As of recent with the worldwide pandemic there has been a lot of rising discrimination within the Asian community. I recently had a roommate from China so I heard first-hand accounts from him as to the rising discrimination he felt and how he felt unwanted and unsafe here in the U.S. There was a spike of random attacks which I saw on the news and this was unsettling. One of the systemic ways I see Asian people discriminated against is in the ivy league college system. Schools like Harvard have come under fire for under accepting Asian students as they are a large part of their population and accepting students who may not be as qualified to have a more diverse population including White Americans. Although I am all for diversity at colleges I feel like the solution to this would be to accept more students who are less qualified and to accept all the Asian students whose spots were taken up. My roommate said that when he was putting in the work to do well in school he felt like his work counted for less than others just because of his race. It is an interesting dilemma as affirmative action is meant to help minorities who have been discriminated against but in this situation, it seems to be a form of discrimination against Asian students. Systemic racism is a lot less blatant to be seen and it is important that the right laws are set in place to live in a fair society. I feel like it is not correct to under accept a group of people for achieving so much. A case against Harvard was filed in 2014 titled “Students for fair admissions v. President and Fellow of Harvard College. It was rejected in 2019 but has once again reached the Supreme Court. In their admissions process Asians score disproportionately lower than all other races in the personality category. This is done to stifle their rankings against other applicants. Although it may be easy to just say that these applicants were born more privileged and had parents who could pay their way to a more advanced education this is not always the case. In New York City Stuyvesant is considered one of the top public high schools and is composed of a 75% Asian population. 90% of the students at Stuyvesant receive need based lunch subsidies. These students are clearly at a disadvantage and if they were to apply to Harvard they would be less likely to get in due to their race. This scenario reminds me of a topic we learned about in week one through Adichie’s Ted Talk on “The Danger of a Single Story”. When one believes that all Asian Americans are privileged and it is not an issue to discriminate against them then that is systemic racism. There are countless stories like the students of Stuyvesant who deserve to have an equal opportunity regardless of their identity. Affirmative action should help ALL minorities who are at a disadvantage because that is what is just.
https://nypost.com/2021/07/04/a-chance-for-supremes-to-end-harvards-asian-discrimination/
https://www.wgbh.org/news/education/2021/07/22/as-supreme-court-weighs-harvard-admissions-case-two-asian-americans-speak-out-and-allege-bias