Asian Students: Victims of “Diversity”

From Minding the Campus, an account of how an inconvenient minority is being victimized in the name of “diversity.”

One of the least-kept secrets in higher education is the fact that many colleges and universities, especially the more select ones, consciously seek to suppress their “Asian” student enrollment.

During the first year of my term as a regent of the University of California (UC), a prominent member of the staff at one of the UC campuses remarked to me that at least two of the UC campuses could become “all-Asian” if conscious efforts were not pursued to “maintain diversity.” It was at that point that I learned that “diversity” was the fig leaf to hide this pervasive system of discrimination against Asians.

This insidious practice of Asian discrimination has largely gone unchallenged for a variety of reasons. First, there is a prevailing view that “opportunities” granted to one group do not come at the expense of another. This view was recently expressed by one of the presidential candidates. It is a sentiment that enables institutions of higher education as well as others to get away with their Asian discrimination. Few are aware that the percentage of Asians at the University of California at Los Angeles campus went from roughly 22% when preferences were being accorded to “underrepresented minorities” to over 40% once they were eliminated.

Second, Asian discrimination occurs because Asians---unlike black and Latino activist groups---remain silent in the face of discrimination against them. Stepping forward as he has done, Li might very well trigger an “I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore” attitude among other Asians. And that would be a good thing.

Politically correct people deride Asians as the “model minority.”

Why the derision? Because Asians have not understood the proper function of minorities in American society.

Minorities are supposed to fail. That failure stands as a condemnation of American society, a very convenient excuse for more social programs, and a justification for more bureaucrats to minister to the needs of poor needy failed minorities.

Success undermines the whole game.

Since the liberals have a vested interest in minority failure, they set out to explicitly reward failure and punish success.

Further, the success of one group raises the question of why other groups fail, and that question can be exceedingly embarrassing. It might, for example, lead one to ask whether the family values that liberals deride have something to do with the success of Asians. It might raise the question of whether buying into the victim culture isn’t itself a major impediment to minority success.

We can’t help but wonder: how would blacks be doing in America today if the black community had not been hobbled both by “leaders” in the community and by white liberals whose interests would be badly harmed by black success?