While educational disparities exist across different Asian groups in the United States, a significant portion of the Asian-American community is relatively advantaged compared to other groups when it comes to education. Despite this group advantage, there was a tremendous outcry among some influential Chinese American groups when California legislators recently attempted to pass legislation to allow race-conscious university admissions.
Fearing that Asian-American applicants would be unfairly disadvantaged, the groups lobbied Asian-American lawmakers, who initially had supported affirmative action. The proposed legislation did not move forward.
It is tempting to think that Asian-American success depends only on our efforts. As a graduate of UCLA and Yale, I can explain my own educational trajectory with reference to my grandparents' sacrifices and their deep belief in the value of education. After immigrating from China, my grandfather worked as a janitor and my grandmother worked in a garment factory. My father attended a segregated Chinatown school but eventually graduated from San Francisco State.
But this "hardworking immigrants" narrative is only a small part of the story. The opportunities my parents and I had were only possible because of the long fight for civil rights and political recognition led by black Americans. The university doors that I so easily walked through in 1995 were opened by civil rights activists who demanded access for all Americans, not just their own group. Yet many of the anti-affirmative action activists in the Asian-American community seem to have forgotten this important history.
There is a more important reason that Asian-Americans should support affirmative action: basic justice. In surveys, blacks, Latinos and Asian-Americans report the same levels of expectation for graduating from college. Blacks and Latinos also invest as much in and value education at the same levels as Asian-Americans, once one controls for differential resources, such as income.
Unless one asserts that there are differences in intellectual ability between Asians and other groups, the best way to explain different levels of educational attainment is to concede that there is something wrong with the system as a whole. And there is something wrong.
For instance, a 2012 study of the Los Angeles Unified School District by Education Trust-West shows that black and Latino students are much less likely to be taught by highly effective teachers than white and Asian-American students.
The disadvantage faced by black and Latino students largely is due to the historical and contemporary policies that create economically and racially segregated communities and schools. They can be attributed also to immigration policies that recruit low-cost labor from Latin America. Similarly, the educational advantage that characterizes many Asian-American groups is due in large part to federal policies that selectively recruit educated immigrants from Asia.
The educational gap between Asians and other groups, then, cannot be explained solely through merit but must attend to public policies that systematically advantage some groups and disadvantage others.
Do I want my own children to go to a great college or university? Of course. But a highly selective university that includes only a handful of black and Latino students will actually mean a worse educational environment for them because it would rob them of the chance to develop a critical perspective beyond their own racial group boundaries.
With more resources, our public universities could accommodate more black and Latino students without sacrificing white and Asian-American "seats." But until those resources are available, where Asian-Americans have advantages, they should use that very real power to open more doors, not to slam doors behind them.
Janelle Wong, who grew up in Yuba City, is director of Asian-American studies at the University of Maryland and the author of three books on Asian-Americans and politics. She wrote this for this newspaper.