While African Americans remain myopically mesmerized by the possibility of a Christian black president in the United States, Cambodians stand ready to defend to the death any encroachment on sacred Afro-Asian religious sites in their country by the Thai government.
African Americans remain unaware that their global legacy is under assault by Thailand's descendants of China. The Thai (Cambodian) kingdom who ruled all of what is known today as Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Burma, and Cambodia. The Thai remained people were once Chinese refugees seeking shelter from Mongol invaders. They appealed and were granted sanctuary by the then powerful Khmerendogamous, marrying within their own ethnic and cultural group over centuries. Eventually they created an insurgency that warred against it's hosts until they were able to seize land and autonomous power from the Khmer. Today Thailand is a diverse society with strong nationalistic sentiments.
Over centuries however, Afro-Asian heritage was subsumed by the more Chinese culture within Thailand. Today many Thai people feel that all of Cambodia belongs to them and hostility between the two nations has remained even during the worst of the Killing Fields era.
Although the majority of the magnificent artifacts have been stolen from Cambodia, the Khmer people still defend the land and its holy sites with intense loyalty.
Currently, Thai troops have crossed the border into Cambodia promoting literal face off in the Cambodian border temple Preah Vihear. UNESCO recently awarded responsibility of the temple to Cambodia ending a long dispute over propriety. The Thai reportedly crossed the border and entered the temple in response to UNESCO's decision.
Nothing whatsoever has been reported about this in the African American press that has spent most of its time focusing on whether Barrack Obama is truly Christian.
Thai Buddhism is father of the Vipassana Buddhist community in America. A community that, because of their spiritual and political connections with Cambodia's adversaries, has done little to raise consciousness among its African American adherents about the Khmer Afro-Asian heritage.
