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  Dr. Jean Park (She/her/hers)

  April 12, 2024 at 9:33 am Reply

  Notes from Sydney Johnson (@sydneyj):

  Asian Americans are a vastly diverse group, seeing as Asia is the largest continent on Earth. Asian Americans come from a variety of countries, religions, and cultures. However, they have been generalized by US society as being a “model minority”: a minority group that is seen as more capable than other minority groups at meeting the US standards of success. This perception has not stopped Asian Americans from being discriminated against, however. Asian Americans came to the US at a disadvantage from many White Americans. They have had to struggle to adjust to the US and succeed, and it has not always been welcoming throughout history. The “model minority” stereotype, singles them out from Black and Hispanic Americans. It causes US society to believe that they don’t need assistance and minimizes the struggles that they went through, along with making people jealous and spiteful. In its extreme, when Asian Americans started largely attending institutions of higher education, this was referred to as the “Asian Invasion” and many people viewed this as a problem. As a response to this, affirmative action was used to limit Asian acceptance into colleges and universities. Affirmative action was legal under the condition that it helps move towards leveling the playing field for oppressed classes. Asian Americans are an oppressed class and they were being harmed by this policy. Additionally, the policy only benefited White Americans, because when Asian American enrollment was limited, White enrollment was the population that increased in its place. Clearly, Affirmative Action was used to perpetuate racism rather than combat it, which is representative in the unfortunate reality of American politics. We have seen this “invasion” rhetoric before, with the “Jewish Invasion” and with segregation of Black Americans. In hindsight, we can see how blatantly discriminatory this mindset is, and how it is used to keep minorities out, so the fact that we are still seeing this in the 21st century is concerning. Unfortunately, oppressed classes are still at a disadvantage when applying to higher education. Hopefully a better system can be found to combat this.