What are the challenges facing Asian Americans? Affirmative Action – College Admission

1) Why is College Admission controversial?

 Asian particularly Chinese culture attach great importance to education as a means of enhancing a person’s worth and career. China’s imperial civil service examination played an important role in Chinese history of education. It created a group of well-educated officials serving the country. Many Asian American parents, both rich and poor, are willing to make great sacrifices to have their children attend and graduate from elite colleges.

The admission policies of Harvard (and other elite universities) are not transparent and have higher bars for AAPI applicants, requiring them to have higher SAT scores, scoring them lower on personal traits and in general placing higher “barriers” on them.

 

2) Does an elite college degree set you up for life?

 Many parents think that a degree from an elite college will make a lifetime difference for the graduate. However, for most students, it simply doesn’t matter, according to many and notably, a paper by Stacy Dale, a mathematician at Mathematica Policy Research, and Alan Krueger, an economist at Princeton University*

Other researchers have concluded that “C” students do better than “A”s later on in life. C’s are not necessarily less intellectually capable, they just do not place such a high value on letter grades. Furthermore, C’s are not afraid to fail and are willing to be innovative and think outside the box.

 

3) How does the University of California handle “Diversity”?

In the early 1970s, Allan Bakke sued the UC Davis Medical School for their quota system. His case went to the Supreme Court which ruled 5-4 that “quota” is unconstitutional while promotion of “Diversity” is allowed.

The University of California has a policy of admitting all students graduating in the top 9% according to their admission index.

 

* https://www.nber.org/papers/w171592019.05.24

 

All Boats Are Lifted When Water Rises: Asian Americans Must Work Together to Achieve Multi-ethnic Democracy

On May 3rd, the “Civic Leadership Forum” was held in Ding Ding TV. The keynote speaker, Dr. Zhang presented the importance of Asian Americans through a series of statistics. To be short, Asian Americans typically have a higher income than average but a very low degree of civic involvement. Through the kind of statistic information, audiences can understand the importance of civic engagement.
As Dr. Zhang said, “Whether one vote for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders’ candidates is a personal choice, but the increasing of political participation because of Asian Americans running for the presidency is a victory for the Asian American community.”
“All Boats Are Lifted When Water Rises: Asian Americans Must Work Together to Achieve Multi-ethnic Democracy”

How are the Asian Americans doing right now?

 

There is Good News!

In 2013, Pew Research published a glowing report stating that Asian Americans are flourishing in the US as compared with the other ethnic groups

Asian Americans are the fastest growing minority and we are more satisfied with our achieving the highest education attainment (~ 50% with college degrees), highest family income and brightest outlook of our future in the US.

 

And Not So Good News!

Although the Indians, Filipino and the Chinese are doing relatively well, some South East Asians are doing poorly. Most still have difficulties with English and their income, healthcare and education are lower than all other ethnic groups.

When education achievement is normalized, the income of Asian Americans does not look as high. Also, Asian Family tends to be larger, when normalized their family income does not look as good.

Although there are more Asian American professors, technical workers and lawyers than other ethnic groups, our membership in the academic and technical executive ranks are negligible and the appointment of Asian lawyers to the judgeship is low.

 

We are only 5.8% of the US population, if Asian Americans do not cooperate with each other to form coalitions, we wouldn’t have any political power and our votes would not be respected.

We have to understand issues that would unite us and those that would divide us.

If it weren’t for the Civil Rights movement of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s influencing the passage of the Immigration Reforms of 1965, most of us would not be here!

We need to learn to work with the other minorities to form the coalition to influence the political system.

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