Reflection to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in California: How Higher Education Diversity Benefits Our Communities

Sherry Yuan
ASA2 Blog post 3

Reflection to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in California: 

How Higher Education Diversity Benefits Our Communities

I have never taken SAT in the U.S. since I am an immigrant. This is the first time I learned about Proposition 209 and its negative effects to AAPIs. I looked into the related news and found out that just earlier this year, on January 30th, Democrats in the California Senate passed a measure asking voters to repeal Proposition 209-the state's ban on race-gender-based preferences in university admissions. It sounds like a positive step of protecting Asian American students' educational right.

However, I had conflicting feelings about the Proposition 209. On one side, being an Asian student, I do feel Asian Americans are seen to be treated as subordinated people by white students, which reflects that Asian Americans need Affirmative Action as protection. On the other side, I found out (see image) Asian-American do have higher score than white students averagely; hence I kinda feel it is not a big harm to Asian-American students' admission while having Proposition 209. By the time we successfully repeal Proposition 209 supposedly, wouldn't that be unfair to the white students?