Please, Don’t Strike Down Affirmative Action

By Andrew Yuan ’24

Author’s Note: Whether the Affirmative Action policy itself should be amended is not a concern of this piece. I wrote this opinion piece only to rebuke the arguments against Affirmative Action previously delivered in front of the Supreme Court and to illustrate the dire consequences of full abolition of Affirmative Action. 

No, Affirmative Action is not racist to Asians. 

On January 24, 2022, the conservative-dominated Supreme Court decided to hear two cases attempting to challenge Affirmative Action, the gravest threats to the 61-year old executive order since its  creation: Students For Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. President and Fellows of Harvard and Students For Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. University of Carolina. 

When I first heard the argument that Affirmative Action was a racist policy against Asians and Asian Americans, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud, not exactly at its logical fallacy, but more at the surrealism associated with this claim. It doesn’t mean that SFFA’s case is meaningless without any merit; it points to the dangerous highway that conservative media and our current political discourse have led us to. 

SFFA’s case, that affirmative action harms Asians, assumes a long-time racist theory that has rooted in American communities for decades: the model minority. The claim follows that due to Asians’ superior intelligence than other demographics, they achieve better standardized testing scores and GPAs required for college admissions, and thus are inherently entitled to or deserving of better college acceptances. 

Sure, if you look at the test scores of Asians compared to other races on SATs or ACTs, you may find some grounds to favor SFFA’s case. Yet the paradigm in which Asian-identifying and white people achieve higher standardized testing scores is a racist one to begin with.

In the United States, the first “standardized testing” appeared in 1890, when white southern Democrats invented literacy tests to disenfranchise Black voters whose votes might strip them from their legislative powers and, subsequently, segregationist agendas. At the time, Black people in America lacked access to education or the resources needed to further one’s education. In states highly populated with immigrants, local politicians allocated less funding to first-generation American communities and extended literacy tests to bar predominantly Latine citizens from voting. 

Centuries of slavery, continued suppression of immigrants from Latin America and massacres of indigenous communities contrast with the highly selective and relatively more successful (prior to immigration) Asian immigrants that come to this country with more wealth for test prep. I do not deny the racism that Asians have experienced in American history, yet such racism dims in the cruelty that other demographics have suffered. Does such disparity not contribute to the systematically predetermined inequity between racial minorities? 

If anything, SFFA’s claim only encourages structural changes needed in standardized testing systems and questions the racist history buried beneath SAT and ACT’s decades of influence in the college admission process. I agree. Standardized testing quantifies students’ success and talent that ought not to be quantified in the first place.

Considering the years of systematic racism and suppression that other racial minorities have experienced under a white hierarchy, affirmative action only combats the restrictive and racist testing systems set in place. 

The characterization of Affirmative Action as a racist policy towards Asians excludes several Asian communities as the so-called “racism to Asians” only applies to particular “successful” ethnic groups. Bhutanese-Americans and Mongolese-Americans, for example, have one of the highest poverty rates in this country and many can hardly afford highly expensive test prep training. 

Then, some other Asian parents argue that even taking away standardized testing, Asians are more qualified for college than students of other races due to their proven superior intelligence. I need not to explain how such a justification is deeply rooted in racism and discriminatory eugenics. 

I understand why many Asians might think that Affirmative Action is inherently racist to us: it strips us of privileges that we have long benefitted from the college application process. Yet this privilege is clearly bestowed upon us by a racist system set in place to empower Asians and white people in the interest of stifling the progress of other racial minorities. 

SFFA’s court cases reveal, if anything, the restrictive mindset that we as Asians may have set up around our perception of progress. 

In an Asian Voices meeting a few weeks ago, an AAPI-identifying student questioned why we see a less represented Asian cultural identity than those of other racial minorities, specifically in music. 

Perhaps we have subconsciously trapped ourselves in the notion that only education empowers progress. For the same reason, Asian parents have been categorized into a stereotype of helicopter parenting and pressuring children for success: the same group of Asian parents who stood behind a conservative lobbyist group to fight against the anti-racism agenda. For the same reason, Asian students have been expected to live up to their parents’ expectations in STEM and standardized tests, subconsciously catering to the “model minority” bigotry. 

We haven’t seen Asian culture represented in art, literature or music until very recently. As Asians strive to fight for a voice on the table, SFFA seeks to backtrack on the progress of Asian representation in America and reinforce the “successful Asian” stereotype upon us. 

Ultimately at the core of SFFA’s case and in my conversation with other Asian parents, I see apprehension. 

Asian parents are apprehensive that while their children have grown increasingly focused in art, activism, athletics and other realms of previously unexplored talents, they have grown rebellious against the path set by their parents. They are afraid that perhaps the financial success of Asians, which many attribute to the educational excellence of Asians at a young age, would be hindered by the prosperity of Asians in other realms. 

The repercussions of this apprehension live with many Asian students today. As hate crime against Asians rises, students live with a haunted past of successful Asians that have come before them and a present urge to fight for their rights and representation. 

At the root of the apprehension lies a group of old, white, neoconservative political strategists and businessmen who founded SFFA. They abuse the overwhelming apprehension imposed upon Asian communities by a white system and manipulate it to protect white interests. 

White Americans, on average, receive far more and far better education resources than do racial minorities. The same systematic privilege applies to white households in income, annual pay and neighborhood infrastructures. Throughout American history, white students have benefitted from a system designed by and for the white, non-immigrant population to succeed in the college admission process through donations, test prep programs and prominent extracurriculars on resumes. 

Let’s be clear: When Edward Blum founded SFFA with funds from conservative Searle Freedom Trust and DonorsTrust, they fought Affirmative Action to maintain the white supremacy in educational institutions, not to help Asian students.

When the liberal media paints Asians as hostile towards other racial minorities, the conservatives laugh in their white fragility. When Fox News pundits praise Asian parents as courageous soldiers fighting “woke culture,” the conservatives laugh in their white fragility. When Asians, black people, Latine Americans and indigenous people divide over their goals for racial progress, the conservatives laugh in their white fragility. They protect their interests by turning the racial minorities against each other. 

When this racist ideology becomes normalized to an extent that the Supreme Court is willing to entertain these groundless and ridiculous cases, such racist ideologies are reinforced in the minds of other non-Asian demographics and exacerbate the current racial tensions in America. 

At the end of the day, I am enraged and perhaps more disappointed at the controversies brought by SFFA v. Harvard and SFFA v. University of North Carolina. I am helpless too, helpless that as though we haven’t suffered through enough racism last year, an anti-racist agenda has been painted as discriminatory, helpless that there really is little we can do to fight against the demonic presence of systematic racism that comes back to haunt us. 

And that, my friends, is how white supremacy destroys us: divide and rule.