Oddly enough, I was excited to take my first PSAT, but before we even got started, I was faced with a question that made my stomach drop. As I filled in the bubble on my Scantron indicating that I was Asian, the question cemented in my mind for the first time, will this hurt me? Already nervous about the test, I began to wonder if in the eyes of college admissions officers, it was possible for me to stand out from a crowd of overperforming Asian kids. This sentiment is extremely popular among Asian students, many of which have experienced the way stereotypes create extra pressure to perform, but it is built on implicit bias and normalizes stereotypes about ourselves and other groups of color.

Asian Americans are now at the center of the fight against affirmative action, having become the tool of right-wing politicians and lobbyists who want to make illegal race-conscious hiring and admissions practices. Conservatives are claiming that affirmative action hurts Asian Americans, and despite a history of resistance in the Asian American community toward this idea, a new, exceptionally vocal, minority of Asian families have joined the conservative cause. 

We must push back against claims that affirmative action rewards Black and Latinx students while punishing white and Asian students as they imply that Black and Latinx students are undeserving and unqualified, which they are not. The notion that Asian Americans are discriminated against through affirmative action is rooted in anti-Black sentiment and leans on the model minority myth.  

On Nov. 12, a federal appeals court upheld a federal judge’s decision that Harvard University doesn’t discriminate against Asian applicants. The lawsuit alleged that Harvard’s race-conscious admissions practices discriminate against Asian Americans, citing lower admission rates despite higher academic performance. The group behind the lawsuit, Students for Fair Admissions, is headed by Edward Blum, a conservative legal strategist who has been trying to end affirmative action for years. While SFFA supposedly represents the interests of Asian Americans, 70% of Asian Americans support affirmative action, according to the Asian American Voter Survey. The 16% of Asian Americans who oppose it are allowed to become extremely vocal, having been given media platforms by conservatives like Blum. 

In California, voters opposed a constitutional amendment that would repeal Proposition 209 (1964) which made discriminating against or granting preferential treatment based on race and ethnicity by public institutions unlawful.

Racial discrimination against Asians in the admissions process exists, but conservatives have steered the conversation away from what hurts us, racial prejudice, and toward what they believe hurts them, affirmative action. In the 1980s, Asian American activists alleged that universities had deliberately made policy changes that discriminate against Asian applicants. Some top schools eventually admitted bias against Asian applicants with Stanford University even citing “latent bias” as the issue. More recently, documents from a federal investigation into racial bias in Princeton University’s admission offices revealed admissions officers wrote about Asian American applicants as having “very familiar profiles” and being “standard premeds.” Disparaging comments were also written about Black and Latinx students. Despite this, the investigation found the university was not discriminating against any racial groups and that race was never the sole factor in determining someone’s acceptance, rather a part of a holistic review process.

At its core, the fight against affirmative action is rooted in white supremacy. To believe that there can exist any admissions process that is completely fair and that in that process, white and Asian students would naturally rise above is built on the belief that Black and brown students are inherently lesser. Race should never be the sole factor in someone’s admission to college, but it should be an important factor in the holistic review process. This country still has a long way to go in achieving racial equality, and we won’t get there without affirmative action.

This story was originally published on U-High Midway on December 9, 2020.