Week 2 - Angela Alejandro - A04

Although certain Asian American families view the path of higher education as the foundation of upward social mobility, a closer look into academia shows its deceitful and ignorant sentiments towards the Asian American community. By viewing the community through benighted myths, such as model minority, one can develop a skewed and oblivious understanding of the realities in which Asian Americans are treated. In Nancy Chung Allred’s article, “Asian Americans and Affirmative Action: From Yellow Peril to Model Minority and Back Again”, the author relates the awkward position that the model minority myth places onto Asian Americans with their acceptance into higher education. She argues that these ideas use Asian Americans as a “mascot” to reinforce white privilege while systematically pitting minority groups against one another. One of the main topics she writes about is the practice of affirmative action. While it began as an altruistic attempt to cease discrimination, it ultimately Balkanized minority groups, meaning it created a separation, where some benefit while others are harmed. I see this as a form of hegemony, where those in power systematically relocate the aggression away from themselves in order to protect their dominance. Affirmative action also reinforces white power by ignoring the fact that it exists. As Allred mentions in her article, the practice of “legacy” admissions where those who are related to alumni are more likely to be accepted, even if it is shown they have lower tests scores. This is problematic because the alumni are white, more likely than not. This gives them an advantage, making it so that Asian Americans have to work twice as hard as White people because of historic and social-economic issues that they don’t have much say into. As Allred has shown, affirmative action can cause more harm to the Asian American community than good. Although some can benefit from the quota system, others are made to vigorously compete against those in their ethnic group in order to obtain a spot. As we have learned, the idea of race was socially constructed as a way to maintain the dominance of one group of people, thereby systematically incorporating those ideas into our everyday lives. Engaging in a “colorblind” mindset is precarious because one cannot ignore the historic and political motives behind everything regarding how minority groups are treated. My question is, with the effects of this racial hierarchy so heavily embedded into our daily lives, how can minorities be equally assessed during university admittance?

References:

• Allred, NC., Asian Americans and Affirmative Action: From Yellow Peril to Model Minority and Back Again, 14 Asian Am. L.J. 57 (2007)
• Image: Synder, B. (2018) Retrieved from REUTERS.