Affirmative action explained…and what Asian Americans can do in this moment

This piece is co-authored by Amie Ninh and Joyce Chiao, who write from our perspectives as Asian American women; former educators; and diversity, equity, and inclusion practitioners committed to racial solidarity and social justice.

In the coming days, the Supreme Court is expected to release its decisions in two cases challenging affirmative action. These two cases, brought forth by anti-affirmative action group Students for Fair Admissions, object to Harvard and University of North Carolina using a race-conscious admissions process. The Supreme Court heard these cases in October 2022. Many expect the conservative-majority court to rule against the use of affirmative action in college admissions.

Several challenges to affirmative action have made their way through the courts over the years, in lower level courts and all the way up to the Supreme Court. From the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), to Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), and most recently, Fisher v. University of Texas (2013 and 2016), the Supreme Court has upheld affirmative action — not without its policy tweaks — time and time again. While cases challenging affirmative action are not new, the two cases currently before the Supreme Court are distinct in that they solidly position Asian students in the policy debate spotlight. Led and funded by Edward Blum, the same conservative policy strategist who funded the Fisher v. University of Texas lawsuits, Students for Fair Admissions asserts that race-conscious college admissions is discriminatory to Asian students.

To understand this case and the impending decision, we want to be clear about what affirmative action is and is not. The weaponizing of affirmative action as a polarizing issue in our racial discourse has obfuscated how the policy actually works. Affirmative action is a practice that seeks to recognize the longstanding historical and still-present social inequities in the United States. It does so by considering the identity of marginalized groups as one factor in access-related decisions, such as in education and employment. Much of the public discourse surrounding affirmative action focuses on race, and indeed, the practice and policy was born out of the Civil Rights movement and originally aimed to dismantle racial disparities. However, a few years after its creation in 1961, affirmative action was also expanded to include religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, and — eventually — disability and veteran status.

Today, affirmative action extends to many of the programs we know. Beyond the use of affirmative action in college admissions, many of our programs surrounding hiring, supplier diversity, public funds spending allocation, and more are built around principles rooted in affirmative action and the understanding that race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, immigration status, disability, and veteran status are intricately linked to class, access, and inequity within the United States. Since its creation, affirmative action has benefited a wide community of BIPOC people, women, immigrants, disabled people, LGBTQ+ people, and veterans — to name a few. The impact on these groups has been far-reaching, in accessing opportunities as students, hiring candidates, promotion-hopeful employees, small business owners, suppliers and vendors, and more. The policy prompts institutions to demonstrate “good faith efforts” to address discrimination within their organizations or in broader society using recruitment, leadership development, and support programs. Thus, many of the diversity recruitment outreach, scholarship, executive training, and mentoring programs that we know today have foundations in affirmative action.

A common misconception surrounding affirmative action is the false belief that the use of an identity, such as race, as a factor in admissions and access-related decisions means that this identity becomes the only criteria for decision-making. Words like “quotas” and “reverse discrimination” are often invoked to incorrectly suggest that affirmative action is an unfair replacement for meritocracy. In reality, our systems have not been merit-based, and rigid quotas are considered unconstitutional. Affirmative action does not use race or any other identity as a singular criteria to meet rigid quotas. Instead, as in the case of race-conscious admissions, affirmative action allows organizations to consider identity, in an effort to address systemic inequities in access, as one factor among many others in holistic evaluations.

Given the spotlight on Asian communities in the current affirmative action debate, we want to address another critical misconception: contrary to the narrative that Asians overwhelmingly are harmed by affirmative action, Asian communities have been among those who have benefited most.

Asian American representation on selective college campuses grew after affirmative action pushed schools like Harvard to include historically-excluded students of color in their admissions. Asian Americans were among the key organizers advocating for affirmative action during this time. Intimately aware of anti-Asian racism and their sociopolitical origins in upholding anti-Blackness and white supremacy, Asian activists worked in support of and partnership with Black leaders in the push for civil rights.

Additionally, if the assumption that affirmative action harms Asian communities were true, then the dismantling of affirmative action would inversely demonstrate a rise in Asian representation. This assumption has been disproven. California, for example, implemented its ban on affirmative action in 1998. Admission rates for the broader Asian American and Pacific Islander community then proceeded to decline across seven of the eight campuses within the University of California campuses between 1998 and 2009, with UC Riverside as the one exception. Black, Latine, and Indigenous student enrollment also experienced steep declines. Furthermore, these impacts persisted beyond simply college admissions and enrollment. In a study of the long-term effects of the ban, Black and Latine individuals who applied to college after the ban went into effect were less likely to earn graduate degrees, less likely to earn degrees in the higher-paying STEM industry, and earned lower wages for the next 15–20 years than they were projected to earn if they had access to more selective universities. Meanwhile, the more selective campuses within the University of California system did experience enrollment increases for one particular group following the ban on affirmative action — white students.

A few other notable ripple effects to consider if affirmative action is overturned: if many of the access-related programs we know today are built upon the policy, then many of those — including those that benefit Asian communities — could be in jeopardy. Depending on the legal language in the ruling, a strike on affirmative action could extend to the Asian leadership development programs aimed at addressing the already-prominent gaps in Asian representation at the executive leadership level. It could roll back the affirmative action language that encourages organizations to contract with minority-owned businesses, a section that has served to benefit the nearly three million business owners within the Asian community.

In the debate of affirmative action, the stakes are high for Asians in the United States. Our fight, however, is not in the effort to dismantle the policy but instead to protect it.

Affirmative action and related issues (like selective enrollment at elite high schools across the country) are a lightning rod for the Asian American community, engendering a wide array of opinions and emotions. Even for us, emotions run high as we write this. We are frustrated and devastated by how we’ve gotten to this moment.

As two Asian American women, we’ve grappled with how to make sense of our social identities in the US racial context. We’ve personally navigated feelings of invisibility, confusion, anger, and pain over the years. And through ongoing dialogue, cross-racial community work, identity development, and healing, we’ve found strong grounding and conviction around how to more intentionally move through the world as Asian Americans dedicated to equity and justice. By no means are our personal journeys concluded. In fact, they’re never-ending. But we’ve learned to lean into moments where we are uniquely positioned to add voice and energy to the space. We’ve also learned that our history holds the unlock and the answers to understanding the current tensions in our community.

We won’t do a deep historical dive on the origins of the model minority. (For that, we highly recommend Ellen Wu’s The Color of Success). However, we think it’s particularly poignant to consider the following parallel: Throughout US history, many systematically marginalized groups — including Black Americans — have sought to portray themselves as individuals worthy of rights in the face of oppression. However, in the postwar era and amidst the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s, it was particularly convenient for powerful US leaders to only listen to the needs of Asian Americans, especially as the US attempted to rectify consequences of racially discriminatory policies on their global image. Thus, the model minority concept took hold and shifted the public perception of Asian Americans from threatening and sub-human to upstanding and family-oriented. The message was clear: Asian Americans were culturally pathologized as hardworking and therefore deserving of middle- and upper-class success, including the access and opportunities that came with it. But the model minority was not created for the altruistic benefit of Asian Americans; it was created as a means to shift the blame of inequitable systemic conditions away from underlying power structures and falsely onto the individual “failings” of other communities of color. Giving Asian Americans a tentative sense of inclusion was an easy trade to ensure that virtually nothing fundamental about power in the United States changed. This is how white supremacy thrives.

What’s ironic is that the creation of the model minority myth dovetailed at the same time that major changes to immigration policy opened pathways to the US for Asian immigrants of specific skills and professions. But these new pathways to immigration wouldn’t have even been possible without the Civil Rights Movement.

And while Asian Americans did not necessarily create the language of the model minority, some in the community were highly complicit in its adoption and proliferation.

In the present day, we see this happening again. The attack against affirmative action by conservatives has been long-standing. But, the model minority myth is an incredibly effective tool for conservatives to use to keep entrenched dynamics of power in place. And, it is now similarly convenient for a powerful group of people in the US to only hear the demands of a vocal minority of the Asian American community who are complicit in the proliferation of the myth. And those in power are not seeking to overturn affirmative action for the benefit of Asian Americans but to ensure power structures remain unchanged.

Of course, we recognize the survival tactics and strategies employed by Asian Americans experiencing systemic racism throughout history and now. When we believe that resources are scarce, it can push us operating within an already unjust system to take what we can and fight one another for the illusion of more access, even at the expense of other communities. And, simultaneously, “zero sum” survival strategies bear significant cost and weight. In this case, the model minority has been used continually to deny the demands of the Black community and keep racial inequity alive and well.

In fact, zero-sum thinking and race neutral solutions do not ultimately lead to more true equity and justice in the world. Take the Fair Housing Act as an example, which banned housing discrimination across a number of dimensions, including race, religion, disability, national origin, etc. Though the act was passed in 1968, the policy primarily focused on outlawing past discriminatory practices, such as redlining; it did little to address the continued legacy of homeownership and residential segregation patterns that resulted from these policies. Today, homeownership rates in the US are still highly inequitable: Home ownership rates have largely gone unaffected across racial groups even into 2021, and white folks still have the highest rates of home ownership.

The model minority has certainly granted the Asian American community a level of conditional racial advantage that we must acknowledge. When we engage in issues of race, we have to be able to contextualize and wrestle with sociopolitical history and how that positions us against other groups of color. We’ve also heard many in our community in recent years proclaim that we must reject the model minority for a myriad of reasons — We agree! And simultaneously, if we’re going to reject the model minority, we must reject all of it in all of its uses, even when it has seemingly benefited us.

We hope that one day we don’t need policies that correct for historical inequities. We hope that we truly live in a world where meritocratic ideals are a reality. But we are far from that.

Given these layers around affirmative action, Asian Americans cannot be neutral about this issue. When we see our community leveraged as a means to uphold white supremacy and anti-Blackness, we bear responsibility to name it explicitly…and then do something about it.

We believe that Asian Americans have a role to play in advocating for affirmative action, not dismantling it. We invite others to join this effort too and offer a few ways to do so below. This list is by no means exhaustive. We recognize that everyone can play different roles, as Deepa Iyer lays out in her Social Change Ecosystem Map. We encourage you to consider these and any other actions you can take within your own spheres of influence and context.

1. Advocate for talent and workforce development practices that foster diversity within your organizations — for hiring, promotions, supplier diversity, etc. Organize with your employee resource groups. Encourage your organizations to maintain their commitments to diversity. Continue reviews of intersectional data surrounding the demographics and experiences of your people, from your employees to suppliers to customers. Continue discussions about race and systemic racism within your organizations: your workplaces, alma maters, and neighborhood and community spaces. A rollback of affirmative action does not necessarily mean that all diversity, equity, and inclusion work must stop. Where we can continue these efforts, keep on holding steady.
2. Check your state laws to learn about affirmative action in your state. Some states have laws requiring affirmative action, and these laws can still serve to protect affirmative action even if the Supreme Court removes protections at a federal level. There may be efforts to roll back state laws if the Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action, so these laws must be carefully watched. Nine states have banned affirmative action, and many others do not have a law about affirmative action at all. Closely monitor your state legislation to determine what is happening. Contact your elected officials to codify, protect, and reinforce affirmative action at state and levels.
3. Get involved with leaders in this space that have organized around protecting affirmative action. Asian communities have been among those advocating in support of affirmative action for decades. Groups like Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC and Chinese for Affirmative Action have robust resources to learn more about affirmative action and its connection to the Asian community. Last year, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in support of race-conscious admissions at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. Over 120 Asian American groups and educators joined AALDEF in this amicus brief. Dr. OiYan A. Poon is a leading scholar whose research studies college access, higher education organization and policy, affirmative action, and Asian Americans. In the broader discourse about affirmative action, many leaders and groups are doing amazing work. Defend Diversity, led by Harvard students and alumni, have been mobilizing to protect affirmative action. The Institute for College Access and Success focuses on higher education public policy research, design, and advocacy. Nikole Hannah-Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of The 1619 Project, has discussed and written about affirmative action numerous times as part of the national conversation on educational equity and racial justice.
4. Discuss affirmative action with your community. Engage others in conversations and action in support of affirmative action. Share your perspectives on why affirmative action is necessary and how it has impacted access to opportunities. In the current discourse on affirmative action, Asians are too often positioned in opposition of it. We need others to add counternarratives demonstrating their support for it!
5. Stay updated and informed! We will learn of the Supreme Court decision in the coming days. Its release will be followed by a flood of analysis and news. Stay connected to the channels and sources that will keep you informed. Additionally, be discerning and aware of misinformation that may circulate. Misinformation across social media and other digital platforms has been particularly prevalent in the Asian community, and misinformation about affirmative action has been especially rampant in the months leading up to these cases coming before the Supreme Court. Develop an informed understanding so you can identify and stop any misinformation about affirmative action.

In community, solidarity, and love,
Joyce Chiao and Amie Ninh

This article represents the views of its individual authors, and not the organizations and employers they are affiliated with.

Sources:

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