An Interesting Article: “Do Colleges Redline Asian-Americans?”
February 14th, 2010 by Glennis Shih“I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Happy Lunar New Year! i just returned home from two back to back feasts…one of the perks of living so close to our families. So much for eating healthier this year. But, as a friend tweeted: “if you need to re-evaluate your new year’s resolution, now is the time – Chinese new year is tomorrow!” I’ll be back on track…Monday. I still have to celebrate Valentine’s Day! 
A quick update on what’s been going on: Praise God for an awesome time at the Epic East Coast Conference only a few weeks ago. One of the highlights of our weekend was our Day of Outreach, where we sent the entire conference out onto various campuses and locations in Philly to get into spiritual conversations. As a conference we were able to initiate 122 conversations, get into 84 spiritual conversations, give 56 gospel presentations and lead 8 people to pray & receive Christ. Yah God!
Since it was MLK weekend, one of the tools we used on our Day of Outreach was a Martin Luther King Jr. survey that one of our staff created. The first question to this survey is “You may be familiar with the famous quote on the front of this card [the "I have a dream" quote above]. Do you think Martin Luther King’s dream has been achieved?” I was surprised that many of the people I personally surveyed said that they think for the most part, his dream has been achieved.
I was reminded of that quote again when I read this article in The Boston Globe: “Do colleges redline Asian-Americans?” The article essentially says that Asian-American students “statistically, have to get higher scores than others to get in.’’ Some other interesting points (taken from “The Week”, which summarized this article):
* Children of Chinese, Koreans and other immigrants from the East earn good grades, shine in extracurricular activities and outperform other ethnic groups on standardized tests.
* That record of achievement has produced a backlash in the country’s colleges, which have quietly instituted an “Asian ceiling” in admissions.
* Yale, Darmouth and Harvard appear to be taking steps to limit Asian-Americans to between 15 percent and 20 percent of students.
* According to Princeton sociologist Thomas Epsenshade, top colleges practice a kind of reverse affirmative-action policy, requiring Asian-Americans to score an average of 140 points higher on SATs than other students.
* It’s understandable that colleges want a diverse student body.
* In a nation where success is suppsedly based on merit and performance, punishing Asian-Americans for their drive and intelligence “feels deeply unfair.”
I still have to process my thoughts on this issue, but I thought I’d throw it out there and begin the conversation. On a somewhat related note, this article captures why I personally decided to serve full-time in Asian American ministry. Growing up, I always felt like I was running on a “success treadmill”: I had to get good grades on my SSAT to get into Stuyvesant (a specialized Highschool in NY that both my brothers attended), had to do well on my SATs and be involved in lots of extracurricular activities to get into Cornell, and then had to fill my summers up with internships so that I could get a good job (read: high paying and stable, not necessarily something I was passionate/cared about) after college. Living on a treadmill always left me feeling anxious, exhausted and constantly fearing failure.
Reading this article is confirmation of the senseless stress and pressure many Asian families put on their children to do well academically. My personal dream is that one day young Asian-Americans would not be forced into a mold of what their families think success looks like (graduating from Harvard?), but truly enjoy the process of discovering who God is and whom He created them to be.
Therein lies the problem with labels and categories. The majority culture in this country (the white elite) assumes the “Asian American” category to be monolithic. It’s not. It’s variegated since it includes people like Filipinos, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indians, Japanese, etc. So it’s not about “palatable group dynamic” as the author of the article suggests. Admission offices should and must look at the individual, instead of lumping Asians –- still a very diverse group of people -– all together. Such categorization glosses over the uniqueness each group under which the “Asian American” umbrella represents. Unfortunately, this country is still very far behind in its understanding of race, power, ethnicity, and status.