Back in June 2023, the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action for colleges and universities across the U.S. Race is no longer a factor in admissions, allegedly.
The original claims reminded me of Abigail Fisher, who I’ve written about before.
In Fisher’s case, she sued and argued that affirmative action was the reason she didn’t get into her dream school: University of Texas at Austin.
Then it turned out she likely just didn’t have the grades to get in. 92% of the spots went to state students who were in the top 10% of their class academically. Fisher didn’t make the cut for that, and then had to compete for the remaining 10%. She had a SAT below 1200 and her GPA was 3.59. I can’t speak for her extracurriculars but a NPR article describes her SAT as “good, but not great.”
Fisher claimed that she knew people of colour in her high school with lower grades were getting into U of T, but there is a 92% chance she is wrong about that. Also, the stats show that 42 white students with lower grades than Fisher got into U of T at Austin. Only 5 minorities (one black, four Latino) got in with lower grades. Additionally, 168 black and Latino students with better grades were not admitted.
So, all that to say that someone’s idea of AA doesn’t always vibe with the truth.
Now that admissions are coming around again, some of the same people who thought the end of AA would make admissions easy, are finding that may not be the case. This trepidation is revealing some of the anti-blackness of the commentators. Many columnists I’ve read so far are Asian, and demonstrate their own misunderstanding of privilege.
Let me use this article as an example.
So, the author acknowledges the model minority trope, where Asians are viewed as the next best thing to white. According to the stereotype, they’re light-skinned, docile and intelligent. As opposed to black people, who are stereotyped as stupid, lazy and violent.
This passage bothered me and led me to write this post:
There’s a left-leaning ideology that Asians are white adjacent — meaning we generally come from privilege. They live in a limousine liberal bubble and haven’t visited Chinatown tenements where entire families crowd into one-room apartment as adults work at factory and restaurant jobs.
The idea that “privilege” applies only to money demonstrates a very basic understanding of the term. Let’s say an Asian person and a black person are both going for an entry-level job. They dress similar and have similar hairstyles. They’re both at the same level of verbal and written communication skills.
For an employer, the stereotype of Asians as hard-working and well-mannered might serve that applicant well. The Asian applicant may fare better than the black applicant. That is regardless of where they both come from or where they live.
If an Asian person is driving a Ferrari, he’s less likely to be pulled over for fear that he stole the car. That applies no matter where he lived. Some wealthy person could run a social experiment for fun, and rent a Ferrari for a black and Asian person to drive around for an hour each. The experience each person has in the car will be different.
Privilege is not only about money. As a dark-skinned black person I have had people tell me that they’re surprised “I speak so well” or that I have a master’s degree. Yes, Asians may get the stereotype of not being good English speakers, but they are stereotyped as intelligent. I have been in many situations where I have to “prove” that to combat someone’s ingrained idea of what a black person is supposed to be.
There are some valid points made by the author, such as:
Asians are being pitted against Black and brown people by conservative and liberal activists. Instead of forcing minority groups to fight for scraps, policy makers and educators alike should focus on the bigger problems in college admissions — too many mediocre students, themselves adjacent of privilege, are regularly admitted at America’s elite colleges. They are the children of alumni, the children of faculty and recruited athletes.
I don’t know if I agree with liberals pitting them against brown and black people. Asian students definitely helped to start the anti- AA charge. However, I agree that the focus should be on policy makers. Legacy kids are a real issue for meritocracy.
Again, the mention of athletes comes across as anti-black, since a lot of sports college funding comes from sports such as football and basketball. So do we also want to target the same type of “working-class” kids you went to school with, who are trying to better themselves with the tools they have?
Again, you can blame the system for that. Do you think unis want to lose out on the money they generate from sports?
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