The backlash against SCA5 and affirmative action in higher education blew up on social media from alarming messages generated by Chinese language news outlets, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Some have gone so far as to call those messages out and out lies.
“It hurts me to see people reacting this way about affirmative action. It’s ugly and shameful. Phil Yu of Angry Asian Man said.
SCA5 would have given voters a chance to pass a constitutional amendment to reinstate race into the equation of admissions into California state public universities.
Messages on Twitter, Facebook and Chinese social networks like Weibo called SCA5 the “yellow peril act,” and compared it to the Chinese Exclusion Act.
The backlash came, according to the Times, primarily from immigrants from China.
“These are two different worlds,” said KarthickRamakrishnan, a political science professor at UC Riverside. “And a big part of the difference in opinions is how the issues are presented to them.”
Two factions within the Chinese American community have formed. You can read about that and how the traditional Asian American political guard was caught by surprise by all this in the Los Angeles Times.
