A national federation of more than 200 Indian-American groups has joined two other prominent Indian organizations in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to end race-conscious college admissions in a case involving the University of Texas at Austin.
The decision by those three groups—the National Federation of Indian American Associations, the Indian American Forum for Political Education, and the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin—reflects a marked departure from the position most other Asian-American groups have taken on the issue.
The San Francisco-based Asian American Legal Foundation, which formed to fight a policy limiting Chinese-American enrollments in that city’s magnet schools, has consistently opposed race-conscious college admissions in the federal courts. But it stood alone among Asian-American groups in arguing against such policies the last time the Supreme Court considered them, in two 2003 cases involving the University of Michigan.
By contrast, 28 other Asian-American groups, including the Japanese American Citizens League, the National Federation of Filipino American Associations, and the Organization of Chinese Americans, signed on to a brief backing Michigan’s policies in the Michigan affirmative-action cases, Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger.
The three Indian groups weighed in against such policies in an amicus curiae, or “friend of the court,” brief, submitted to the court on Tuesday.
Also signing onto the brief were the 80-20 National Asian American Educational Foundation, a nonprofit group that fights discrimination against Asian-Americans and last month published a report saying that Asian-Americans overwhelmingly oppose race-conscious admissions; and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a fledgling organization that advocates on behalf of people who are Jewish and has pledged to sue colleges that do not deal with anti-Semitism.
Much of the brief is devoted to comparing current college-admissions policies that favor minority groups other than Asian-Americans to admissions policies of the early to mid-20th century that sought to hold down elite colleges’ enrollments of Jewish students.
“Admission to the nation’s top universities is a zero-sum proposition,” the brief argues, and “the utilization of race as a ‘plus’ factor for some inexorably applies race as a ‘minus’ factor against those on the other side of the equation.”
The brief continues: “Particularly hard-hit are Asian-American students, who demonstrate academic excellence at disproportionately high rates but often find the value of their work discounted on account of either their race, or nebulous criteria alluding to it.”
Referring to the criteria that colleges used to exclude Jewish students in a bygone era, the brief says, “Then, as now, fuzzy notions of ‘character,’ ‘sociability,’ ‘leadership,’ and athletic prowess were utilized to consciously restrict an ethnic group believed to be different in these qualities, lest its members overwhelm schools by virtue of their superior academic performance.”
The National Federation of Indian American Associations was established in 1980 and claims to represent more than 2.7 million Indian-Americans belonging to national, regional, and local groups. The Indian American Forum for Political Education frequently advocates on behalf of that population in federal politics, and the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin champions the rights of people of Indian origin worldwide.