Camille Abutin

Section A01

Week 3

In her article, “Asian Americans and Affirmative Action: From Yellow Peril to Model Minority and Back Again,” Nancy Chung Allred illustrates the concept of affirmative action as a counteractive to the fairness it is meant to bring. From what I’ve gathered, affirmative action is meant to eliminate white privilege in academia and produce equity amongst all students of color in hopes to provide the opportunities American has promised their immigrant families. In essence, we’re called to compete in the ethnic hunger games of university. As Chung puts it, “a balkanization effect that promotes antagonism and ethnic strife, especially between Asian and whites on one hand, and blacks and Latinos on the other,” because for one race to succeed, the others must fail. I suppose that because Asians and whites go hand in hand, that makes us, Asians, the model minority. In other words, to white society Asians are seen as above Blacks and Latinos. It’s awful. While I do appreciate that Chung does offer the argument that affirmative action can promote minority’s self esteem though, I felt as though a more powerful part of this piece was the revelation that affirmative action can be problematic for Asians when our numbers in university become to large. And when this happens, Asians are no longer seen as the “model minority” because our presence will be seen a threat to white society. 

Question: How to we create a system in which we can admit students based on their merit as opposed to race while still encouraging diversity on our campuses?

Chung Allred, N. (2007). Asian Americans and Affirmative Action: From Yellow Peril to Model Minority and Back Again. Asian American Law Journal, 14(3). Available at

http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/aalj/vol14/iss

Nakagawa, S. (2014, April 23). No Right Turn: Asians and Affirmative Action [No Right Turn: Asians and Affirmative Action]. Retrieved April 16, 2017, from https://www.racefiles.com/2014/04/23/sno-right-turn-the-surprising-truth-about-asian-americans-and-affirmative-action/