At the forefront of the battle against affirmative action is Edward Blum, founder of the vaguely named organization Students for Fair Admissions (SFA). In addition to gutting the Voting Rights Act, Blum orchestrated the controversial Texas v. Fisher case, in which white student Abigail Fisher argued that she was rejected from the University of Texas because of her race. After the failed case, Blum said that he “needed Asian plaintiffs” to challenge affirmative action once again.
“I needed Asian plaintiffs,” said Edward Blum the force behind several failed lawsuits challenging the consideration of race in university admissions by pitting #peopleofcolor against one another. #NotYourCover #HarvardLawsuit pic.twitter.com/L2okJsTSgu
— Legal Defense Fund (@NAACP_LDF) August 2, 2018
Blum’s intentions haven’t changed since Texas v. Fisher. For him, ending affirmative action was never about protecting the interests of Asian Americans and other racial minorities—if it were, he might listen to the 65 percent of Asian Americans in support of racial considerations in college admissions. Instead, his attacks on affirmative action will have the effect of marginally improving admissions chances for whites, only to devastate the educational opportunities of underrepresented groups.
One analysis of data from state-wide affirmative action bans shows that the chances of underrepresented minorities gaining admission to highly selective public colleges decreased by 23 percent without accounting for race in the admissions process.
Meanwhile, a 2016 study determined that even if all blacks and Hispanics were to be removed from Harvard’s admissions pool, the admissions chances of both Asian and white students would only rise by about one percent. If white and Asian Americans want to improve their prospects in education, fighting against school diversity and their fellow minorities isn’t the way to do it.
This isn’t the first time white Americans like Edward Blum have used Asian Americans as “racial mascots” to drive a wedge between people of color. After the United States horrifically relocated thousands of Japanese Americans to internment camps in the 1940s, the country embraced the image of Asians as a “model minority” as a sort of international P.R. stunt to repair America’s reputation overseas. As the image of the industrious Asian spread, Asian Americans became the first and only group to close the income gap with whites. According to researchers at Brown University, this change in Asian American earnings and success was not primarily the result of superior education, but rather because of the simple fact that white Americans became less racist toward their Asian counterparts.
That’s not to say that Asian American discrimination doesn’t exist today or to imply that all Asian Americans are well-off. In the U.S., income inequality among Asians is greater than that of all other racial groups. Southeast Asian Americans in particular have poverty rates substantially higher than the national average. Indulging in the model minority myth by insisting that blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans reach the success of the Asian American community through grit and determination not only ignores the institutional racism that affects those underrepresented groups, but also the racial disparities that still exist within the diverse Asian American experience.
Instead of demanding that minority students exhibit unrealistic levels of “merit” in the face of enormous struggles, let’s do away with admissions preferences that exist to serve the entrenched elite.
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