Affirmative Action Affirms         

Frank H. Wu

I am often asked whether Asian Americans should support affirmative action. I had the honor of testifying in the University of Michigan case when it was tried in the United States District Court in 2001, appearing on behalf of students who intervened in favor of the programs. The practice of considering race as a factor in high-stakes decision-making, such as college admissions, is controversial, but it also is crucial to ensuring genuine diversity.

Perhaps it would be more constructive to ask a different question that emphasizes our important societal goals: should Asian Americans value racial integration? In the past generation, it has become clear that the answer is “yes.” Asian Americans, like all Americans, consistently say that we would like our institutions to be inclusive: we want the President’s Cabinet to look like the face of the nation, corporate management to be a realistic aspiration for everyone who is talented and hard-working, and selective campuses to offer opportunities to students who are African American and Latino as well as Asian American and white. The challenge, then, is how to develop practices that make our rhetoric a reality.

In the pair of University of Michigan cases, the Supreme Court has announced Constitutional guidelines that will allow us to do so. The Justices have declared that diversity is a “compelling state interest.” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in the majority opinion, “In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity.”

For Asian Americans, however, the issues are different than for blacks and whites. Asian Americans are often frustrated, and rightly so, to learn that we are not recognized as racial minorities much less United States citizens. We are presumed to be model minorities or perpetual foreigners. Yet as we stand up and speak out for our civil rights, we will succeed only if we also stand up and speak out for racial equality in a principled manner.

I cringe when I meet someone who is Asian who tells me they support diversity efforts at work, because they see a glass ceiling and know that Asian Americans will advance only if their employer takes active measures to bring about such an outcome, or whose small business has benefited from a government initiative meant to encourage people of color, but who then pauses and declares they oppose affirmative action by universities because they believe their child will be disadvantaged. In a democratic system, we cannot simply demand programs that will help us while fighting programs that we believe – erroneously – will harm us. Otherwise, blacks and whites alike will realize we are self-interested rather than willing to build coalitions.

What is worse are demagogues who tell Asian Americans that African Americans’ gains come at our expense. Asian Americans are turned into a wedge group, used to attack African Americans. People say, “Look, they made it, why can’t you,” ignoring both group histories and contemporary stereotyping that is very different. Or Asian Americans are encouraged to blame racial discrimination against us on affirmative action for African Americans. People suggest that Asian Americans must be discriminated against if affirmative action is used, even though it would be illegal to use quotas whether maximum or minimum.

Affirmative action is merely a means to an ends. It is an attempt to give all people a chance to achieve the great American Dream. Asian Americans, especially those of us who are close to our immigrant origins, can understand that ideal.

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© 2005 Frank H. Wu

Frank H. Wu is the ninth Dean of Wayne State University Law School; he grew up in metropolitan Detroit.

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Comments

[Tai Chan]

Lot of truth in Frank Wu's article. With all the hoopla on diversity, is American still treating the minorities as the "other" people ?

[W. Michael O'Neill]

Bravo! Dean Wu

As my wife and I followed the path of adopting our four daughters from China, we became in a sense, truly an Asian-American family. We also confirmed that we live in a country that, while it has made ethnic and cultural prejudice illegal, has done very little to actively eliminate the reality of day-to-day injustice. Affirmative Action statutes and policies in centers of education and in the workplace are a positive beginning and nothing more. We are, for the moment, the wealthiest and most powerful of nations. Yet, we are in many ways also the most violent, most bigoted, and least diverse.

I am inclined to agree with the conclusions of Ashley Montague in his groundbreaking work, “Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race” that I first encountered in its 4th edition published in 1965. Montague gives us one possible reason for the renewed attempts to reverse the direction of affirmative action. He wrote, “…as long as racism and prejudice continue to satisfy structural and psychological needs, these superficial differences will always be exaggerated and favored to preserve privilege, power, and position (Montague 1965).” Montague’s work was supported by that of Frank Boas who found “there is no biological basis for race….Biologically there are no distinct human racial categories or boundaries, only a continuum of genetic variation.”

My young daughters, the eldest not yet 7, already face this racial issue either in its typical face or in the reverse order that so many Asian children encounter; the reverse prejudice that suggests because they are Chinese they must certainly be gifted in Math, Science, and probably music. It seems to me important that the Asian-American community, including those of us “members by adoption,” be both visible and vocal in building the coalitions that can most effectively counteract this growing movement to reverse the advances of the past decades. Those advances have been small and painfully won.