We Won’t Go Back: Asian Americans and Racial Justice After Affirmative Action

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Parts of this essay are adapted from Janelle Wong and Viet Thanh Nguyen, “Affirmative action isn’t hurting Asian Americans. Here’s why that myth survives,” Los Angeles Times (June 14, 2023) https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-06-14/affirmative-action-supreme-court-harvard-case-asian-americans

2. Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (2023) https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf

3. Ellen D. Wu, The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).

4. Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou. The Asian American Achievement Paradox (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2015); Janelle Wong, “Asian Americans and the Anti-Racist Equity Agenda: Contradictions and Common Ground,” Economic Policy Institute, 2022, https://www.epi.org/anti-racist-policy-research/asian-americans-and-the-anti-racist-equity-agenda-contradictions-and-common-ground.

5. See note 2.

6. Alvin Chang, “What the SAT really measures: Predicting what we might do can’t be untangled from where we’ve been,” Vox, July 12, 2019, https://www.vox.com/videos/2019/7/12/20690615/sat-score-measures-video.

7. Andre M. Perry, “Students need more than an SAT adversity score, they need a boost in wealth,” Brookings, 2019, https://policycommons.net/artifacts/4144895/students-need-more-than-an-sat-adversity-score-they-need-a-boost-in-wealth/4953356/; Matthew Scheidt, Ryan Senkpeil, John Chen, Allison Godwin, and Edward Berger, “SAT does not spell SUCCESS: How non-cognitive factors can explain variance in the GPA of undergraduate engineering and computer science students” (presented at 2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)), 1–5; Elaine M. Allensworth and Kallie Clark, “Are GPAs an Inconsistent Measure of College Readiness across High Schools? Examining Assumptions about Grades versus Standardized Test Scores,” University of Chicago Consortium on School Research (2019).

8. Alia Wong, “Asian Americans and the future of affirmative action,” The Atlantic (2016).

9. Thomas J. Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford, No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).

10. Scott Jaschik, “The Power of Race: New research on admissions at elite colleges shows the role of affirmative action, the extent and limits of cross-racial interaction among students, and significant gaps in academic performance,” Inside Higher Ed, November 3, 2009, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/11/03/power-race.

11. Anemona Hartocollis, “Harvard Rated Asian-American Applicants Lower on Personality Traits, Suit Says,” New York Times, June 15, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollment-applicants.html..

12. See page 84 of District Court ruling: https://www.harvard.edu/admissionscase/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2021/06/first_circuit_court_of_appeals_opinion.pdf; and page 47 https://www.harvard.edu/admissionscase/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2021/06/2019–10-30_dkt_672_findings_of_fact_and_conclusions_of_law.pdf.

13. Harvard Handbook 2013–14, https://www.dropbox.com/s/ye07och6hpq8ucd/DX%205%20%28Interviewer%20Handbook%202013–14%29.pdf?dl = 0.

14. See footnote 49 on page 75: https://www.harvard.edu/admissionscase/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2021/06/2019–10-30_dkt_672_findings_of_fact_and_conclusions_of_law.pdf..

15. Ileana Najarro, “Teachers Expect More from Asian American Students” EdWeek, 2022, https://www.edweek.org/leadership/teachers-expect-more-of-asian-american-students-is-bias-the-reason/2022/10..

16. Zachary Bleemer, “Affirmative action, mismatch, and economic mobility after California’s Proposition 209,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 137, no. 1 (2022): 115–60.

17. M.N. Bastedo, D. Bell, J.S. Howell, M. Hurwitz, and G. Perfetto, “Information dashboards and selective college admissions: A field experiment” (paper presented at the ASHE annual meeting, Houston, TX, November 2017).

18. Paul M. Ong, “The affirmative action divide,” in Asian American politics: Law, participation, and policy, ed. Don T. Nakanishi & James S. Lai (New York, NY: Routledge, 2003): 377–406.

19. Sumi Cho, “A Theory of Racial Mascotting (remarks presented at the First Annual Asian Pacific American Law Professors Conference, October 14, 1994).

20. Janelle Wong, “Asian Americans and the Anti-Racist Equity Agenda: Contradictions and Common Ground,” Economic Policy Institute, 2022, https://www.epi.org/anti-racist-policy-research/asian-americans-and-the-anti-racist-equity-agenda-contradictions-and-common-ground.

21. Read more about the study here: O.A. Poon, M.S. Segoshi, L. Tang, K.L. Surla, C. Nguyen, D.D., “Asian Americans, affirmative action, and the political economy of racism: A multidimensional model of raceclass frames,” Harvard Educational Review 89, no. 2 (2019): 201–26.

22. Sally Chen, Douglas Lee, OiYan Poon, and Janelle Wong, “Sounding the Alarm and Reclaiming an Asian American Politics for Racial Equity,” in Asian American Contemporary Activism: Movement Moments and New Visions for the 21^st Century, ed. Diane Wong and Mark Tseng-Putterman (New York: New York University Press, in press).

23. Julie J. Park and Amy Liu, “Interest Convergence or Divergence? A Critical Race Analysis of Asian Americans, Meritocracy, and Critical Mass in the Affirmative Action Debate,” Journal of Higher Education 85, no. 1 (October 31, 2016): 36–64, https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2014.11777318.

24. Michele S. Moses, Living with Moral Disagreement: The Enduring Controversy about Affirmative Action (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016).

25. J. Yi and N.R. Todd, “Internalized model minority myth among Asian Americans: Links to anti-Black attitudes and opposition to affirmative action,” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 27, no. 4 (2021): 569–78, https://doi.org/10.1037/cdp0000448.

26. Daniel Hirschman and Ellen Berrey, “The Partial Deinstitutionalization of Affirmative Action in U.S. Higher Education, 1988 to 2014,” Sociological Science 4 (August 28, 2017): 449–68, doi 10.15195/v4.a18.

27. Kristin Wright, “A federal appeals court blocks a grant program for Black female entrepreneurs,” NPR, October 3, 2023, https://www.npr.org/2023/10/03/1203221945/affirmative-action-black-female-entrepreneurs.

28. Cusano v. Cook County, et al. (1:2022cv07196).

29. Ann Morning and Daniel Sabbah, “From Sword to Plowshare: Using Race for Discrimination and Antidiscrimination in the United States,” International Social Science Journal 57, no. 183 (2005): 57–73.

30. Robert T. Teranishi, Bach Mai Dolly Nguyen, Mike Hoa Nguyen, Jason Chan, Cathy Chu, Cynthia M. Alcantar, Edward R. Curammeng, and Edwin Hernandez, “The Racialized Experiences of Asian American and Pacific Islander Students: An Examination of Campus Racial Climate at the University of California, Los Angeles,” National Commission on Asian American & Pacific Islander Research on Education (CARE) Report (2016).

31. Jude Paul Matias Dizon, “Lesson on Ethnic Data Disaggregation from the ‘Count Me In’ Campaign,” The Vermont Connection 32, no. 3 (2011): 21–31; OiYan A. Poon, Jude Paul Matias Dizon, and Dian Squire, “Count Me In!: Ethnic Data Disaggregation Advocacy, Racial Mattering, and Lessons for Racial Justice Coalitions,” Journal Committed to Social Change on Race and Ethnicity (JCSCORE) 3, no. 1 (2017): 92–124.

32. Kristine Jan Cruz Espinoza and Reneé T. Watson, “In the Hands of Students: The Charge of a Minority-Serving Institution Student Council at a Dual-Designated Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution and Hispanic-Serving Institution,” AAPI Nexus: Policy, Practice and Community 19, nos. 1–2 (2022): 35–56.

33. Julie J. Park and Mitchell J. Chang. Asian American and Pacific Islander Serving Institutions: The motivations and challenges behind seeking a federal designation. AAPI Nexus: Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders Policy, Practice, and Community 7, no. 2 (2009): 107–25; Julie J. Park and Jude Paul Matias Dizon. “The Push for Asian American Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions: Highlighting the Perspectives of Student Activists.” The Journal of Higher Education 93, no. 2 (2021): 195–219.

34. Robert T. Teranishi, “Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving Institutions: Areas of Growth, Innovation, and Collaboration,” AAPI Nexus: Policy, Practice and Community, 9, nos. 1–2 (2011): 151–55.

35. Mike Hoa Nguyen, Demeturie Toso-Lafaele Gogue, Kristine Jan Cruz Espinoza, Patricia Neilson, and Rikka J. Venturanza, “Celebrating 15 years of Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions: Exploring how colleges and universities become AANAPISIs; serve Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Students; and institutionalize their initiatives,” APIA Scholars (2023), https://apiascholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/AANAPISI_NationalReport_2022_Digital.pdf.

36. U.S. Department of Education. Lists of postsecondary institutions enrolling populations with significant percentages of undergraduate minority students (n.d.), https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/edlite-minorityinst.html.

37. Neil Gotanda, “A Critique of ‘Our Constitution Is Color-Blind’,” Stanford Law Review 44, no. 1 (1991): 1–68.