f**********r
发帖数: 18251 | 1 【 以下文字转载自 Military 讨论区 】
发信人: onetotwo (回国肉), 信区: Military
标 题: 怎么会 有AAJC这种内奸？
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Thu May 21 14:28:21 2015, 美东)
BuzzFeed News: Asian-American Groups Clash Over Harvard Affirmative Action
Complaint
May 19, 2015
Share: Twitter logoFacebook logoLinkedIn logoForward logoGoogle+ logo
The latest high-profile challenge to affirmative action in college
admissions has exposed fault lines in the Asian-American community,
underscoring differences of opinion between foreign-born immigrants and
American-born Asian community leaders.
More than 60 Asian-American groups — mostly led by recent Chinese
immigrants — filed a federal complaint accusing Harvard University of
discrimination on Friday afternoon.
That same day, a separate coalition named Asian American Civil Rights posted
an open letter rebuking the complaint and declaring its support for
affirmative action in higher education.
“Our universities should reflect our diverse democracy and expand
opportunities for those students who have overcome significant barriers,”
the letter says. “Rather than letting ourselves be divided, we must come
together to ensure increased opportunities and success for all students.”
Most of the groups who filed the federal complaint are newer organizations
comprising foreign-born immigrants, largely from China. The groups who led
the opposition to the complaint tend to be older civil rights groups with
American-born leaders and long-standing relationships with black and Latino
activist groups. “From a sociological standpoint, that makes sense,” C.N.
Le, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, told BuzzFeed
News. More recent immigrants, he said, “are coming from an idealized image
of American society as a meritocracy where everybody should have an equal
chance … So, from that point of view, they see affirmative action as this
mechanism that discriminates against Asian-Americans.”
By contrast, Le said, civil rights groups with deeper roots have views of
racial politics much more in line with those of other traditional civil
rights advocacy groups, who have long advocated for affirmative action as a
necessary corrective to structural inequalities.
The substance of the federal complaint, which was filed with the U.S.
Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, is a request for an
investigation into Harvard’s admission practices and cites data that
Harvard and other Ivy League schools discriminate against Asian applicants
by holding them to a higher standard for test scores. The coalition argues
that under a “race-neutral” admissions process, schools like Harvard would
have a much higher proportion of Asian students. Currently Harvard’s
student population is 19% Asian.
But the coalition of Asian groups that opposes the federal complaint say it
pits Asian Americans against other minority groups and imperils hard-won
inclusive university admissions policies.
“This is largely what we’ve seen in the past, which is a ploy by many
conservative groups to use Asian-Americans as a wedge community,” Vincent
Pan, executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, told BuzzFeed
News. This, he said, serves to create the false appearance that Asian-
Americans don’t support or benefit from “efforts to promote racial justice
.”
Taylor Chow, president of Asian Americans for Political Advancement, one of
the groups behind the complaint against Harvard, said that the groups
defending affirmative action are failing to address the real concerns of
Asian-American parents and students who are suffering from discrimination
with every new round of college applicants. “Those groups, they claim they
are representing the minority,” Chow told BuzzFeed News. “But they have
lost their leadership on these issues.”
The complaint is a new twist on decades-long discussions of affirmative
action in college admissions. While a lawsuit last December accused both
Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill of
discrimination against a specific Asian student, this is the first time that
Asian-American groups themselves have attacked affirmative action on a
national stage, said OiYan Poon, a professor at Loyola University Chicago
who studies race and college admissions. In the past, Poon said, such
complaints have usually been led by predominantly white, conservative groups
. Or, if the complaints were raised by Asian-Americans, they were limited to
discrimination against Asians without attacking affirmative action in
general.
Thomas Espenshade, a sociologist at Princeton who published some of the
research most frequently cited by opponents of affirmative action, told
BuzzFeed News that the statistical disadvantage felt by Asian applicants is
not necessarily a sign of discrimination. “We only have the hard,
quantifiable variables,” like test scores, Espenshade said. “We don’t
have some of the softer things like students’ personal statements or
recommendations.” Still, Espenshade said his research shows that the
disadvantages felt by Asian students are related to the benefits felt by
other minority groups, and that removing race-based preferences would
increase the proportion of Asian students admitted into elite schools.
Ultimately he called the decision over what to do about affirmative action a
“philosophical” one.
Betty Hung, policy director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice in Los
Angeles and the author of the open letter supporting affirmative action,
disagrees with Espenshade about the implications of his research. She said
the error of the Harvard complaint lies not in decrying discrimination
against Asians, but in identifying affirmative action as the culprit. The
complaint accuses Harvard of applying de facto racial quotas, but “
affirmative action does not constitute quotas,” Hung said. Instead, “it’s
simply taking account whether a candidate has overcome racial adversity and
discrimination” in so-called “holistic” reviews of applicants. Hung also
pointed to a recent survey by her organization that found that 69% of Asian
-Americans support affirmative action in higher education. Other polls have
shown similar levels of support overall, but that support varies among
different Asian-American subgroups.
Both Hung and Pan, from Chinese for Affirmative Action, did not discount the
possibility that Asian applicants are discriminated against by college
admissions processes, but insisted that attacking affirmative action is not
the solution. “The remedy they call for is the wrong one,” Hung said. “
The remedy is not to end affirmative action. It’s to end discrimination.”
Yukong Zhao, a columnist and author who spearheaded the coalition that filed
the complaint against Harvard, said that this was precisely the intention
of the complaint. “They try to focus this conversation on affirmative
action when it is more about discrimination against Asian-Americans,” Zhao
told BuzzFeed News. Harvard and other Ivies, he said, are violating existing
laws that allow for affirmative action policies yet prohibit discrimination
against specific groups.
Nevertheless, the coalition that filed the complaint is actively calling for
an end to any use of race as an admissions criterion, advocating instead
for a form of affirmative action based purely on an applicant’s economic
background. Moreover, the complaint itself frequently cites evidence
presented in a lawsuit filed against Harvard in November by Edward Blum, a
prominent conservative anti-affirmative action activist, to support its
claims.
Still, the groups behind the Harvard complaint insist that they are not
being properly understood, and some called for a more amicable dialogue.
Alex Chen, president of the Orange Club, lamented that none of the groups
behind the letter had reached out to the groups behind the complaint. “You
know, just talk to us,” he said. “We’re not here to destroy things. We
are the victims, too. And we are parents who care about our children and
care about the future of our home, which is America.” |
|
