Daniel Uk
UML Student

In the end, said Martin Luther King, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. For Silence is the obstacle in the midst of human progress, and the adversary of change. My community is in disarray and shouts for me in her time of need. I must answer the call, yet I have not forgotten the cries of the many who are in need of my help. And I hope for these communities, in turn,not to forget mine. Reverend King had a dream, ‘that this nation would rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed, that we hold these truths to be self ­evident, that all men are created equal’.1

Today I stand proud knowing that we are one step closer toward His dream.
But I, too, have a dream today.

My community is like an infant, young and inexperienced in the ways of the world. During our fractured upbringing, we desperately searched for a father’s love, a mother’s nurture. Many Cambodian​­American youths not only not lacked visionaries like Reverend King, but even mothers and fathers who are properly equipped to parent them in a country that is foreign to them. As an American I am privileged to be born in this land of opportunity, but I am now faced with a completely new frontier. I see an ominous void in my community, a graphic and explicit disenfranchisement, and with this knowledge and understanding I seek to work to give my community a new vision. My duty is vivid and clear, that I am to organize my strength into a compelling power.

But to do so, I had to transcend from the status quo which had been imposed
on the dream I foresee for myself and my community.

It is quite alarming how one statistic, one stereotype, could inadvertently affect a child’s entire life and subjugate him or her. 35% of Cambodian­-American students do not finish their secondary high school education. For those who have earned their high school diploma, 66% of those students do not 2 attend college. During a time where Lowell once ran rampant with impoverished youths and 3 gang ­violence, a time in which I was most impressionable, I knew that society had preconditioned within my mind a self­fulfilling prophecy of an utter failure who, based on the statistics of his ethnicity, could not commit to earning his high school diploma and attend a university to achieve a higher education. From the day my mother bore me into this world, I was born into this statistic of a lazy and subpar individual who has yet to walk in the shadows of ghetto streets and hide behind the walls of federal section 8 housing.

And so I challenged this statistic with every ounce of my integrity so I would someday be one step higher to lift my people into victory.

Finally, on June 2012, my high school graduation day, I walked onto the auditorium stage with pride and grasped the future. As I held my diploma, nevermore would I be a simple statistic for I had broken away from the status quo that had shackled and bound me. Today, I am president of a socially active student association dedicated to the future success for young aspiring innovators and pioneers. But it does not end here, for we must do so much more to see our communities blossom! The problems facing education are complex. The solution, which eludes even the greatest minds, is sequestered.

However, a lack of family coherence contributes to a large part of the problem. And the problem cannot be solved with a school system with limited resources.

There is a need for more money to start with: money dedicated to serving those in special need. As community leaders, we must invest in our posterity’s education. Students must seek personal attention from teachers and counselors alike and must not be a statistic, a number lost in a zoo. Even students from wealthy professional families need personal care, but for those lacking direction at home, how can they possibly get motivated with so little human caring around them? We must encourage and support education no matter what community we are from. Let us answer the cries of our communities with a solution for their suffering. Let education be the building block for the foundation of a strong, vibrant, and united community. So let us take one step toward that dream, it is a dream in which we all share. It will take time and it has been a long time coming. But just as Dr. King has, just as the civil rights movement has, and just as anyone who has jumped the same hurdles and had broken the same barriers we face today,we, too, shall overcome.

1 “Martin Luther King I Have a Dream Speech ­ American Rhetoric.” Martin Luther King I Have a Dream Speech ­ American Rhetoric. Online Speech Bank, n.d. Web. 03 Jan. 2014.

2 “Critical Issues Facing Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.” The White House. Www.whitehouse.gov, n.d. Web. 05 Jan. 2014.

3 “SEARAC’s 2013 Fact Sheets on Education and the Southeast Asian American Community.”Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC). Southeast Asian Resource Action Center, 27 Sept. 2013. Web. 05 Jan. 2014.