NPR says Asian Americans should love affirmative action

NPR thinks Asian Americans should stand against the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action whether they like it or not. In an article published Sunday, NPR’s race and identity correspondent Sandhya Dirks argued that white conservative activists have used affirmative action to divide Asians from other communities of color for far too long. In fact, Asian students have nothing to lose by embracing the practice. 

Per the article, Asian Americans became proxies for white privilege when affirmative action lawsuits brought by white students failed in 2013. To beat the legal system, Edward Blum, the head of Students for Fair Admissions, approached Asian students who he claimed had been hurt by biased college admissions. “I needed plaintiffs,” Bloom told the Houston Chinese Alliance in 2015. “I needed Asian plaintiffs.”

Bloom’s damning statement proves that he is only pitting Asian Americans against black and Latino students, according to Dirks. The myth of affirmative action is all just a ploy to drive a wedge between people of color and racialize Asian Americans. 

“Predominantly white, conservative political forces are leveraging this experience of being racially marginalized among Asian Americans to say, ‘yeah, and by the way, there’s this policy that you’re not benefiting from,’” said OiYan Poon, a professor at Colorado State University who studies race-based admissions. “It’s really tapping into fear with zero evidence.”

Cockburn must admit he’s found himself very behind the times on affirmative action discourse. He always thought Asian students were often at the forefront of debate since their SAT scores are over 300 points higher than those of black students and almost 150 points higher than those of white students. But he must be wrong since NPR didn’t mention anything about Asian Americans’ disproportionate academic dominance.

Backlash against affirmative action also has nothing to do with the anti-Asian bias at elite colleges and universities, according to NPR.

In 2013, Harvard conducted an internal investigation that found admissions counselors consistently rated Asian students lowest in positive personality, likability, courage and kindness. Harvard also conceded that if it only considered academic achievement, Asian Americans would account for 43 percent of the student body, compared to 19 percent at the time of the study. 

Of course, these discrepancies are the fault of white people too, according to Dirks, and dismantling the affirmative action program would only help white, wealthy Americans, not Asians. 

“To think like somebody like Ed Blum is gonna come along and basically bamboozle young Asian Americans into thinking like these policies are against us when they’re actually for us is just heartbreaking,” said Poon.