Republicans leverage attention on anti-Asian hate incidents in bid to overturn affirmative action
Amid increased public attention on anti-Asian hate incidents, some Republicans and conservative-leaning advocacy groups are seeking to leverage the debate to bolster their long-standing efforts to overturn affirmative action policies at elite universities and high schools.GOP lawmakers have railed against the admissions criteria used by Ivy League schools, saying they discriminate against Asian American students. Influential pundits, including podcast host Ben Shapiro, have made similar arguments on social media, suggesting that Democrats and liberal groups have been duplicitous in their advocacy.
And on Tuesday, a new coalition of Asian American groups, based mostly on the West Coast, called on the Justice Department to reinstate a Trump administration lawsuit — which the Biden administration dropped in February — that had accused Yale University of discriminating against White and Asian American students in its admissions.
“We condemn anti-Asian hate, but we call for action not empty rhetoric. People who are appalled by the broader attacks on Asians should be equally outraged by Asian students being deprived of their fair chance at a college education based on their race,” said Linda Yang, director of Washington Asians for Equality, a group formed in 2018 to oppose affirmative action measures in Washington state.
Yang, a co-founder of the new coalition, told reporters on a conference call that she hopes President Biden “has the courage to officially acknowledge that anti-Asian racism existed before covid-19” and direct the Justice Department to reinstate the Yale case.
In a statement, Yale spokeswoman Karen N. Peart rejected any assertion that the school’s admission’s process is discriminatory.
“Yale considers every applicant as a whole person; race and ethnicity alone never determine admission; and Yale never imposes numerical quotas or targets,” she said, noting that Asian Americans comprise about 26 percent of the school’s incoming class each year, up from 14 percent 20 years ago.
Democrats have denounced the efforts as a disingenuous attempt by Republicans to score political points on an ideological issue, and to shift the focus away from rising racism and xenophobia against Asian Americans over the past year that, they argue, was fanned in part by President Donald Trump’s rhetoric in blaming China for the coronavirus pandemic.
“This is a cynical use of a moment of real pain to further an agenda that [a majority of] the Asian American community does not even support,” said Janelle Wong, a professor at the University of Maryland and co-founder of AAPI Data, a demographic and policy research operation that conducts polling among Asian American and Pacific Islanders.
Surveys from AAPI Data in 2012 and 2016 showed that a drop in support for affirmative action among Asian Americans was attributed largely to more negative views specifically among Chinese Americans. Support among other Asian American groups held roughly steady at about 73 percent, the survey found.
"They are trying to end any consideration of race in public policy, which is not consistent with ending racial discrimination,” Wong said of Republicans.
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