[ad_1]
A federal judge in Boston is scheduled to hear argument on Friday as part of a highly publicized lawsuit alleging that the Harvard elite discriminates against Americans of Asian descent.
Much of the attention has been focused on wealthy Chinese-Americans with stellar academic scores that say the college rejects Asians in favor of less qualified candidates. They say that taking race into account hurts Americans of Asian descent.
But other members of the Asian community claim that a blind process based on race and based solely on academic results would also be detrimental to Americans of Asian descent. Southeast Asians, for example, who arrived largely as refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, are underrepresented in higher education.
"The narrative is currently very focused on a very specific segment of the Asian-American community that does not represent the broader Asian-American community," said Quyen Dinh, executive director of Asia's Resource Center for Asia. South East.
The center has signed a "friend of the court" with the American-American Legal Defense and Education Association, which sided with Harvard's opposite side of what the university calls a "global" review of the plaintiff .
The lawsuit brought by Students for Fair Admissions could end up in a newly reconstituted and more conservative US Supreme Court, which only strongly reiterated the use of race in college admissions two years ago.
Here are some of the issues related to Americans of Asian descent and positive discrimination:
WHO ARE ASIA-AMERICANS?
In the United States, at least 18 million people of Asian descent from around 20 countries. Americans of Asian origin make up about 6% of the US population, but account for nearly 23% of the Harvard freshman class, 22% of the same class in Princeton and constitute the minority of growth is the fastest in the country.
Americans of Chinese descent are the largest subgroup with at least 4.3 million inhabitants, followed by Americans of Indian descent at 4 million and Americans of Filipino descent to 3 million.
The Chinese began migrating to the country in the 19th century as a workforce for the growing West. More recent waves include refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, as well as highly skilled workers from China and India.
The term "Asian-American" was coined by young civil rights advocates alongside Latinos and African Americans for social justice in the 1960s.
Ellen D. Wu, a professor of history and director of the US Asian Studies Program at Indiana University in Bloomington, says that political identity has evolved significantly to become a demographic designation for "a very diverse group".
WHAT IS THE ASO-AMERICAN COALITION FOR EDUCATION?
Students for Fair Admissions filed a lawsuit against Harvard in 2014. The Asian American Coalition for Education, which filed 2015 federal complaints alleging discrimination, actively supported it. The president of the coalition is Yukong Zhao, a strategist who immigrated from China to the United States in 1992 to pursue a master's degree in business administration.
Zhao is part of a new generation of wealthier Chinese immigrants, active on social media and opposed to positive action.
Conservative strategist Edward Blum, president of Students for Fair Admissions, was at the origin of the latest case of admission as part of a positive action, which accused the University of Texas of discriminating white students. Blum lost this case in the United States Supreme Court.
Does AFFIRMATIVE ACTION HELP OR NIGHT IT TO ASIAN COUNTRIES?
It depends on who you ask.
Julie J. Park, author of "Running on Campus: Demystifying Myths with Data" and an earlier Harvard consultant, said that underrepresented Asians, such as Cambodians and Hmong, could be stimulated by an analysis going beyond beyond the results of the tests. The same is true for low-income Americans of Asian descent, whose grades may not reflect their potential. Park also says that colleges want students from different backgrounds, so that Americans of Asian descent may be more coveted in the fields or that colleges have little Asian backgrounds. It depends on the situation.
Students for Fair Admissions, meanwhile, argues that the system in place at Harvard gives an unfair weight to the race, mainly to the detriment of Americans of Asian origin with academic talent. He also alleges that Harvard intentionally uses a vague "personal rating" to reject US-Asian candidates in favor of students of different racial backgrounds.
Proponents of positive action argue that it is possible that Harvard has a bias against Americans of Asian descent, but that does not mean that race-based policies should be abandoned.
WHY ARE ASIANS CALLED "MODEL MODEL"?
The stereotype of Americans of Asian descent as a hard worker, educated and free of social problems began in the 1960s. Wu, the history teacher, said that it was a way for whites to establish a defined racial order, more importantly, by not being black.
Americans of Asian descent are also responsible for perpetuating the myth, she added, adding that "the consequences of this situation have long justified anti-black racism and anti-black policies".
IS THE MYTH OF MINORITY REAL?
Overall, the numbers look good for Americans of Asian descent. The median household income is $ 83,000, compared to $ 60,000 for the United States. More than 50% have a bachelor's degree or more, compared to 32% for the country, according to the 2017 US survey published by the US Census Bureau.
But there are big disparities within the group.
For example, while 75% of Indians had a bachelor's degree or higher, only 16% of Laotians and 20% of Cambodians had. Among the Chinese, this figure is 55%.
Indian households have the highest median income, at $ 114,000, while Burmese households are at $ 40,000. About 6% of Filipinos live in poverty, compared to 21% of Nepalese and 31% of Burmese.
—
Angeliki Kastanis, a journalist for AP Data, has contributed from Los Angeles.
Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, disseminated, rewritten or redistributed.
[ad_2]Source link
