Why affirmative action against Asian-American students needs to end too

Immediately after the US Supreme Court announced its landmark verdict striking down affirmative action in college admissions by a 6:3 division on ideological lines, it was pointed out that one of the majority verdict judges entered law school when that policy was there. That, in effect, bolstered the main contention of this Black ‘conservative’ judge that race-based policies predetermine that all Blacks are victims who need help rather than gauge them on merit and abilities. Justice Clarence Thomas, in fact, has recounted several times that he was resented in college by others because he was part of Yale’s stated move for “diversity”, which led him to begrudge the policy which denied his own agency in getting where he had — on merit. As there is no certainty on whether his high school graduation grades were sufficient to ensure admission otherwise, he is now deemed a traitor to the very cause that put him in the place to judge it! US Chief Justice John Roberts, writing on behalf of the majority on Students for Fair Admissions Inc vs President and Fellows of Harvard, said that colleges can consider race in their admission schemes only to allow an applicant to explain how their race influenced their character in a way that would have a concrete effect on the university. But he has clarified that all students “must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual, not on the basis of race”. This verdict overruled the 2003 Supreme Court decision in Grutter vs Bollinger that had upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s consideration of race “as one factor among many in an effort to assemble a student body that is diverse in ways broader than race.” In that case, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor writing the majority verdict had reaffirmed that “student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify the use of race in university admissions”. However, she had also stated that such race-conscious (and, in effect race-based) admissions policies should not be there in perpetuity. She had suggested that 25 years later (by 2028), “the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest” in diversity. Unfortunately, affirmative action has not waned, and race-based admission policies continue in the US, albeit not along expected lines only. Anti-discrimination has led to different discrimination. Here the counter argument to Justice Thomas by the other Black US Supreme Court judge Ketanji Brown Jackson that “deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in real life” rings true, but not solely in the way she meant. Affirmative action for more diversity in universities actually recognises only three “races”: Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans. It ignores Asians, also a racial minority — South Asians (mostly Indians) and East Asians (mostly Chinese). Affirmative action has not included them because they punch above their weight. Asian percentages in colleges are disproportionate to their population in the US: 60 per cent of college-going age Asians are enrolled, compared to just 38 per cent of whites of the same age, 37 per cent Blacks, 33 per cent of Hispanics, 28 per cent of Native Americans, and 35% of mixed race in that same age bracket. But notably, Jewish representation is just as “disproportionately” high as they comprise about 2 per cernt of the population. In fact, the history of Jewish enrolment in universities there, particularly in the Ivy League (topmost East Coast institutions), has a curious parallel with that of Asians now. Jews comprise 23.9 per cent of Brown University’s undergraduate cohort, 22.3 per cent of Columbia, 21.5 per cent of Cornell, 16 per cent of UPenn, 12.2 per cent of Yale, 9.9 per cent of Harvard, 9.6 per cent of Princeton and 8.8 per cent of Dartmouth students. And they have a significantly higher than 2 per cent presence in many other US universities too. A century ago, many Ivy League colleges tried to lower Jewish enrolments. But by the mid-1960s (when attitudes towards Jews changed after World War II’s horrors), a New York Times survey revealed that 40 per cent of students at UPenn and Columbia were Jewish, between 20 per cent-25 per cent at Harvard, Yale and Cornell and 13 per cent-20 per cent at Dartmouth, Princeton and Brown. Interestingly, most Jewish-American Nobel laureates of the past 50 years are from these colleges. In a US population of 336 million, Asian-Americans number just 24 million (7 per cent of the total), of which the largest groups are Chinese (5.2 million), Indian (4.8 million), Filipino (4.4 million), Vietnamese (2.3 million), Korean (2.0 million) and Japanese (1.6). But Indian-Americans constitute a mere 1.4 per cent of the total population, and they are not all of college-going age. Of 4.8 million, only 60 per cent of those among them who are aged between 18 and 24 years are in college. But a deceptive equivalence has been applied to deny Asians across the board the affirmative action advantage given to other minorities. Compared to 24 million Asian-Americans, there are 47 million people who identify as Black (14 per cent of the total), of which 37 per cent of the 18-24 age group are in college. Significantly, the Black community is mostly young, with 45 per cent under 30 and 12 per cent over 65. Of the 62 million Hispanics (18 per cent of the total), 33 per cent of that age are college-goers. Many Asians emigrated to the US for a better education, not necessarily only a better life. The Jewish community and Asians share a reverence for learning and place huge emphasis on higher education. University is practically de rigeuer among both demographics, preceded by high academic achievements in school, especially among the immigrant generations. So while Asian university presence is high, mere statistics without social and historical contexts are deceptive. Sir CV Raman, the first Indian and Asian to be awarded a Nobel Prize in sciences (for Physics in 1930) and also the first-ever Bharat Ratna in 1954, reportedly smashed the latter to protest against Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s state control of scientific research. His nephew Subrahmanyan Chandrashekhar and Har Gobind Khorana went on to win Nobel prizes in 1983 (medicine) and 1966 (physics), but as Indian-Americans, and while working in US universities… The fact that Asians were part of the movement against the unfair application of affirmative action that led to the US Supreme Court case and verdict shows the rising frustration at skews in the land of equal opportunity. India now regrets that the red-tape-ridden approach to higher education and research in their homeland sent so many bright Indians off to US universities, never to return. That their descendants now find it hard to go to university there is tragically ironic. The expected blowback has also begun now, in the form of fresh litigation. The Boston-based Lawyers for Civil Rights has filed a federal complaint earlier this week challenging the tradition of “legacy admissions” at Harvard, arguing that giving preferential admission to alumni offspring discriminates against “students of colour”. Indeed, 70 per cent of Harvard’s donor or legacy applicants are white but this practice actually discriminates against meritorious students of all races. Indian-Americans may have lost out on places at Harvard and other universities as much due to legacy quotas as affirmative action policies. Anything that skews admissions away from merit must be excised. In India, reservations in universities for certain traditionally disadvantaged communities have also ensured a continued brain drain to the US. This Supreme Court verdict may see a bigger rush of students from India to add to the desi diaspora applicants already there. The high profile of Indian-Americans in corporate America (who mostly arrived there for higher studies) probably instigates more antipathy from other minorities in the US as well as the majority race, much like the prominence of Jews once used to do. However, all forms of anti-Semitism are unacceptable now; a similar non-tolerance of unfairness against meritorious Asians in the US, particularly in universities — the building blocks of success — needs to be inculcated as well. The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed are personal. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .