Redlining Asians

Last week, the Boston Globe published an op-ed about a topic we’ve covered on the blog several times. Thomas Espenshade is an author of a Princeton University study that revealed students of Asian descent face discrimination at elite colleges and universities.

His research showed that a black student with 1150s and a white student with 1460s had the same chance of admission as an Asian student with 1600s, top scores. Download his 11-page Power Point presentation for a quick view (PDF).

(Incidentally, Espenshade called for a project to close the racial academic achievement gap between the races “with the same scale, urgency, and sense of importance as the original Manhattan Project.”)

According to the op-ed, Princeton spokesperson Emily Aronson said “no particular factor is assigned a fixed weight and there is no formula for weighing the various aspects of the application.”

The op-ed’s author, Boston College teacher Kara Miller, shares this bit of news: “A few years ago, however, when I worked as a reader for Yale’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions, it became immediately clear to me that Asians – who constitute 5 percent of the US population – faced an uphill slog. They tended to get excellent scores, take advantage of AP offerings, and shine in extracurricular activities. Frequently, they also had hard-knock stories: families that had immigrated to America under difficult circumstances, parents working as kitchen assistants and store clerks, and households in which no English was spoken….But would Yale be willing to make 50 percent of its freshman class Asian? Probably not.”

Do colleges and universities keep Asian admittees below a certain percentage?

“There are a lot of poor Asians, immigrant kids,” University of Oregon physics professor Stephen Hsu told Miller. “But generally that story doesn’t do as much as it would for a non-Asian student. Statistically, it’s true that Asians generally have to get higher scores than others to get in.”

Americans of Asian descent typically aren’t as vocal about discrimination or nearly as successful spreading collective guilt as other minorities. Perhaps op-eds like this, along with Espenshade’s research, will change that.

States like California banned discrimination and preferences in government-supported colleges and universities. Consequently, Asians account for about 40 percent of students at these schools, Miller notes, although they account for 13 percent of the state’s population. It’s possible that in states where preferences are permitted, colleges and universities redline Asians so the student body can reflect the population.

If any group should support bans on preferences and discrimination, it should be formerly oppressed minorities. These bans protect all individuals, regardless of race, from being judged by their race. The government’s intent to benefit these minorities is irrelevant. The authority to treat people differently based on race is a proverbial double-edged sword.