Investigating Whether Affirmative Action Hurts Asians - The Atlantic

"...In fact, some affirmative-action advocates stress that doing away with race-conscious admissions would actually hurt certain Asian applicants. The category “Asian” encompasses an incredibly diverse spectrum of ethnic groups, from Chinese to Cambodians to Bangladeshi. Most of those groups are severely underrepresented in higher education, some of them more so than African Americans, despite the focus on black students in much of the public discourse on affirmative action. “Many of the things we have fought for in continuing to maintain both the policies and principles behind affirmative action are designed not only to help the overall population but also specific subgroups such as my community,” Mee Moua, a Hmong American who serves as the president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, told me last year.

Despite the widely disseminated narrative that Asians are hurt by affirmative action—including by media outlets that cater to Asian American communities—surveys suggest those communities generally support race-conscious admissions. The National Asian American Survey in 2012 found that three in four respondents support affirmative action. Similarly, in the 2016 Asian American Voter Survey, 64 percent of respondents said they favor “affirmative action programs designed to help blacks, women, and other minorities get better access to higher education.” Just 25 percent said they oppose such programs. These attitudes suggest that one of the prevailing arguments against affirmative action—that Asian Americans are victimized by it—isn’t felt on the ground as much as headlines make it out to be...

Investigating Whether Affirmative Action Hurts Asians - The Atlantic