Inconvenient Asians
My column for the Seattle Times is online (may req. reg.):
Underrepresented minorities: a shift in the racial dialogue
By James J. Na
Special to The Times
May is Asian Pacific American History Month, designated by President George H.W. Bush. So perhaps it is a fitting occasion to bring up one of my pet peeves:
We are not a biracial nation.
Yet, until recently, "America: black and white" had been a common title in discussions about race relations. Hispanics and Asians were often subsumed into a broad-stroke category of "minorities" along with blacks.
Hispanics have gained some attention of late, because of shifting demographics, particularly electoral demographics. President George W. Bush won 44 percent of Hispanic voters in the last election, up 9 percent from 2000. Some Republicans hope that increasing support among Hispanic voters will counter the overwhelming lock the Democrats have on black voters (over 90 percent in most elections).
Asians, however, are still invisible at the national level. So it is no big surprise that many Americans seem to be unaware of a subtle language shift in the racial dialogue. The operating catchphrase today is "URM" — "underrepresented minorities."
The "traditional" model of race relations in the post-civil-rights era was simple (and simple-minded): Whites oppressed minorities, the latter therefore could not succeed, and so-called affirmative action was deemed necessary to redress the balance — for "racial justice."
Enter Asians. Asians may be the fastest-growing racial group, but they are still a tiny minority at about 4 percent of the U.S. population. In comparison, blacks account for more than 12 percent of Americans. Yet, even as other, larger minority groups languish in economic and educational underperformance, Asians have the highest average household income, the highest college-graduation rate and the highest rate of home ownership of any ethnic-racial group, including whites.
In other words, Asians have become inconvenient to the old model of race relations. In fact, where affirmative action becomes a "soft" form of quota, such as in some university admission schemes, Asians are actually discriminated against by a system purportedly designed to help minorities.
A racial enrollment "target" or quota system forces applicants to compete within their own ethnic groups for the allotted slots, rather than as individuals against the entirety of the applicant pool. Since Asians, on average, outscore whites by 20 points and blacks by 226 points in the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), this means that individual Asians must score higher than whites and substantially higher than blacks to be treated equally.
Similarly, what was conveniently glossed over in the media during the debates preceding California's Proposition 209 to ban racial preferences — portrayed as a black vs. white issue — was the predictive analysis that removal of affirmative action would mean only a marginal rise in white university enrollment, but a significant increase for Asians who would now be free to compete with everyone else.
Thus, far from benefiting all minority groups, affirmative action often promotes the interests of a politically powerful, but underperforming minority group at the expense of limiting and downplaying the success of an overperforming, but politically weak, minority group. This form of discrimination against success is not confined to academia, but is also ingrained in pop culture.
Witness, for example, the latest hit medical drama, "Grey's Anatomy." Of nine major characters playing doctors at a fictitious Seattle hospital, three are black. Only one is Asian. In the real world, Asians account for 20 percent of medical-school graduates while blacks make up 6.5 percent of new doctors.
"America: black and white"? Only according to the Hollywood affirmative-action system, where blacks are dutifully assigned a sizable portion of major roles whereas Asians are lucky to get one spot, reality be damned. (An odd side effect of this is that foreigners who are exposed to America through television indeed think of it as a nation of whites and blacks; one Indonesian villager, when told I was from America, exclaimed, "But your face is so Asian!")
In today's world of affirmative action, there are whites and then there are "URM." I suppose that makes Asians an "overrepresented minority," but that doesn't exactly warrant an acronym. It is merely inconvenient to those who push affirmative action.
Of course, there are racial discriminations, as there are discriminations and preferences based on a myriad of other factors including looks (it is documented by studies, for example, that handsome military officers do better in their careers), height (women prefer taller men) and regional origin (woe unto non-native Seattleites in Seattle). Should we enact affirmative action for ugly, short, non-native Seattleites, too?
Instead of building intricate and ultimately futile social-engineering schemes to account for differences in circumstances of birth, I would prefer that our institutions judge individuals solely by their merit and character — by how they overcame their inborn adversities and took advantage of natural gifts.
And instead of "America: black and white," I prefer "E Pluribus Unum."
James J. Na is a senior fellow in foreign policy at Discovery Institute (www.discovery.org) and runs the "Guns and Butter Blog" (gunsandbutter.blogspot.com). He can be reached at jamesjna@hotmail.com.
[Update] One related note: Yesterday I was watching Book TV on CSPAN 2. The speaker was Bob Baird, the author of The Case for Affirmative Action in University Admissions. After his talk (which was obviously not very convincing), one person in the audience asked something to the effect of "Asians are over-represented at Berkeley. Blacks and Hispanics are under-represented. As a pragmatic matter, how do you keep Asians out?" (!!!)
As if I weren't shocked enough already (can you imagine that kind of talk about blacks, Hispanics, Jews or any other group? "How Do we keep blacks out?" for example), not only did Baird decline to repudiate that kind of reasoning, he actually went on to make a bizarre, meandering response about how, without affirmative action, Asians would fill the state schools and elite, private institutions would be 100% blacks and Hispanics! Is this guy on something?
Underrepresented minorities: a shift in the racial dialogue
By James J. Na
Special to The Times
May is Asian Pacific American History Month, designated by President George H.W. Bush. So perhaps it is a fitting occasion to bring up one of my pet peeves:
We are not a biracial nation.
Yet, until recently, "America: black and white" had been a common title in discussions about race relations. Hispanics and Asians were often subsumed into a broad-stroke category of "minorities" along with blacks.
Hispanics have gained some attention of late, because of shifting demographics, particularly electoral demographics. President George W. Bush won 44 percent of Hispanic voters in the last election, up 9 percent from 2000. Some Republicans hope that increasing support among Hispanic voters will counter the overwhelming lock the Democrats have on black voters (over 90 percent in most elections).
Asians, however, are still invisible at the national level. So it is no big surprise that many Americans seem to be unaware of a subtle language shift in the racial dialogue. The operating catchphrase today is "URM" — "underrepresented minorities."
The "traditional" model of race relations in the post-civil-rights era was simple (and simple-minded): Whites oppressed minorities, the latter therefore could not succeed, and so-called affirmative action was deemed necessary to redress the balance — for "racial justice."
Enter Asians. Asians may be the fastest-growing racial group, but they are still a tiny minority at about 4 percent of the U.S. population. In comparison, blacks account for more than 12 percent of Americans. Yet, even as other, larger minority groups languish in economic and educational underperformance, Asians have the highest average household income, the highest college-graduation rate and the highest rate of home ownership of any ethnic-racial group, including whites.
In other words, Asians have become inconvenient to the old model of race relations. In fact, where affirmative action becomes a "soft" form of quota, such as in some university admission schemes, Asians are actually discriminated against by a system purportedly designed to help minorities.
A racial enrollment "target" or quota system forces applicants to compete within their own ethnic groups for the allotted slots, rather than as individuals against the entirety of the applicant pool. Since Asians, on average, outscore whites by 20 points and blacks by 226 points in the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), this means that individual Asians must score higher than whites and substantially higher than blacks to be treated equally.
Similarly, what was conveniently glossed over in the media during the debates preceding California's Proposition 209 to ban racial preferences — portrayed as a black vs. white issue — was the predictive analysis that removal of affirmative action would mean only a marginal rise in white university enrollment, but a significant increase for Asians who would now be free to compete with everyone else.
Thus, far from benefiting all minority groups, affirmative action often promotes the interests of a politically powerful, but underperforming minority group at the expense of limiting and downplaying the success of an overperforming, but politically weak, minority group. This form of discrimination against success is not confined to academia, but is also ingrained in pop culture.
Witness, for example, the latest hit medical drama, "Grey's Anatomy." Of nine major characters playing doctors at a fictitious Seattle hospital, three are black. Only one is Asian. In the real world, Asians account for 20 percent of medical-school graduates while blacks make up 6.5 percent of new doctors.
"America: black and white"? Only according to the Hollywood affirmative-action system, where blacks are dutifully assigned a sizable portion of major roles whereas Asians are lucky to get one spot, reality be damned. (An odd side effect of this is that foreigners who are exposed to America through television indeed think of it as a nation of whites and blacks; one Indonesian villager, when told I was from America, exclaimed, "But your face is so Asian!")
In today's world of affirmative action, there are whites and then there are "URM." I suppose that makes Asians an "overrepresented minority," but that doesn't exactly warrant an acronym. It is merely inconvenient to those who push affirmative action.
Of course, there are racial discriminations, as there are discriminations and preferences based on a myriad of other factors including looks (it is documented by studies, for example, that handsome military officers do better in their careers), height (women prefer taller men) and regional origin (woe unto non-native Seattleites in Seattle). Should we enact affirmative action for ugly, short, non-native Seattleites, too?
Instead of building intricate and ultimately futile social-engineering schemes to account for differences in circumstances of birth, I would prefer that our institutions judge individuals solely by their merit and character — by how they overcame their inborn adversities and took advantage of natural gifts.
And instead of "America: black and white," I prefer "E Pluribus Unum."
James J. Na is a senior fellow in foreign policy at Discovery Institute (www.discovery.org) and runs the "Guns and Butter Blog" (gunsandbutter.blogspot.com). He can be reached at jamesjna@hotmail.com.
[Update] One related note: Yesterday I was watching Book TV on CSPAN 2. The speaker was Bob Baird, the author of The Case for Affirmative Action in University Admissions. After his talk (which was obviously not very convincing), one person in the audience asked something to the effect of "Asians are over-represented at Berkeley. Blacks and Hispanics are under-represented. As a pragmatic matter, how do you keep Asians out?" (!!!)
As if I weren't shocked enough already (can you imagine that kind of talk about blacks, Hispanics, Jews or any other group? "How Do we keep blacks out?" for example), not only did Baird decline to repudiate that kind of reasoning, he actually went on to make a bizarre, meandering response about how, without affirmative action, Asians would fill the state schools and elite, private institutions would be 100% blacks and Hispanics! Is this guy on something?
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"E.Pluribus Unum". I like that too as a way of describing the American mixture. I see us as a mongrel nation, like a mongrel dog, all the different parts make one loveable creature.
This notion of underrepresented minorities...I'm a black woman and I came of age during the days when civil rights were a new thing for black people and when affirmative action was first talked about in those days, there was an unspoken assumption of "grace". But then that was before America's body politic became allergic to religious influences.... Though I think of grace in the context of my Christian beliefs, it is also an approach to civil society that non-believers can appreciate as a framework for thinking about ideas like affirmative action from the standpoint of their own voluntary will & principles.
The example of Asians being an "overrepresented minority" but yet invisible in so-called minority politics is testimony to the reality of America's balkinization through affirmative-action and its kindred concepts such as "diversity" and multiculturalism".
There will always be a unique place for the black & white racial narrative in America due to the peculiarities of slavery & Jim Crow. The important lessons we should be learning are being neglected & poo-pooed...For example America was held accountable by her own standards, our Constitution was built on principles that were sufficient in and of themselves to bring about the day of reckoning; and that a dear price was paid every step of the way for our forefather's sin and securing the freedom of black people,--from the civil war to the civil rights struggles of the 1960's. And this is a freedom that inures to the benefit of everyone, an expression of truths that are Self Evident.
vashti
Posted by
vvarnado |
13/6/06 23:07
The example of Asians being an "overrepresented minority" but yet invisible in so-called minority politics is testimony to the reality of America's balkinization through affirmative-action and its kindred concepts such as "diversity" and multiculturalism".
Yes, I agree.
There will always be a unique place for the black & white racial narrative in America due to the peculiarities of slavery & Jim Crow.
Indeed. That narrative is an important part of our shared history (one which led to the most destructive war in American history). But it is also the past. We are supposed to be a nation of the future. While understanding the past is crucial, policies designed to "right the wrongs of the past" often backfire, as affirmative action indeed has.
Furthermore, the narrative, while history, is not the present in that the complex ethnic makeup of the U.S. today can no longer (if ever) be framed into an inaccurate black and white paradigm.
Posted by
James J. Na |
14/6/06 15:37
By noting that the black-white narrative's uniqueness, I am not suggesting that this should frame America's understanding of itself where its "complex ethnic makeup" is concerned today. However one chooses to think about these issues, for me the bottomline today is to contend against forces that balkanize.
It's too involved for me to get into here, but I'm the first to admit that the race-narrative has been overused where black people in particular are concerned. From the beginning of the civil rights reforms of the 1960's there have been those with a hostile agenda for Judeo-Christian values in American social policy who have seized upon the historic grievances of black Americans, promoting black alienation, and group-rights as the meaning of equal opportunity.
You will not get any arguement from me concerning the pernicious effect of social policies purporting to rectify the past by looking at individuals in terms of their group identification.
However its sliced, the group-rights pie divides America.
Which brings me back to the metaphor of America as a mongrel dog, indivisible, the whole always greater than its parts.
vashti
Posted by
v varnado |
14/6/06 22:03