Asian-Americans: Don’t Subscribe to the Myth of an American Meritocracy

Tensions run high in the discussion about higher education and the brazen inequalities of who gets it and who doesn’t. Asian voices speaking on the issue have been making headlines more frequently since the Students for Fair Admissions, a collective of parents, students, and litigators, filed a lawsuit against Harvard University for intentionally discriminating against Asians in its admissions process. This has led to a heated debate over affirmative action, with many Asian-Americans taking the stance that admissions should be strictly merit-based. However, despite their vehement opposition to race considerations in admissions, Asian-Americans have a lot to lose from the loss of affirmative action.

Historically, Asian-Americans have benefited enormously from affirmative action, and they still do. According to the Urban Institute, Asian-American enrollment at Harvard rose from four to 13 percent in the 1970s when affirmative action programs were first implemented. Since then, campus demographics have often reflected a disproportionate number of Asian-Americans in colleges compared to the demographics of the entire country. This disproportionate representation, combined with the success that has come from so many Asian-Americans being given the opportunity to reap the benefits of higher education, set the foundations for the model minority myth.

It is impossible to effectively discuss the status of Asian-Americans and their attitudes toward affirmative action without considering the model minority myth, which presents high college enrollment and employment rates in the Asian community as shining examples of what marginalized groups can achieve if they work hard. This argument completely disregards the disadvantages that the black and Latinx communities suffer due to the long history of oppression and discrimination against them, instead shifting accountability for the lack of success to the oppressed who were consistently denied opportunities to flourish.

The most problematic aspect of the model minority myth is that most people don’t realize that it is a myth. Many Asian-Americans subscribe to the model minority concept and feel immense pressure to build up a successful record in school because it is what is expected of them. They embrace that pressure as a part of Asian-American culture and use it to justify their position on affirmative action and their overwhelming presence in institutions of higher education. They argue that affirmative action is unjust because it invalidates hard work. But merit cannot be measured solely by what is written on an application. If it were, many Asian-Americans would not be in the positions of privilege that they have occupied since the administration of affirmative action in the late 1900s. Without consideration for diversity on campuses and in workplaces and having the disadvantage of being immigrants unfamiliar with the language and without good social networks, Asian-Americans would have been far less qualified on paper than their white counterparts.

The model minority myth also neglects the disparities in socioeconomic status within the many ethnicities conglomerated into the ambiguous “Asian-American” box. Pacific-Islander, Bhutanese-American, and Burmese-American students are just a few examples of Asian-Americans who benefit from affirmative action. Low-income Asian-Americans also benefit tremendously. Affirmative action isn’t the exclusion of high-achieving students in favor of less fortunate and less deserving students, as its opponents believe, but rather, it is the broadening of opportunities and the extent to which those opportunities can affect people and the world.

Asian-American opposition to race-conscious admissions policies is understandable because Asian applicants are discriminated against in the admission process. The recently released Harvard admissions procedure revealed a “personal rating” method of gauging an applicant’s character that has been under fire for allegedly rating Asian-Americans much lower in the categories of personality, courage, and integrity. Anti-affirmative action advocates have been calling this the “Asian penalty.” The generalization of Asians as a tiresomely studious and unsociable group, which unsurprisingly is another effect of the model minority myth, may have played into the decisions made in scoring Asian-Americans. That is discrimination.

However, the fight against the discrimination of Asian-Americans and the fight for more diversity in academic and professional spaces are the same fight. The media exaggerates anti-affirmative action sentiments from Asian-Americans, galvanizing the community into further action against race-conscious admissions, while choosing to ignore arguments made by the 65 percent majority, according to a 2016 AAPI Data study. It is important that the Asian-American narrative written in the headlines is not the one we identify ourselves by, but rather one that we overcome. Janelle Wong, an Asian-American professor at the University of Maryland, says, "Ending affirmative action will not have a big effect on Asian-American admission rates. But if opponents of such policies are successful, lack of diversity will create a worse learning environment for Asian-American students...and damage a multiracial civil-rights coalition that could protect Asian-Americans from discrimination into the future." Rather than live under the illusion of acceptance, Asian-Americans should be in support of affirmative action if they want to taste real success as a group with an equal voice in society.