Asian American College Students and the Myths of Meritocracy
By Sophie Huang
A few months ago, Nathan Chen and Chloe Kim both won gold medals at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing for Team USA. But this is not a blog about sports; this is a blog about education.
Like myself, Nathan and Chloe are both first-generation Asian Americans with immigrant parents. Like myself, Nathan and Chloe are both current undergraduates at Ivy League institutions. (But unlike them, I will never win a gold medal at the Olympics, or even attend the Olympics.)
I am a Sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania. My parents immigrated to America from China before I was born. We are neither wealthy nor poor. I am from the Midwest, however, I went to a private boarding high school in New England and, by most measures, am extremely privileged. But that does not mean I have not worked hard every day for what I have, or that my family has not struggled in ways that some never will. Yet, I currently attend the same institution that has, since 2001, employed and protected Amy Wax, the law professor who claimed that America is “better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration.”
In the past few decades, the rapidly growing presence of Asian American students–primarily of East and South Asian descent–at elite US colleges, universities, and certain high schools has been a cause for major concern from all sides of the political spectrum. There are many people, like Amy Wax, who want there to be fewer of us here. There are also many people, like our parents, who do not understand why we should be denied something we have worked so hard for all our lives.
And then there are people like me: the students in question. Many of us are children of immigrants and the first in our families to attend higher education in America. The majority of us have been educated in the “American way,” at public schools across the country, eating American school lunch to avoid the ridicule of bringing an ethnic lunch from home, and speaking English in addition to another language at home.
For much of the US public, affirmative action is just a court decision. For us, the students, it comes coupled with feelings of guilt, confusion, and rejection. Many Asian American students have grown up with internalized notions about affirmative action and the “Model Minority Myth,” the perceived universal success of Asian students that is used to isolate them and pit them against their Black and Latinx peers, before it even had a name. But our generation has also grown up with ideals of justice, solidarity, and equity. We are a growing demographic of voters nationally, we understand the value in advocating for ourselves and others rather than keeping our heads down and quietly accepting injustice as we have been taught by our parents and grandparents, and we are activists and campaigners for causes we believe in.
We find ourselves at a difficult crossroads, only one of a number of issues that plague children of immigrants when it comes to identity and belonging in this country. We do not want to be discriminated against, whether overtly or covertly. But we also do not want to be unintentional perpetrators of discrimination or inequity against our Black, Latinx, and Indigenous peers.
Michael Powell of the New York Times interviewed Asian American students at New York’s prestigious Brooklyn Tech high school who all echoed this sentiment with which I strongly agree: “Most Asian students want more Black and Latinx classmates.” By this, I mean that we want to see Black, Latinx, and Indigenous enrollment rising at comparable, if not higher, rates. Rising Asian American enrollment should not cut into Black, Latinx, or Indigenous enrollment, or vice versa. We do not want to re-distribute the slices of this opportunity pie amongst ourselves, but rather to increase the size of the pie as a whole.
Simply put, we, the Asian American students, do not want to be pit against our Black, Latinx, and Indigenous peers as we have been for so long. We do not want our presence or our fight to come at the expense of our peers. But we also do not want to be asked, or forced, to give up our opportunities for others. We want there to be more than enough opportunities for everybody.
Affirmative action in its modern conception is intended to alleviate the historical disadvantages BIPOC students face over centuries of discrimination and inequity by deprivileging white students. But it is important to acknowledge that the historical inception of affirmative action was used to discriminate against Jewish American students. And affirmative action, like all political tools, is also deeply rooted in wealth. As Jeannie Suk Gersen mentioned in her 2017 New Yorker article, “It is unrealistic to think that universities like Harvard can immediately stop privileging white applicants, given the current whiteness of their donors, but that picture will change over time. It was as Jews gained more political power and became more likely to be donors that élite schools’ discrimination against them waned.”
Our current debate surrounding Asian American students is much more contemporary. I for one have often felt that my presence at my predominantly white institutions, which all boarding high schools and Ivy League colleges are, is seen as duplicitous. Even though Asian and Asian American students are still vastly outnumbered by white students, seeing more faces like mine around me in recent years is both comforting and uncomfortable. As Suk Gersen eloquently put it, “For Asian-American students, the imperative to show originality will continue. But I hope that we can soon say goodbye to the admissions ritual whereby an Asian student is paradoxically expected to represent other Asians by proving she is different from them.” I sometimes feel that someone else deserves my “spot” more than me. But do I want to be at Penn, and do I believe that I have earned my right to be at Penn, as much as anybody else? Of course.
Yet, a classroom made up of only white and Asian faces is also not what we want. In some places, Asians and Asian Americans are still not considered people of color. But it is not right to align Asian and Asian American students with white students. Just as we will never know the struggles faced by our Black and Latinx peers, white students will never know the struggles faced by their Asian American peers. Even under the “Asian” umbrella, students of East Asian descent will never know the struggles of their Southeast Asian peers.
In the past few years, the idea of the “Model Minority Myth” has entered the mainstream. But even as it becomes more common that people know about what this stereotype entails, I believe many still do not understand it. The perceived collective success of Asian Americans in the US is often ascribed to their quiet, hard-working nature that prioritizes achievements over excuses. The Model Minority Myth perpetuates the misconception that minoritized groups can “overcome” their oppression simply by pulling themselves up by the bootstraps and enforcing the “right” kinds of values. This myth is often used as a racial wedge to undermine and minimize the struggles of other minoritized groups, particularly Black folks. Not only does this group and flatten the experiences of all Asian Americans, a diverse group in which there are wide socioeconomic and racial differences, but the myth of a “superior Asian culture” has been created to explain away the perceived successes of Asians and simultaneously ignore the historical effects of systemic racism, slavery, and injustice against Black Americans.
Asian American students have come a long way since the establishment of the first Asian American Studies curriculum at UC Berkeley, UCLA, and San Francisco State University in 1969. But there is still so much work left to be done. While Asian American Studies has been embraced by some, Asian American students at Dartmouth, a member of the Ivy league, are still facing an uphill battle for this program in 2022. Asian American history is rarely taught in a robust or adequate way across the country, whether in K-12 or higher education. Asian American instructors are severely underrepresented and existing Asian American Studies programs are severely underfunded. Most universities, including my own, still do not offer a major in Asian American Studies.
Here is one way I believe we can proceed: by following the golden rule of reciprocity, do unto others as you would want to have them do unto you. Asian Americans should stand in solidarity with and listen to our Black, Latinx, and Indigenous peers, and in return, we ask that they do the same for us. We are not minoritized in the same ways, but we are all minoritized. When we take the time to learn more about each other’s histories and act intentionally in our communities, we are making a difference. When we stand in solidarity with one another, our voices are amplified. A more equitable future for some means a more equitable future for all of us. Affirmative action is not a perfect solution, but it can be a conduit for the change we want to see. Together, we can make the pie bigger.