2019 Review: Affirmative action debate exposes schism in Asian American community

A small but vocal group of conservative Asian Americans were used by the anti-affirmative action Students for Fair Admissions to attack affirmative action. The courts ruled in October 2019 that Harvard admissions process did not discriminate against Asians. 

Meanwhile, the conservative Asian Americans were successful in the state of Washington, where voters upheld a 20-year old law, Initiative 200, that forbade the use of affirmative action.

Students for Fair Elections, led by anti-affirmative action activist Edward Blum, argued that Asian Americans with high test scores were being denied admittance to Harvard while applicants with lower test scores were being accepted.

During arguments in 2018, it was learned that school's admission process had some significant flaws, specifically the portion about personality where Asian American applicants allegedly received lower scores.

The battle for affirmative action also put a spotlight on the wide differences within the Asian American community between mostly new immigrants from China with older Asian American groups which had aligned themselves with other people of color in support of affirmative action. The fracture threatens to widen even further as conservatives try to use the differences to pit Asians as a wedge against other communities of color.

In Washington State,  the New York Times reports that the state's Office of Minority and Women’s Business Enterprises found that before the ban, about 10 percent of government contracts awarded to businesses certified as being led by minorities or women. Since the ban was instituted, that proportion has dropped to about 3 percent.

The University of Washington's main campus in Seattle is the most competitive in admissions in the state has had the greatest impact.

The most recent federal data show the university's student body mix has more Asian Americans (25%) than their share of the state population. But the shares of white (42%), black (3%), Latinx (8%) and Native American (less than 1%) students lag their share of the state population.

Much of the opposition in Washington was led by a well organized Asian American group, who worried that affirmative action could affect their record of success in university admissions. Like the Harvard case, affirmative action opponents were made up of newer immigrants from Asia, primarily China.

The majority of Asian Americans support affirmative action but mainstream media - as in the Harvard case - kept reporting the story as if the anti-affirmative action group represented the general view of the AAPI community, effectively using Asian Americans as a wedge between the AAPI communities and other people of color.

Lawmakers in other states, such as California, Texas, Michigan, Florida and Arizona, which have similar bans on affirmative action, watched the Washington results with interest as they consider overturning those bans.

The court ruling on Harvard Admissions is being appealed and will probably end up at the US Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority thanks to Trump and Senate Pro Tem Mitch McConnell, which in 2015-2016 thwarted President Obama's Supreme Court appointment of Judge Merrick Garland.

2019 REVIEW 
Part 1: AAPI political visibility explodes on nat'l scene
Part 3: Trump immigration policies shake up, wake up AAPI communities
Part 4: Hollywood 'discovers Asians