Week 3 - Do Won

Do Won Lee
Section 2

The two readings for this week are written by Nancy Chung Allred, who writes of how Affirmative Action affects Asian Americans, and OiYan Poon and Ajani Byrd, who write about the different aspects in the lives of Asian Americans that affects their college decision.
Allred describes the lives Asian Americans have had to go through from Affirmative Action. How it caused Asian Americans to go all over the place in terms of the racial spectrum of the United States. She goes on about how Affirmative Actions can do the opposite of what it's supposed to do and give Asians a disadvantage when it comes to things like education. Where only a certain percentage of races can be accepted, it pits fellow Asian Americans against each other rather than students as a whole. Acceptance into a school isn't based on merit and academic achievements but rather what your race is. Allred also describes the relationships Asian Americans have with other races in the United States. At times, Asian Americans are grouped together with other minorities against whites in the U.S., but other times Asian Americans are tied with whites, being the "model minority" because of our ways of assimilating to white America.
Poon and Byrd include statistics of different ethnicities within the category of Asian Americans. They also go through the processes that different cultures and ethnicities go through when deciding which college they should attend. Different ethnicities considered different people to be their inspirations for picking colleges. Some said it was their counselors, some their teachers, and others family members.
As an Asian American that immigrated to the United States from Korea, I feel like I was somehow able to get into Davis from some magic that included Affirmative Action, but that's something I'll probably never know about. It also doesn't help that my parents didn't have any college education so I feel like I might have been given a bit of a boost there to into my acceptance at this university. But even then, UC Davis' largest population according to race is Asian, so how I out of all other Asians got in is beyond me.

My question is: Because of your race and culture, regardless of if you're Asian or not, have opportunities been given or taken away?

PBworks. (2008). Affirmative Action in Higher Education. Retrieved April 16, 2017, from http://h340b.pbworks.com/w/page/7314496/Affirmative%20Action%20in%20Higher%20Education