that?

East Side, Long Beach, I put that on the map... HINOJOSA: Through his poetry and music, Alex has become an inspiration to Cambodian-American kids, especially his own younger siblings.

They look up to Alex, you know?

In a good way, though.

Yeah, in a good way.

Like, I tell my little brothers and stuff, "Man, if I had a chance to be in high school again "and do all the proms, all the high school activities, I would do it."

I mean, I know they probably think, like, it's cool to be like me or whatever, or follow my footsteps.

But I tell them, "You can do that and you can be in school."

You ain't gotta gang bang and all this other stuff.

HINOJOSA: While some Cambodian youth are learning the value of high school, more refugees from Asia are fleeing war and political turmoil and coming to the U.S. Now, they're coming from Burma, Nepal and Bhutan.

And there's been about 250,000 that have arrived in the past ten years.

So it's extremely important for our education system to figure out how to better understand who our students are and how we could be more responsive to their needs.

This is an important dilemma for the nation because it's immigrants that bring the optimism to America.

HINOJOSA: Each new group that arrives here after surviving war may face challenges much like the Khmer and need more resettlement support.

While waiting for U.S. refugee policy to catch up, teachers like Peter Ly, who understand second-generation Asian youth, may be part of the solution.

How many of you guys are going to college?

From my experience and my upbringing as a person of color and ethnicity growing up in Long Beach, I have a lot to offer some of the kids who are struggling.

I was born in Cambodia, and I came to America when I was four years old.

I didn't know where I belonged.

I saw either African Americans or Latinos or white kids living the American lifestyle and I didn't fit in.

A lot of these kids are looking for their identities.

They don't know what their parents had to come through for the opportunities they have.

HINOJOSA: Seng learned this lesson when he traveled to Cambodia in 2011.

SENG SO: I wasn't born in Cambodia, I was born in a refugee camp in Thailand.

So I actually never stepped foot inside my own country.

It always felt like going back to Cambodia would be a home for me.

But I always felt just this-this heartbreak when I saw images from the country, because I...

I always believed growing up that there was such potential in our country.

(voice breaking): It always reminded me of my parents.

I often wondered, um... what their lives would be like.

If they had stayed?

They didn't have an opportunity to dream.

(sniffling) Do you think that your mom and dad... they would have dreamed to go to college?

What kind of work do your parents do now?

SENG SO: They work in a doughnut shop.

So it's very labor-intensive and they're getting older; they're in their 60s.

And I don't know when they're going to retire.

I just wish they could have been who they wanted to be, you know?

HINOJOSA: For young people now, young Cambodian Americans, why is it important for them to understand that history of their country?

SENG SO: We have this saying in our program and it goes, "Know History"-- K-N-O-W history-- "know self; "no history"-- N-O-- "no self."

So it's very important that we understand our country, its history and its current-day state, because it's a part of who we are, and a part of how the world sees us, and we can't escape that.

SHAMEKA MIN: When I started high school, I felt like I wasn't gonna follow through with it because I was following the footsteps of my brother and sisters.

And after a while, like, I was like, no, I have to prove to everyone that I'm not gonna be like them.

Hey, doll.

Here you go, congratulations!

You did it!

HINOJOSA: Today is graduation day.

And despite her pregnancy, homelessness and family problems, Shameka has made it.

She'll get her high school diploma.

WOMAN: Shameka Min... HINOJOSA: After graduating, Shameka moved into a maternity shelter and enrolled in Long Beach Community College.

While Alex continues recording and performing his music, he also works for an organization that helps formerly incarcerated kids find jobs.

David graduated from Poly Academy of Achievers and Leaders.

Shortly afterwards, he enrolled in the Army.

Next time, in Rochester, New York, moms of color lose their babies at two times the rate of white moms.

I put her to sleep and she never woke back up.

MAN: We could put our arms around the children and carry them to something better.

Rochester's taking a stand so that mom can have the healthiest pregnancy that she can have.

HINOJOSA: To learn more aboutwith Maria Hinojosasodesrs is available on DVD.

To order, visit shopPBS.org, or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.

♪ ♪ Funding for this episode was provided by: