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发帖数: 9531 | 1 【 以下文字转载自 SanFrancisco 讨论区 】
发信人: wildtiger (wildtiger), 信区: SanFrancisco
标 题: mercury news 的文章--脑残的ABC又给民主党做打手来了
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Tue Apr 1 19:56:23 2014, 美东)
Opposition to affirmative action: California Asian Americans have forgotten
civil rights history by Janelle Wong
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_25442457/opposition-affir
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.
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