Did US Supreme Court's affirmative action ruling really help? Asian-Americans aren't sure

Julia Kim, a 17-year-old Korean-American high school junior busy researching colleges, feels unsettled by last month's US Supreme Court decision on affirmative action.

Her concerns: that it will add more confusion to the already opaque admissions process, pit minorities against each other and threaten to undercut the diversity she seeks after growing up in a predominately white suburb.

"I'm going into the process much more frustrated than before, having the weight of knowing that your experience as an Asian person is not going to be accounted for as much as it should," said Kim, from Columbia, Missouri.

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"Banning affirmative action is not good and works to serve the interests of white people, white supremacy in particular.

"I know there are a lot of narratives in the Asian-American community that affirmative action hurts us, but I personally disagree."

On June 29, the court effectively ended race-conscious admissions practices in US higher education, upending four decades of precedent.

The six-to-three decision overturned lower courts in finding that Harvard and the University of North Carolina operated discriminatory quota systems that unfairly benefited less academically qualified students over Asian-Americans and whites.

As the dust starts to settle and Asian-Americans take stock, some are concerned that the result may not help much and could even work against the community - even though the campaign was fought in their name.

"It's not a panacea," said Gabriel Chin, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. "Whether this helps Asian-Americans at all, I have my doubts."

Although the fallout remains to be seen, a Georgetown University study estimates that admission based solely on test scores would decrease Asian spots at top colleges by one percentage point - to 10 per cent from 11 per cent - while African-American and Latino entries would be nearly halved to 11 per cent.

The biggest projected winners would be whites, whose share would rise to 75 per cent from 66 per cent, and the affluent.

"White students would gain the most when race as a factor would be removed," said Margaret M. Chin, a sociology professor at Hunter College in New York.

That possible outcome has raised concerns that the Asian-American community was used. The two cases the court considered were brought by the conservative activist Edward Blum, who is white.

Blum, who has since vowed to extend his efforts into employment, minority contracts and other areas, tried unsuccessfully in an earlier case to upend affirmative action using white women as plaintiffs.

"Affirmative action policies have played an important role in securing Asian-American access to higher education," the Asian American Advocacy Fund civic group said in a statement.

"The white supremacist agendas behind these lawsuits use the small number of Asian-Americans against affirmative action as pawns in their efforts - weaponising the 'model minority' myth to divide our communities."

A related fear is that Asians, already disproportionately represented in top colleges, could see further societal backlash if they are seen reducing slots at top universities for other minorities and even poor whites.

Despite a US population share of 7 per cent, for example, Asians already make up 28 per cent of admissions at Harvard and 21 per cent at Yale.

This follows a sharp rise in prejudice and violence against Asian-Americans around the pandemic, inflamed by the "Chinese virus" and "kung flu" rhetoric brandished by the former president Donald Trump and others.

"Will the problem be a change from being seen as needing affirmative action for Americans to 'there are too many Asians'?" Gabriel Chin asked.

"It could fuel Asian hate, anti-Asian violence once we open that Pandora's box."

While many Asian parents hope the Supreme Court decision will open wide the gates to Harvard, Yale and other elite campuses for their children, uncertainty surrounding the decision could drag on for years.

Even as the court largely struck down the use of race in admissions, it left open race as part of a candidate's experience in considering applications, such as personal essays. But the court did not define those limits even as it warned that this carveout could not be used to maintain a now-outlawed quota system.

Mapping out those limits is expected to involve extensive litigation. Just days after the decision, black and Latino groups filed suit against Harvard, arguing that the university's legacy programme, which favours the children of predominantly white alumni, was also discriminatory.

Another worry is that the results could spur discord between the Asian and black communities in the US, two groups that have seen their share of differences.

Sunnie Liu, 24, an art and history double major who recently graduated from Yale, is a founding member of the non-profit Xin Sheng Project, which tracks misinformation on WeChat.

While polls show that over half of the Asian-American community supports affirmative action, Liu said that a vocal minority on WeChat - mostly first-generation, upper middle class Chinese suburbanites - opposes it.

Liu, the daughter of working-class Chinese immigrants from Houston, Texas, said that there were over 65 right-wing Chinese-American WeChat accounts, compared with three that were more left leaning, whose voices often get shouted down, citing Columbia Journalism Review data.

"WeChat groups that circulate news and discussion, including on affirmative action, become chambers for spreading right-wing misinformation and arguments," Liu said.

"A common false narrative blames 'inner-city black and brown kids' for supposedly taking away seats from Asian-Americans who are more deserving."

A Pew Research poll released shortly before the court announced its decision found that 53 per cent of those in US ethnic communities who had heard of affirmative action supported it, with one-fifth against.

But Chinese were the most opposed, followed closely by Vietnamese and Korean communities; Indians and Filipinos were the most supportive.

Asian-American supporters of the court decision argue that the US no longer needs special fairness provisions for racial groups and that "merit" should prevail.

Particularly galling for some was a provision in Harvard's admission process that, according to the lawsuit, gave Asian-Americans a lower personality score drawn from essays, recommendations and alumni interviews.

"I am living my American Dream because, in this country, your actions determine your success - not your race and ethnicity," Representative Michelle Steel, Republican of California, posted on Twitter.

Steel, a Korean-American, recently won her election after a race-tinted campaign against another Asian-American candidate.

Stanley Ng, a long-time Brooklyn resident, said he got frustrated nearly 20 years ago when he found that Asian-American students were not eligible for prep courses to help underprivileged students get accepted into top New York public high schools.

In 2007, Ng filed suit and eventually won - well after his children had graduated - cementing his opposition to affirmative action.

"It's about time," he said. "We've been waiting for this. It finally came true."

Ng, who met Blum years ago when Blum was recruiting Asians for his lawsuits, said he didn't believe Blum was using Asians as proxies for his agenda and didn't know whether the ruling would ultimately increase academic admissions for Asians.

"It used to be, because of your last name and where you lived, you were automatically disadvantaged," Ng said. "At least that argument will go away now."

Most parents in any community want their children to attend top schools, the gateway to a better life.

But admission into Harvard carries particular resonance for many first-generation immigrant families from countries with relatively few name-brand colleges - Tsinghua or Peking University, Yonsei or Korea University, the Indian Institute of Technology - resulting in a near-obsession with getting into a few Ivy League universities in pursuit of the American dream.

Like many issues in the country's diverse Asian community, polarisation over affirmative action also tends to break down along the community's many educational, political and generational fault lines.

New immigrants often believe that their best path to success involves getting ahead of other minorities.

Their US-born counterparts are often more supportive of collective attempts to break glass ceilings, having seen how Asians gained from the 1960s civil rights struggles that finally abolished national-origin quotas that long penalised Chinese.

"The main concern is division within different marginalised communities," said Kim, the Missouri high school student. "The 'model minority' myth is intentionally made to be a wedge with black people."

Asia's long history of all-or-nothing testing, dating to the Chinese Imperial examinations in the Sui dynasty (581-618 AD), also has resonance.

"The funny thing about this is, there are so many Asian-American parents, especially from Korea, China, Japan, who didn't like the one-test system in their own country, talk about how brutal it was," said John Yang, the president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, a civic group.

"And now to suggest that a test should be the be-all and end-all is very unfortunate."

Yang also sees the singular focus on Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT and a few others as a bit narrow, given the huge range of good US schools from which to choose.

For Liu, the recent Yale graduate, long-time Asian-Americans also bear responsibility by failing to better understand newer immigrant perspectives, address their concerns and bridge community divisions on affirmative action and other contentious issues.

Affirmative action supporters add that it has become a scapegoat for an admissions system that is frustrating, high-stakes, anxiety-provoking and often zero-sum for virtually all applicants.

Only 3.4 per cent of candidates are accepted into Harvard and 4.35 per cent into Yale - with many more spots often reserved for athletes, legacy candidates and those on the dean's list, carve-outs that receive far less attention.

"Affirmative action plays such a small role," Yang said. "There's a suggestion that if you got rid of one aspect of admissions that this aspect is punishing Asian-Americans."

Added Gabriel Chin, who has served on his university's admissions committee: "There are some people who are affirmatively racist. I hope Asian-Americans don't find themselves playing footsie with that crowd."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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