The Justice Department’s latest accusation that Yale University discriminated against Asian and white students is an attempt to marginalize students against each other, using Asian Americans as the channel, experts say.
Several Asian American activists and scientists criticized the DOJ’s letter sent to the Ivy League institution on Thursday, in which the feds claimed that the school “deviates every year from Asian American and white applicants based on their race, who she would admit otherwise. ” Critics say that in clumsy white students with those of Asian descent, the administration uses Asian Americans as a pawn to thwart government action.
“This announcement is purely political – a signal again that the Trump administration will take extraordinary steps to protect white privilege and spring up against unfounded racial attacks, directly on the heels of Kamala Harris, a black and Asian American woman who participates in the top of the Democratic ticket, ”said Anurima Bhargava, who served as head of the Civil Rights Division’s Section for Educational Opportunities at DOJ during the Obama administration.
In the letter, which followed a similar case involving fellow Ivy League institution at Harvard University, Eric S. Dreiband, assistant attorney general, argued that the university is much less likely to focus on Asian American and white applicants. with similar academic backgrounds compared to students of Black and Latinx.
“Yale loses substantial, and often determinative, race-based preferences to certain racially favored applicants and relatively and significantly disfavors other applicants because of their race,” the letter read.
Bhargava said the DOJ’s own words prove that the federal agency is reducing groups to create only their racial backgrounds.
“The Department of Justice is doing exactly what the courts have warned them to do, which is to confuse students by their racial background, not treat students as individuals and suggest that white and Asian students as a whole be harmed in any way by Black students, ‘she said.
In addition, it appears that the Trump administration’s cohesion of white and Asian American students the DOJ publicly “uses Asian Americans to protect the status quo for white applicants,” instead of paying attention to Asian Americans, said Janelle Wong, a senior government professor and politics at the University of Maryland, College Park. Wong notes that this is particularly problematic against the background of anti-Asian rhetoric from members of the administration during the coronavirus pandemic, using terminology such as “China virus”, which could potentially harm Asian Americans.
The needs of the two demographics are drastically different too, John C. Yang, Executive Director of Nonprofit Civil Rights Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC explained. The Asian American community includes many subgroups that do not have the same access to education compared to most. Nearly 30 percent of Southeast Asian Americans, for example, did not complete high school when the GED tests were passed. In contrast, the national average stands at 13 percent.
“Asian American and Pacific Islander communities are incredibly diverse. “While we have some in our community who are successful, we have many who are struggling, who come from difficult backgrounds and do not have the same opportunities,” said Yang.
Research further shows how certain factors benefit white students at all elite colleges. According to a survey published last year in the National Bureau of Economic Research, 43 percent of white students admitted to Harvard were athletes, legacy students, and children of faculty and staff. The percentage also includes those on the dean’s interest list, which consists of applicants whose parents or relatives have made donations to the university. Roughly 75 percent of white students admitted to those categories, identified as “ALDCs,” “would be rejected if they were treated as white non-ALDCs,” the study said.
If you look at black, Hispanic, and Asian American students, the percentage of ALDCs drops to less than 16 percent, each from those categories. A distribution of legacy applicants shows that 70 percent are white, the study found.
Affirmative action removal poses problems for students of color, including Asian Americans, alleged lawyers. Jennifer Lee, a scholar who has extensively researched affirmative action and author of “The Asian American Achievement Paradox,” notes that by eliminating the program, the realities of racial history in the US are ignored.
“By attempting to eliminate consideration of race and national origin in Yale’s permit decisions, the DOJ is blatantly forgetting the various legacies of race in the United States and the divergent economic, social, and psychological consequences as a result,” said Lee.
Yang also noted that the availability of racially motivated permits would not result in a significant change for Asian Americans. A 2016 study found that white applicants would benefit overwhelmingly from eliminating such programs. When researchers removed Black and Latinx applicants from the pool, they found that the chance of Asian American students increasing by 1 percent.
There are also existing examples of how Asian American enrollment is compromised by the lack of such programs. When affirmative action was banned in California over the state’s constitutional amendment in 1996, the proportion of Asian American students in public state universities in general.
While the Yale investigation was launched after the Asian American Coalition for Education filed a complaint against the university in 2016, research shows that the group does not reflect the opinion of the general Asian American population. Data from that year show that about two-thirds of Asian Americans support racially-conscious permits. Wong pointed out that although Chinese American support for affirmative action has deepened dramatically compared to other Asian American groups, most studies suggest that more Chinese Americans support such policies than against them.
The allegations against Yale follow similar actions by the DOJ in its attempts to control affirmative action programs. Earlier, the department filed an amicus brief siding with anti-affirmative action group Students for Fair Admissions in its appeal of a judge’s decision in favor of Harvard College.
The judge ruled that the institution did not explicitly discriminate against Asian Americans in its racially-conscious permissions program. Many students and alumni of color in various communities supported the Ivy League institution, arguing that without the consideration of race in the admissions process, the institution would likely overlook impressive students, such as themselves, whose racial identities were focal points in their applications. .
“This latest attempt by the Trump administration to dismantle strong and inclusive learning environments for children – just as we have seen with the reopening of forced schools – places politics above the safety and educational needs of our children,” Bhargava said.
