Week 2 - Yufei Liu sec A04

Once my Mexican roommate and I were talking about a social justice related topic. When she mentioned how hard it is to be a brown person with stereotypes and racist mindset, I also expressed my feelings as a colored womxn as well. Nevertheless, she shocked me with saying something like “You’re not a colored person because Asians are not counted as clored people.” At the time I was confused. Are you telling me that after going through racist people calling me out for not playing basketball well and all those random people on the street calling me “yellow” and “Go back to your country!”,  I am not a minority, and just as vulnerable as you are?

Like author Nancy Chung Allred wrote in her article “Asian Americans and Affirmative Action- From Yellow Peril to Model Minority and Back Again”, our race is invisible to American society. “In the affirmative action debate, Asian Americans are rarely included despite a long history of discrimination in the United States. Many discussions of white privilege still center around a black/white paradigm that assigns Asian Americans to one side or the other.” (Allred, 2007) Being Asian meaning we are an easy target for any other race. “Colored people” believe we are privileged to be Asians because we are the so-called model minority and we generally have more chance of achieving success, yet we are not nearly as privileged as Caucasians in this country.

Another example. UC Davis is hard to get in for many Asian American students. Once they do get accepted, student loans and parents’ expectations will drag them into a burdensome early 20s. Simultaneously, a colored student might get in UC Davis with lower GPA or standardized test scores plus full scholarship/financial aid. The reason behind could be because some “colored students” grew up in a worse environment than the Asian students grew up in, so that they are not expected to shoot a score as high as Asian students. There are so many other versions of answers to this phenomenon as well but regardless, Asian students are just too privileged for many universities in this country that these universities can reasonably raise their bars for them.

Retrieved from  https://www.vox.com/2018/3/28/17031460/affirmative-action-asian-discrimination-admissions