By Charles C WangGuest Blogger
I see a cap against Asian Americans applying for admission to top colleges. Is the cap an unwritten maximum quota limiting Asian Americans? Quotas are illegal since Bakke was decided by the U S Supreme Court in 1978. In fact, is there disparate impact?
If we look at the SAT or GPA distribution curve for college admissions, it is a classical Gaussian Bell shape. Super-impose on that bell the racial data – not surprising it fits well into the same bell shape – it correlates. Asian Americans at one end and the other minorities on the other tail – the bulging middle is white. What does this mean?
Decades of Affirmative Action still not working? Why are Asian Americans suffering a upper cap – to benefit more white enrollment or to actually help the other minorities?
I see the current 2013 data as benefiting more the white students because the other minorities are still lagging. The Fisher case is a majority rights complaint – Abigail Fisher is a mediocre white student whose academics is below the automatic 10% top Texas high school graduates admission cut. She is arguing that she got rejected because lesser qualified minorities, i.e. African Americans and Latino Americans, cut in ahead of her. If a strict SAT/GPA criteria is used, she could NOT get in anyway because very likely Asian Americans are waiting in-line ahead of her. If the courts ordered her in, the probability is that some better Asian American will not. So how will Fisher’s argument help Asian Americans? Not at all!
In my analysis and opinion, the real problem against Asian American college applicants is more due to an arbitrary cap or upper quota, and the disparate impact that results; much less on account of Affirmative Action. Asian Americans are being squeezed out of the Ivy League because of white pressure from the bulge of the middle of the bell, not from the other much smaller other tail of the bell (which squeezes from the opposite end smack into the other end of the middle bulge). In other words, the huge mass of the center of the bell squeezes against both ends and the opposite ends only squeeze into the center – therefore, there is much less direct competition contact between the two tail ends.
As some know very well and even have the honesty to point out – legacy preferences (automatic admission points awarded because an applicant’s father or brother went there), big donations, alumni networks, etc. all perpetuate the historical white dominance there. On the other hand, Affirmative Action developed as a legal remedy to redress lingering discriminatory effects of Jim Crow or worse that institution of slavery. A cap quota is calculated to keep a racial group out of the college of their choice
I see a cap Asian Americans at top colleges. Is the cap an unwritten maximum quota limiting Asian Americans. Quotas are illegal since Bakke! Is there disparate impact against Asian Americans? Has this cap anything to do with Affirmative Action? Very little!
So how to address the problem – certainly not by throwing rocks at each other, perhaps in frustration over the misdirection of Fisher, but by coming together to discuss the issues, mediate our differences, and go forward on a critical issue for aspiring Asian American and indeed all students in the nation.
(About the Author: Charles C Wang is an attorney with WangLaw in Cincinnati, Ohio. He specializes in immigration law)