Race Still Matters

Kevin Wang

Week 3

APA 2 Section 2

Race still matters. According to the infographic in the reading, de facto segregation still exists in schools. Most White students attend White-majority schools and most minority students attend minority-dominated schools. The issue stated is 90% White schools end up having the money to spend an average of $733 more per student than 90% minority schools. Continuing, the infographic claims to have dispelled the model minority myth and shows statistics of many Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander groups with significantly lower education attainment. It describes admissions criteria disfavoring minorities because of less resources and access to test prep, compared to White students.

What bothered me a little was the lack of mention of East-Asian groups. These are the Asian groups that bring the Asian American education, test, and income values up. Indian, Filipino, and Taiwanese Americans have income more than $20,000 above the national average. In addition, most of the Asian Americans that are “filling up” the UC school systems are East Asians. I do see that including those statistics do not help the cause of their perceived message, but ignoring those statistics do not help the organization’s credibility, not to mention the fact that it is one that is fighting for justice, yet picks and chooses facts. If affirmative action were to be put into place right now, all East Asian students would have a harder time getting into a public university than White students if the goal was to aim for a student population representative of the US population. Is that fair for the East Asian students? What about income? Would a system of college admissions where family income is a major factor instead of race work better?

https://nces.ed.gov/