The New York Times this week ran a series of opinion pieces bringing to the forefront the debate over whether elite universities discriminate to limit the number of Asian Americans.
Not mentioned in all the stories is the routine xenophobia Asian immigrants face on a daily basis. In an article published in the Atlantic Conor Friedersdorf writes:
I’ve personally seen the way that some white people cloak what is, at bottom, xenophobia and racial insecurity in what they insist are non-racist complaints about how the country club is justified in artificially slowing the pace at which Japanese people join because they are “clannish” and “change the atmosphere;” or how Asian American kids have an “unfair” advantage over whites in the college admissions game because they’re quasi-automatons whose parents oppressively force them to study all weekend long and late into the night.
I presume the average Ivy League college admissions officer is well-intentioned and against racism. But I don’t believe for a minute that those institutions are totally insulated from the attitudes I’ve referenced
What do you think? Are admission officers guilty of the same racism many Asian American face in everyday life?