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Evading The Question Of Anti-Asian Discrimination

Today Inside Higher Ed posts an interview with Robert Teranishi, associate professor of higher education at NYU, author of a new book, Asians in the Ivory Tower: Dilemmas of Racial Inequality in American Higher Education.

The Q&A on affirmative action (or at least the A) is evasive and even mealy-mouthed.

Q: Many Asian American students believe that they are held to a higher standard or that quotas are used against them. Do you think that elite colleges are discriminating against Asian applicants?

A: This is actually one instance where AAPIs [Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders] receive attention in higher education. One perspective I bring to this issue is the extent to which AAPIs are often used as a wedge group in broader equity debates in higher education. For example, opponents to affirmative action, such as Ward Connerly, like to say that whites are not the biggest victims of affirmative action and point to AAPIs as the population whose numbers are most suppressed by the policy. Proponents of affirmative action have also used the AAPI population to argue that ending the policy will trigger an ?Asian Invasion? at highly selective universities. In reality, there is quite a bit of evidence of AAPI support for affirmative action, which is at levels that are similar to other racial minorities. If there is any issue related to selective college admissions where AAPIs have an issue, it has to do with wanting equal consideration for how changes to policies might disproportionately impact the AAPI student population.

So, critics of affirmative action claim that it discriminates against Asian Americans more than whites, while supporters of affirmative action say that ending it ?will trigger an ?Asian invasion? at highly selective universities.? But doesn?t that mean that supporters agree with the critics? argument that affirmative action excludes many Asian Americans who would have been admitted in its absence?

I will leave it to those with more fortitude than I to look at the book to see whether it deals with all the widely available evidence that when California ended affirmative action the number of Asian admits increased dramatically.

Finally, does Prof. Teranishi really believe that pointing out that Asian Americans support affirmative action refutes the critics? charge that Asian American applicants are held to a higher standard at selective institutions? If people never supported policies that weren't good for them, after all, Democrats would get far fewer votes.

Full post as published by Discriminations on October 09, 2010 (boomark / email).