Asian Americans Are Not Affirmative Action’s Victims

Michael Morgenstern for The Chronicle

The high-profile lawsuit against Harvard for its use of race in admissions hinged on the unprecedented argument that Asian American applicants were affirmative action’s victims. This week in Massachusetts, Federal District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs ruled that while “not perfect,” Harvard’s decisions showed no evidence of being “negatively affected by Asian American identity.” She made clear in her ruling that diversity is a worthy goal and race-conscious admissions are one way to achieve it.

This is a historic decision, not only because the plaintiff, Students for Fair Admissions, will appeal and likely place the fate of race-based affirmative action in the hands of a conservative Supreme Court, but because of what it means for all Asian Americans, including myself.

Indeed, this is not just a court case about the use of race in college admissions. It is also about whether Asian Americans are a homogeneous, overachieving “model minority” that experiences racism in the form of affirmative action or are a diverse group that experiences disadvantages and therefore needs the policy; it is about whether, in this context, Asian Americans are hurt by the Black and Latinx students that the policy supposedly favors or whether all of these groups of color should be given special consideration.

Harvard on Trial

Detailed background on the lawsuit over the university’s race-conscious admissions policy, the case’s implications for selective colleges, and coverage of the trial as it unfolded, in a federal court in Boston.

• Harvard Doesn’t Discriminate Against Asian American Applicants, U.S. Appeals Court Rules
• 3 Takeaways From the Appeal of the Harvard Admissions Lawsuit
• A Judge Advised Harvard to Give Its Admissions Officers Training to Stop Bias. Will That Help?

In other words, this court case is about the politics of race in our country, especially for an Asian America that is often disappeared from the race conversation, used as cover for race inequality, and thereby rendered mute.

This is precisely how Edward Blum, president of Students for Fair Admissions, treated Asian Americans when he plucked a very small group to represent all 19 million of us as a people aggrieved by affirmative action and who thus wanted it dead. His key argument was that Harvard racially balanced its entering classes by sinking Asian Americans’ personal rating scores in admissions decisions.

But there is no evidence of that Asian American penalty. In fact, both Harvard and the U.S. Department of Education found that the advantage Harvard gives to legacies and athletes actually gives whites an edge over Asian Americans. This is a form of affirmative action for whites that Harvard certainly needs to fix — “not perfect,” indeed.

At the same time, there is no evidence that Harvard’s consideration of applicants’ nonwhite status effectively hurts Asian Americans. Since 2014, if we exclude recruited athletes, legacies, those on a special dean’s list, and children of faculty of staff, Asian Americans have had a higher rate of admission than white applicants at Harvard. Across the Ivy League, Asian Americans make up between 13 percent and 30 percent of undergraduate enrollments, despite the fact that they only make up 1 percent of all elite-college admissions and only 6 percent of the nation’s population.

In fact, there is evidence that affirmative action advantages Asian Americans. The University of California system banned the policy in 1998, and by 2009 admission rates of Asian American had declined more than 13.3 percent at every UC campus except Riverside.

Further, Black and Latinx students are in no way taking Asian Americans’ seats. If we were to eliminate all Black and Latinx applicants, Asian Americans’ admission chances at Harvard would only increase by a negligible one percent.

These data matter little to Blum, however, who has long dreamed of rolling back civil-rights laws designed to uplift people of color. He convinced the Supreme Court in 2013 to gut race-based protections in the Voting Rights Act and was the architect behind Abigail Fisher’s Supreme Court lawsuits in 2013 and 2016 against the University of Texas at Austin. Blum, who has never fought for the rights of Asian Americans before, admitted after he lost the first time that “he needed Asian plaintiffs.”

Most Asian Americans, from a mile away, can smell this pungent odor of being used for racially palatable purposes. We smelled it when we were called “model minorities” by the 1960s white establishment to discredit Black and Latinx social movements’ claim that institutionalized racism was responsible for their disadvantage. We Korean Americans also smelled it in 1992 when the fires of the Los Angeles unrest taught us that systemic racism was ultimately culpable for the violence against Rodney King and for our burnt-out Koreatown.

And, finally, we smelled the odor when the non-Asian American proponents of “California’s Civil Rights Initiative” used Asian Americans as a racial wedge group to pass their anti-affirmative Proposition 209 in 1996. Our fatigue over being muted as racial pawns, our firm commitment to advancing racial justice, and our knowledge that we benefit from race-based policies is why a clear majority of registered Asian American voters — 65 percent — support affirmative action, a number that would rise to 73 percent if we excluded Chinese Americans, the only group to show declining support.

It is why a majority of Asian Americans, 58 percent, deem policies that are designed to increase the number of Black and minority students on college campuses as a good thing. It is why a slew of Asian American Harvard students sacrificed their studies to serve as representatives in this case, like Sally Chen and Thang Diep, whose atypical biographies not only convinced Harvard’s admissions office but Judge Burroughs herself. It is why author Viet Nguyen traces his recent Pulitzer Prize in fiction to the minority fellowship he received when UC Berkeley’s English program had few Asian ethnics.

Indeed, it is why I write this piece: I would likely not be a professor today if it were not for the University of Michigan sociology department or the American Sociological Association prioritizing Asian American students and fellows. There were very few of us in their midst, especially women, and they used affirmative action to fix that.

Whether or not the Supreme Court decides to advance this kind of racial progress the way the Federal District Court did this week, the Harvard case has been a racial crucible for Asian America. It has compelled us, under a historic national spotlight, to condemn being used as racial paper dolls that hold up the white American status quo; it has reaffirmed our commitment to join hands with all people of color who need affirmative action, knowing that a racially just, peaceful society benefits everyone, including those at the top.

No matter what happens as the fate of race-conscious college admissions is decided in court after court, the message from Asian Americans has been loud and clear: We will not let affirmative action die without a fight.

Nadia Y. Kim is a professor of sociology at Loyola Marymount University. She is the author of Imperial Citizens: Koreans and Race from Seoul to LA (Stanford University Press, 2008).