Those Michigan Affirmative Action Decisions: Clueless Asian-Americans Celebrating Own Dispossession
There was only one thing
that disturbed me more than President Bush`s mushy
comments
praising socially engineered campus “diversity”
this week.
It was the
newspaper photos and television broadcasts of
militant
Asian activists joining other liberal minority
students across the country in a Sumatran gibbon-like
celebration ritual of chest-beating, fist-pumping,
and pro-affirmative action whooping calls.
Both Bush and the college
zoo denizens were responding to the Supreme Court`s
racial preference rulings, which can be summed up
thusly: It`s dandy to discriminate in public
university admissions. Just cloak your bigotry under the
disingenuous guise of promoting “cross-racial
understanding.” Go ahead and
trample the
14th amendment`s equal protection
clause. Just don`t make it so damn obvious.
Nearly 30 Asian-American
political and legal organizations inexplicably filed
amicus briefs
in support of the University of Michigan`s
race-based admissions policies—one of which awarded
bonus points to blacks, Hispanics, and Native
Americans, but not to Asian-Americans or whites, on the
mere basis of their skin color or ethnicity.
The noxious point scheme
was struck down, [PDF]
but the high court upheld [PDF]
the university law school`s
stealthier scheme of ensuring a “critical mass”
of racial and ethnic minorities.
Except, that is, for
Asians.
Out of political expedience, you see, "minority" has
been redefined by
racial-preference promoters. It is no longer an
objective statistical category, but an ideological
status. Members of minority groups who have overcome
barriers to success—and who oppose being tallied by
race—are no longer viewed as people with valuable
heritages, diverse life experiences, or raw memories of
discrimination and prejudice.
They are effectively "white" and simply don`t count.
Clueless Asian-American students and leaders are
proclaiming “victory” with other minority groups in the
wake of the Michigan decisions. But as Peter Kirsanow,
one of the rare voices of sanity on the
U.S. Civil Rights Commission,
notes, “were Asian-American students not
discriminated against in the college-admissions process,
they would constitute the largest minority group, if not
an outright majority, at many schools.”
A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher
Education [Pay
archive] reports that the percentage of
Asian-American applicants granted admission at the
University of Texas-Austin rose from 68
percent to 81 percent immediately after the Hopwood
decision
struck down race-based admissions policies in the
Fifth Circuit. After California`s
Proposition 209 ended race-based admissions, the
percentage of Asian-American freshmen at Berkeley
rose 6 percent.
Kirsanow
continues:
“Asian Americans, though only 4 percent of the
nation`s population, account for nearly 20 percent of
all medical students. Forty-five percent of Berkeley`s
freshman class, but only 12 percent of California`s
populace, consists of Asian-Americans. And at UT-Austin,
18 percent of the freshman class is Asian American,
compared to 3 percent for the state.”
For liberal
race-fixers, having “too many” Asian-American students
winning admissions on their own merits is a bad, bad
thing. Overcoming the encumbrance of colored skin is
viewed not as an accomplishment, but as a liability.
A sad irony
of the battle over racial preferences on
campus is that many of the leaders who want to
re-jigger the numbers to fit a politically correct,
proportional ideal are traitorous
Asian Americans themselves.
With a great
deal of moral smugness and zeal, these “Me, Too” members
of the cult of victimization are echoing calls to defend
campuses against the supposed "threat" of race
neutrality—despite all the bald evidence that racial
preferences are harming their very own constituents.
In the name
of diversity, they share President Clinton`s
demeaning concern that merit-only-based admissions
could lead to universities filling "their entire
freshmen classes with nothing but Asian Americans."
In the more
than a decade that I`ve been writing and reporting on
the harm that government racial preferences causes
Americans of all races and ethnicities, liberal
Asian-Americans have gleefully labeled me an “Aunt
Tomasina,” a “coconut” (brown on the outside, white on
the inside) and a “sellout.”
But when you
look at the numbers, when you look at the clear intent
of the law, and when you cut through the smokescreen of
politically determined “diversity,” it`s quite clear who
is selling out whom.
Michelle Malkin [email
her] is author of
Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists,
Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores.
Click
here for Peter Brimelow`s review. Click
here for Michelle Malkin`s website.
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