Asian Americans' overwhelming support of affirmative action contradicts headlines

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DESPITE ANTI-AFFIRMATIVE ACTION rallies which have attracted bold headlines and mainstream media coverage, Asian Americans overwhelmingly support affirmative action, concluded an analysis of survey results from AAPI Data.

The survey found that 73 percent of Asian Americans support affirmative action.

So where do the headlines proclaiming Asian Americans oppose affirmative action come from? They are headlines written by editors who lump all Asian Americans together.

The survey found that support among members of the Chinese community for affirmative action is at just 41%. Those headlines would be more accurate if they proclaimed that Chinese Americans oppose affirmative action.

The survey results are based on data acquired in multi-lingual telephone surveys taken in 2012, 2014 and 2016.

Support of affirmative action in the Chinese American community plummeted from 73% in 2012 to 41% in 2016.  According to the analysis by Karthick Ramakrishnan and Janelle Wong, Chinese Americans almost are entirely responsible for the decline in support among Asian Americans overall for affirmative action. Chinese Americans make up the largest Asian subgroup in the United States.

CONTEXT

This is clearly a case of the mainstream media looking for story being suckered in by the anti-affirmative action groups egged on and funded by organizations who have had a history of fighting affirmative action. 

After failing to completely do away with affirmative action in various court cases (Bakke v. University of California, Grutter v. Bollinger, Fisher v. University of Texas, et al), all with white plaintiffs, Students for Fair Admissions, looked for and found plaintiffs who were not white - Asian Americans.

The latest case against Harvard University revives a three-year old complaint by Asian Americans groups that claims Asian Americans denied admissions in favor of less qualified applicants, who happened to be African American and Latino, completely ignoring the legacy admittances who got in because of family history or family contributions to the university.

Students for Fair Admissions is led by Edward Blum, who has helped organize and fund several cases against affirmative action. Blum's efforts are financially supported by anonymous conservative donors and foundations. He was also involved in the Supreme Court's ruling two years ago that narrowed the Voting Rights Act.

Unfortunately, most stories by mainstream media about the Harvard case give the impression that all Asian Americans feel aggrieved at the allegedly biased admission process used by Harvard when in actuality -- as the AAPI data clearly shows -- the anti-affirmative action sentiment is in the minority within the Asian American community.

The Harvard case will likely end up in the Supreme Court with the U.S. Department of Justice in the unprecedented position of being on the side of the plaintiffs who want to dismantle affirmative action. The difference this time around is that Neil Gorsuch has been named to the U.S. Supreme Court giving conservatives - and presumably anti-affirmative action views -- a decided edge.

"Asian Americans should not allow our community to be used as a pawn in efforts to dismantle the hallmark achievements of the civil rights movement," said John Yang, president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice in an opinion piece published in HuffPost. "This is a classic divide-and-conquer strategy with echoes of colonial paternalism."

Views From the Edge contributed to this report.

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