About Coloring Cambodia

Coloring Cambodia is an archival project comprising interviews and portraits of women of indigenous Khmer ancestry speaking about their personal experiences with colorism within the Cambodian community.

Mission

Coloring Cambodia aims for the Khmer collective to reclaim informed power to self-advocate by dismantling Cambodian colorism through the transformative narrative change of indigenous Khmer women and centering stories of lived experiences.

Cambodian colorism as a subject in academia is in need of more conversation, dissemination, and research. Coloring Cambodia aims to be a resource for other scholars wishing to write and research more about colorism in Cambodia as well as a contribution to this field in general. We believe that academia can contribute to societal change in an informed and ethical manner, and as of now, Coloring Cambodia is planning to release reports on the major findings of this research, with further academic research goals to be announced.

The word “Khmer” has been used as an all-encompassing term, many using it interchangeably with the “Cambodian” nationality. However, the Khmer have been and are a people group indigenous to the land first. Coloring Cambodia stands by this fact: that “Khmer” is not just a language and a culture; it is a highly racialized native population, and Cambodians today may or may not be descendent of this group, many being of mixed ancestry. Because those of Khmer descent are racialized for their features and skin color making them subject to erasure, it is unjust to use the term “Khmer” to describe all Cambodians because not all Cambodians are racialized as Khmer and face the oppressions of having Khmer features. 

Throughout the Coloring Cambodia project, the terms “Khmer” (the Khmer racial/ethnic group) and “Cambodian” (the nationality of Cambodia) will be separated in their meanings and “Khmer” will be synonymous with “indigenous Khmer,” and we urge the wider Cambodian community to begin adopting these distinctions. Thus, Khmer people may be of various nationalities such as Thai, Laotian, Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, Filipino, Malaysian, etc. but not all Cambodian people would necessarily be Khmer. In addition, we want to clarify the distinction of our usage of indigenous as an essential and racialized concept of indigeneity rather than the politically-concerned Indigenous, which encompasses the identification of Native Americans, First Nations, and Aboriginal communities such as the non-Khmer indigenous communities in northeastern Cambodia.

In addition, Coloring Cambodia is calling for as many people as possible in the Cambodian community to hold and participate in open conversations about colorism. We hold discussion spaces on our platforms where all Cambodians can respectfully and truthfully engage with these difficult topics in conversation with one another. We ask that you make space, take space, and hold space as appropriate for others in the conversation; acknowledge your own role in wider Cambodian colorism; and keep in mind the various contexts that it may take place in. Colorism has not affected, does not affect, and will not affect everyone identically nor equally.

Coloring Cambodia’s goal is to enact change through a cultural shift, brought about by increasing visibility of colorism’s impact on Khmer women and striking down believed essentialisms about darker skinned peoples’ value, worth, and capabilities that keep Khmer and other native peoples psychosocially subjugated. Through continued work and cooperation, the Cambodian community and Cambodian society can undergo this cultural shift that is needed in order to stand up for the welfare of Khmers who are suffering the results of ongoing anti-indigeneity and indigenous erasure.

Centering Khmer Women

Those with indigenous Khmer ancestry are commonly stereotyped and devalued for their skin color, facial features, and hair textures. In addition to anti-indigeneity, Khmer women especially face a layer of oppression wrought on by colorism related to their gender, value, and femininity. This project acknowledges all experiences of colorism, but centers Brown Khmer women because of the distinct way they are affected by colorism in Cambodia.

Colorism is accompanied with the ideology that whiteness is feminine and blackness is masculine. Thus, when this is applied to dark skinned Khmer women, their femininity is invalidated. Dark skinned Khmer women are seen as less feminine and thus less valuable, as well as more suitable for laborious or unskilled work. For women, social mobility is often found in marriage to men of higher socioeconomic status; this means dark skinned Khmer women are kept marginalized in positions of minimal economic mobility because of this infringement on their femininity and value.

Acknowledging colorism also means acknowledging the hierarchical social structure in Cambodian communities that especially affects women. Darker skinned Khmer women disproportionately face colorism in both public and private spaces; thus, to better understand the effects of colorism on Cambodian society, it is crucial to hear from the women themselves first.  

Process

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Coloring Cambodia was conducted primarily via Zoom. Interviewees were from the United States, Cambodia, and France.

The interview process had two components: an informal spoken interview and a portrait. Interviewees were asked a series of questions regarding their identity, how others in various communities have identified and perceived them, family dynamics, stories from the past where their appearance was mentioned, class and race in Cambodia, and more. Following the interview, interviewees were asked to send a recent photograph of themselves that captured their most authentic self as well as optional childhood and/or family photographs.

Coloring Cambodia was funded in 2020 by the Chappell Lougee Scholarship at Stanford University and the SunHim Chhim Fund in 2023. We are thankful for the opportunities presented by these sponsors.

Background

Colorism, as we know, is a very normalized issue in both domestic and diasporic Cambodian communities and families. Indigenous Khmer people who are darker skinned are subject to consistent degradation, marginalization, and silencing on the basis of their appearance and thus their indigeneity by members of their own communities, widely and intensely affecting social status, economic status, education access, discrimination by occupation, media representation, and more.

The Khmer ethnic group is indigenous to Southeast Asia. Khmer phenotypes are consistently compared to that of East Asian or even other Southeast Asian ethnic groups. The historical evidence of marginalization and degradation of ethnic Khmers dates back to ancient records written by explorers from abroad, building a justification for colorism and the contempt for Khmer features. Ethnic Khmers were described as primitive, un-industrious, lazy, and more, their physical descriptions citing dark skin frequently accompanying these observations. These narratives have not gone away; they are very much still present in Cambodian society, which is why colorism remains extremely relevant. Despite this long-standing rhetoric, there are not any ethnographic or archival studies focusing on colorism in Cambodia. 

Thus, colorism acts as a manifestation of as well as a driver for indigenous erasure, those erased in this case being the ethnic Khmer. This can be seen in the way Khmer people are dispossessed of their land, rights, and privileges oftentimes on the basis of their ‘uncleanliness, unfitness, unsightliness, and uncivilized-ness’ in modern society, all imposed characteristics and essentialisms that denote colorist discrimination.

The purpose of Coloring Cambodia isn’t limited to educating people about colorism. For many Khmer women, colorism has been the factor keeping them from being visible in their own communities as well as in the world. Coloring Cambodia presents their stories to highlight resilience and beauty in these women and beyond. Coloring Cambodia is a story about Khmer women, but it is also a chapter in a worldwide story of anti-indigeneity. Thus, the sentiments and phenomena that Khmer women express about their experiences with colorism can also be applicable to other indigenous populations in Asia and across the world.  

About the Creators