For many Cambodians, racial discrimination was an unanticipated part of their experience as new Americans.
Vesna Nuon arrived in the U.S. in 1982 after surviving the brutal Khmer Rouge reign under Pol Pot that killed 1.7 million people, or about a quarter of Cambodia’s population, between 1975 and 1979.
He recalls some Americans, including students at his Boston high school, were less than welcoming. “I was not only verbally harassed to go back to my country, but also during lunch breaks they spat in my food. I told cafeteria staff who were monitoring the area, but they turned a blind eye and deaf ear to me,” he told VOA Cambodian.