The Department of Justice’s decision to investigate into whether Asian-Americans are discriminated against by affirmative action is a farce.
This is another sign of how the Trump administration intentionally seeks out anti-black stances and policies, and Asian-Americans should be - and rightfully are - outraged that the White House is using the complaints of a small group of Asian-Americans to try to dismantle a program that has been critical to bringing diversity and opportunity to our nation’s colleges.
Edward Blum - a white, conservative anti-affirmative action advocate - has been personally taking up the Asian-American cause in an effort to end affirmative action. He was behind the Abigail Fisher lawsuit - the case of the white girl who felt entitled to a spot at University of Texas - and has been using advertisements bearing Asian faces to try to reach out to Asians for his next anti-affirmative action plan.
But “Asian-American” is an extremely broad umbrella, and how affirmative action affects different Asians matters. When people are talking about Asians who are allegedly overrepresented at colleges, they overwhelmingly mean Asians of Taiwanese, Indian, Korean, Sri Lankan, Pakistani or Chinese descent.
Other groups, like Laotian, Cambodian and Hmong Asian-Americans, who don’t have the same number of Instagram followers, are severely underrepresented in colleges and are far more likely to hold no college degree at all. These groups aren’t hurt by affirmative action - they benefit from it.
Statistics also indicate that groups like Hmong Asian-Americans are more likely than other Asian-Americans to be living in poverty, suggesting that the Asian model minority myth is distorted by variances in income - which we already know directly correlates to college acceptance.
It’s important in this discussion to keep in mind that despite the DOJ’s decision, the vast majority of Asian-Americans do agree that affirmative action is necessary and helpful.
Many Asian-American activists have responded to attempts to build a political divide between Asian-Americans and Black Americans with commentary on how and why they support affirmative action, using hashtags such as #notyourmodelminority to emphasize an unwillingness to be complicit. According to the Urban Institute, a full 78 percent of Asian-Americans support affirmative action.
The White House would like to convince you that affirmative action discriminates against Asians, a minority in the United States, because they think that argument will disarm liberals. The fact that it’s misleading and based on manipulated and incomplete data doesn’t really matter - conservative media is pushing the idea that affirmative action discriminates against Asians because it helps their cause for white people.
That’s why white conservatives like Blum are so heavily invested in the perceived Asian plight - not because they care about the Asian experience in America, but because they want to dismantle affirmative action for white Americans.
This is part of a long-time goal by conservatives to pit minorities against each other - in this case, the affirmative action debate ostensibly tries to pit Asian-Americans against Black Americans, creating a narrative in which Asians should resent the underperforming Black students who failed to lift themselves up for taking spots in college admissions.
In the 1960s, Asian-American activists were photographed bearing signs that read “Yellow Peril Supports Black Power.” It signified a defiance of the model minority expectation, solidarity with one of the most discriminated-against racial groups in the United States and a fervent sense of protest against the demands of the American government. That fervor still exists today - Asian-Americans will not be complicit with the DOJ’s attempt to repeal affirmative action.