“Race and College Admissions, Facing a New Test by Justices”

Sounds like this case will soon join the ranks of other landmark and highly controversial cases like Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), Hopwood v. University of Texas Law School (1996), & Grutter v. Bollinger (2003)… Hopefully someday everyone will acknowledge how systemic the legacy of white supremacy and privilege is in this country. 

Taken from: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/us/supreme-court-to-hear-case-on-affirmative-action.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all&

October 8, 2012

Abigail Fisher is a slight young woman with strawberry blond hair, a smile that needs little prompting, a determined manner and a good academic record. She played soccer in high school, and she is an accomplished cellist.

But the university she had her heart set on, the one her father and sister had attended, rejected her. “I was devastated,” she said, in her first news interview since she was turned down by the University of Texas at Austin four years ago.

Ms. Fisher, 22, who is white and recently graduated from Louisiana State University, says that her race was held against her, and the Supreme Court is to hear her case on Wednesday, bringing new attention to the combustible issue of the constitutionality of racial preferences in admissions decisions by public universities. “I’m hoping,” she said, “that they’ll completely take race out of the issue in terms of admissions and that everyone will be able to get into any school that they want no matter what race they are but solely based on their merit and if they work hard for it.”

The university said Ms. Fisher would not have been admitted even if race had played no role in the process, and it questioned whether she has suffered the sort of injury that gives her standing to sue. But the university’s larger defense is that it must be free to assemble a varied student body as part of its academic and societal mission. The Supreme Court endorsed that view by a 5-to-4 vote in 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger.

University officials said that the school’s affirmative action program was needed to build a student body diverse enough to include minority students with a broad range of backgrounds and for the campus to have a “critical mass” of minority students in most classrooms. Interaction among students in class and around campus, said Kedra Ishop, the university’s director of admissions, helps students overcome biases and make contributions to a diverse society. “The role of U.T. Austin,” Dr. Ishop said, “is to provide leadership to the state.”

The majority opinion in the Grutter case, written by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, rejected the use of racial quotas in admissions decisions but said that race could be used as one factor among many, as part of a “holistic review.” Justice O’Connor retired in 2006, and her replacement by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. may open the way for a ruling cutting back on such race-conscious admissions policies, or eliminating them.

Admissions officers at colleges and universities almost universally endorse the idea that students from diverse backgrounds learn from each other, overcome stereotypes, and in so doing prepare themselves for leadership positions in society. Many critics of affirmative action say that there is at best a weak correlation between race and having a range of views presented in the classroom.

Others say the Constitution does not permit the government to sort people by race, no matter how worthy its goal. “While racial diversity on college campuses is beneficial, it cannot be attained by racial discrimination,” said Edward Blum, an adviser to Ms. Fisher and a driving force behind the Fisher case.

The competing arguments are hard to test, but a recent visit to a freshman seminar at the University of Texas at Austin suggested that the intellectual life of undergraduates there is varied and vibrant.

The course was called Debates on Democracy in America, and the topic that day was “The Known World,” Edward P. Jones’s novel about a black slave owner. It was only the third week of class, but the 18 students, of all sorts of ethnicities and backgrounds, talked easily and earnestly about contemporary echoes of slavery. An Asian student mentioned cheap labor in China. A Hispanic one talked about the ways employers in the United States take advantage of illegal immigrants.

Other comments ran counter to possible stereotypes. D’wahn Kelley, a black student, said he hesitated to condemn the slave owner in the novel too harshly. “You’re judged on what you know, not what you don’t know,” he said, referring to the limits of the character’s moral imagination. “If you wanted to be successful, you had a right to own slaves.”

In response, Ashley Vasquez, a Hispanic student, said the she rejected “the whole idea that you have to learn right and wrong.” “It’s hard for me to think,” she said, “that you can go about your day thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to own a human being.’ ”

Three-quarters of applicants from Texas are admitted under a program that guarantees admission to the top students in every high school in the state. (Almost everyone calls this the Top Ten program, though the percentage cutoff can vary. Ms. Fisher barely missed the cutoff.) The remaining Texas students and those from elsewhere are considered under standards that take account of academic achievement and other factors, including race and ethnicity. The Top Ten program has produced substantial racial and ethnic diversity. In the fall of last year, freshmen who enrolled under the program were 26 percent Hispanic and 6 percent black. Texas is 38 percent Hispanic and 12 percent black.

The practical question in Austin is what eliminating the additional race-conscious admissions program would mean for seminars like the one on democracy, for lecture classes and for interactions in cafeterias and dormitories.

The university said the Top Ten program was a blunt instrument and that classes in many subjects have few or no minority students. It adds that the diversity generated by the Top Ten program is “mostly a product of the fact that Texas high schools remain highly segregated in regions of the state,” which “limits the diversity that can be achieved within racial groups.”

Among the kind of student excluded by the Top Ten program, the university said is “the African-American or Hispanic child of successful professionals in Dallas who has strong SAT scores and has demonstrated leadership ability in extracurricular activities but falls in the second decile of his or her high school class (or attends an elite private school that does not rank).”

Ms. Fisher’s lawyers called that “a newly minted interest in elitism dressed up as ‘intra-racial’ diversity.” They added that the university is making the unseemly pitch for “its preferred kind of minorities” at the expense of white students like Ms. Fisher with similar qualifications.

Talking in the hallway after the seminar, Joao Eloy, who was admitted outside the Top Ten program, said he had mixed feelings about the university’s approach. “My only concern is if diversity becomes a priority above merit,” he said, adding that he was wary of any system that “punishes Asians and poor whites, to name a few.” But Mr. Eloy, who said his heritage was Brazilian (making him Latino but not Hispanic, he said), said classrooms were enriched by a mix of voices. “The different perspectives help a lot,” he said. “It makes it really interesting.”

Nosa Aimuyo, whose parents are Nigerian immigrants and who was also admitted outside the Top Ten program, said race-conscious admissions were needed to address “disparities in opportunity between high schools, which disproportionately affect minorities.”

In an interview in his office in Austin, William C. Powers Jr, the university’s president, said the attributes that the university seeks have many dimensions. “We want diversity in terms of economic background, first generation, geography, inner city, suburban middle class,” he said. Asked what he would say to Ms. Fisher, whose own background is middle class, about her disappointment at being rejected, Mr. Powers paused for a moment. “We look at everyone’s holistic characteristics,” he said.

Last month, Ms. Fisher spent a morning chatting with a reporter at a private club in Washington and then took an impromptu tour of the Supreme Court, where the grandeur of the surroundings seemed to bring home to her the gravity of the question she had presented to the justices. She is working in Austin, where she had wanted to be in the first place, as a financial analyst. She said her college years at Louisiana State had been fine and that she had enjoyed the camaraderie of the bowling team. But she added that she had lost a benefit that her state’s government had decided to distribute on a basis other than merit. “The only thing I missed out on was my post-graduation years,” she said. “Just being in a network of U.T. graduates would have been a really nice thing to be in. And I probably would have gotten a better job offer had I gone to U.T.” She said she was trying to come to terms with her role in a case that could reshape American higher education. Asked if she found it interesting or exciting or scary, she said, “All of the above.” But she did not hesitate to say how she would run an admission system. “I don’t think,” she said, “that we even need to have a race box on the application.”

“Health care reform law helps 1.3 million minority young adults obtain health insurance”

Though the Affordable Care Act has its limits (it doesn’t cover undocumented immigrants, it only extends health care for young adults whose parents have an existing health care plan – to name a few), it has made a big difference. Hopefully universal health care will be a reality for Americans one day. 

Taken from: http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2012pres/03/20120307a.html

March 7, 2012

New data released today by Health and Human Services shows that the Affordable Care Act has extended health insurance to a substantial number of racial and ethnic minorities nationwide. The health care reform law allows young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance plans through age 26.

The data, based on combined estimates from the National Health Interview Survey and the Current Population Survey, indicate that approximately 736,000 Latinos, 410, 000 Blacks, 97,000 Asian Americans, and 29,000 American Indian/Alaska Natives have gained coverage because of the law.

Highlighted in an HHS issue brief, the data coincides with a research letter also published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). “As a result of the Affordable Care Act, we are making strides in giving every American regardless of race or ethnicity a fair shot at quality, affordable health coverage,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “Because of the law, more and more young adults can breathe a little easier knowing they have health coverage.”

The studies released today provide the first estimates of the law’s effects on young adults in minority groups.  “These results show that the Affordable Care Act has already made a real difference in the lives of young adults, and that the benefits have occurred for Americans across racial and ethnic lines,” said Richard Kronick, Ph.D., HHS deputy assistant secretary for planning and evaluation, and one of the study’s authors.  “The Affordable Care Act has helped give millions of young adults – white and black, Latino and Asian – the security of health insurance as they begin to build their careers and their families.”

“San Antonio prep hoops fans accused of racism over ‘USA, USA’ chant”

Taken from: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/highschool-prep-rally/san-antonio-prep-hoops-fans-accused-racismabover-usa-123930890.html

March 8, 2012

A high-profile high school in one of the wealthiest districts of the San Antonio region finds itself under fire after its fans chanted “USA, USA, USA” following its boys basketball team’s regional final victory against a team made up predominantly of Hispanic players.

As reported by KENS5.com, the Alamo Heights (Texas) High boys basketball team’s regional title celebrations were marred by the aforementioned “USA” chants, which came from the school’s fan section in the school’s Littleton Gym.

While San Antonio Independent School District athletics director Gil Garza insisted that Alamo Heights boys basketball coach Andrew Brewer acted quickly to quash the inflammatory chants, the school at which they were directed — San Antonio (Texas) Edison High – filed an official complaint about the incident with the University Interscholastic League, the governing body which oversees Texas public high school extracurricular activities. ”I appreciate coach Brewer taking the action he took to stop it,” Garza told KENS5. “Our kids try real hard and work extra hard to get to the regional tournament, and then we have to worry about them being subjected to this kind of insensitivity. To be attacked about your ethnicity and being made to feel that you don’t belong in this country is terrible. Why can’t people just applaud our kids? It just gets old and I’m sick of it. Once again, we’re on pins and needles wondering what’s going to happen.”

The chants — which can be heard in the video from San Antonio TV station KSAT below — and subsequent brouhaha overshadowed Alamo Heights’ first berth in the state basketball tournament in 21 years, earned by virtue of a 50-39 victory against Edison.

The Alamo Heights School District will now have 10 days to officially respond to the complaint from SAISD, but the district’s superintendent wasted no time in offering up his apologies for the fan section’s actions, which you can hear in this video from San Antonio TV station KSAT. ”Obviously, we were disappointed that this happened,” Alamo Heights superintendent Kevin Brown, who reportedly apologized to SAISD officials personally, told KENS5. “That’s not who we are as a community and that’s not who we are as a school. It’s not something that’s acceptable for us. Our kids are very respectable. We have to remember that they’re teenagers, and kids make mistakes. Still, there are consequences. We have tried to use this as a teachable moment for them. We have talked to our students. We’ve taken responsibility for it, although what happened is not representative of everybody who was there.”

Meanwhile, at least one report noted that Edison students may have inflamed the situation by chanting “Alamo whites” either before or after the “USA, USA” chant began. Still, while that claim was reported by one San Antonio Express-News columnist it has not been substantiated by other sources (though it has also been perpetuated by Alamo Heights supporters online, which doesn’t necessarily speak to its veracity or lack thereof).

While it may still be some time before all the consequences connected with the chanting incident are sorted out, the fans whom Brewer and other Alamo Heights officials identified as being involved in the chanting incident have already been banned from attending the team’s state semifinal against Dallas (Texas) Kimball High in Austin on Thursday.

“‘Nine/Twelve’ Film Aims To Tell A Muslim American Story, Challenge Islamophobia”

Taken from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/23/nine-twelve-film-khurram-mozaffar_n_1285399.html

February 23, 2012

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1150082127/nine-twelve/widget/video.html
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 forever impacted the lives of every American — but for Muslim Americans, their lives changed more than they could have expected.

The experience of Muslim Americans in a post-9/11 nation — one often marked by scapegoating, prejudice and fear — inspired Khurram Mozaffar, a Naperville, Ill. actor, writer and lawyer, to write “nine/twelve,” a screenplay telling, as the film’s website describes, “a story that hadn’t been told before. But perhaps should have been.”

The screenplay is currently in the process of being brought to life as a full-length feature film by director Sean Fahey and producers Fawzia Mirza and Kevin Schroeder. Telling the story of two Chicago men — one Muslim, one Christian; one a soldier, one a blue-collar worker — whose lives are brought together following the 9/11 attacks, the film recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to help offset its production costs.

The Huffington Post spoke with Mozaffar about his new project.

What originally inspired you to write the script for “nine/twelve”?
I come from an acting background and I do some theater in Chicago and I started writing, in general, because there weren’t a lot of parts for people of my ethnicity. I fell in love with the craft of writing itself. A number of stories originate out of the South Asian Muslim American experience and they’re usually told from an outsiders’ perspective. I wanted to tackle that kind of story line from the inside out because I feel like that kind of voice usually isn’t heard in film.

In the time after 9/11, the world changed for everybody and it changed twofold for patriotic Muslim Americans who were, on one hand, horrified as to what was happening and what they were witnessing, but at the same time, we were also suffering a backlash as we were associated with the people who committed these horrific, horrific crimes. With “nine/twelve,” I wanted to tell that story of what it was like in the days right after 9/11 for people, like me, who were considered patriotic Americans one day and, in a matter of minutes, because of what happened, the perception that people had of them changed.

This story clearly has a strong personal resonance for you. Tell me more about what you sensed changed for you and how you were perceived by others immediately following the 9/11 attacks.
I remember a few years ago, I was visiting a close friend of mine, a white American frat brother of mine from the University of Chicago, in New York. We were talking about 9/11 and he said something to the effect that, in addition to me, he knew other Muslims, including one man he worked with. He said he seemed like a really nice guy though my friend added, “But I don’t know what he talks about when he gets home.”

Wow, was that surprising for you to hear from your friend?
It struck me that his coworker was automatically considered suspicious, even by my friend, someone who knew other Muslims and who doesn’t have a negative bone in his body. But because of what he witnessed, he had to question everything he knew about Muslims. I always thought that as a Muslim American, if people just get to know me, they’ll use me as a standard for what to decide about us, but there are competing messages about what people of my faith have done in the world. It’s not enough to sit back and wait for people to come to their senses — we have to battle the presumption that is out there. That was the impetus of the film.

That said, the film is not an overtly political or overtly pro-Muslim movie. This is not that movie. I wanted to be careful not to create propaganda, because that sort of filmmaking makes me sick. I am telling a story about human people, a story that would resonate with anyone, so that people can understand we are just like anyone else, and felt pain like anyone else. We are a part of the fabric of this country.

Fictional stories can definitely be powerful in battling prejudice.
I feel like we, especially in the West, are a culture of storytellers. I feel an obligation to take on the role of storyteller. I’m a parent and I want my children to grow up in a world where they can be proud of who they are and don’t have to hide aspects of themselves. A good friend of mine in Chicago told me that, in the days after 9/11, his son was 4 or 5 years old saw him shredding some financial documents and his son asked him whether he was shredding the bills because he didn’t want their neighbors to know they are Muslim. Even at that age, this child was cognizant of how the world perceives him right now.

How long has this screenplay specifically been in development?
This script has been in incubation for the last few years now. It was an idea I had a while back and has gone through a couple of different transformations in terms of plot lines and characters. About a year and a half ago, I was in a play with the Silk Road Theatre Project and met a number of amazing artists there. One is Fawzia Mirza, an actress and producer of the film. We started working on the movie together and started developing a fresher take on the ideas I already had. From that point on, it’s been kind of steamrolling on its own as people have really responded to the need for voices like these to be heard.

Your story feels particularly timely right now, as last fall marked the 10th anniversary of the tragedy and there has been a lot of Islamophobic language coming up in the presidential race.
I think it [the anniversary] gave me a sense of urgency. We launched our Kickstarter right after the incident where Lowe’s pulled their ads from the “All-American Muslim” reality show and that situation effected all of us as filmmakers and people. It was very saddening to us that it was happening and made it even more important for us to make this movie. It is profoundly sad that there are people in our culture who have no interest in seeing people like me or my wife or my kids as anything other than some kind of aberration of humanity or something we should all be suspicious of.

I’ve never seen the particular show, but the argument that boycott made was that there is something wrong with a show that doesn’t depict Muslims being violent. Those people don’t want us to be a part of our national conversation. I don’t think this film will change those peoples’ minds, but I would like other voices to be out there on these issues and I hope to be one of those voices. I hope to be a part of the conversation.

What is your timeline going forward with the project?
Job one for us now is to get the money in the bank. To do this film right and to do it justice, we’re looking at a $400,000 budget, which is not a lot of money for a movie, but is a lot of money to fundraise. We are bringing together a wonderful crew, we have the cast, which includes some fun names that we are looking forward to working with. One is another Chicago actor, Parvesh Cheena, who used to be on “Outsourced.” Another is Faran Tahir who played the villain in the first “Iron Man” movie. And we also have Azhar Usman, a Chicago standup comic who tours the world as part of his comedy troupe which is called “Allah Made Me Funny.”

We also have some rewrites going on and one of the people who has been really instrumental in helping us work on the script is “Chinglish” playwright David Henry Hwang, who I had worked with as an actor. I showed him my script and he was very generous with his time and gave me some very serious and thoughtful notes on where the story can go.

Tell me more about the decision to film in and recruit talent primarily from Chicago. What was behind that decision?
It seemed like an obvious decision for us, given that most of our talent lives here, so it made sense because it was cheaper to shoot here. But also, this is an amazing theater town and amazing writers constantly come out of Chicago. As far as we’re concerned, this is a movie that Chicago is making. The crew and actors are primarily from Chicago and the majority of the filming will be done here.

The movie takes place in Chicago after 9/11 and part of it is a love letter to the experience in Chicago. This is a community-based movie. When I’ve been out working on other projects in LA and talking about scripts, it was almost a purposeful decision not to talk about this script with production companies. This has been a passion project for me and really everyone involved with it — to be making the movie for the amount we’re trying to make it for means that nobody is going home with a giant pay check at the end of the day. They all believe in the story we are trying to tell. We’re committed to making this movie no matter what, even if we have to shoot it on iPhones.

As of Feb. 23, with 23 days to go, Mozaffar’s campaign has raised just over $5,200 of its $100,000 fundraising goal. Click here to learn more about the film and help the important project become a reality.

“Vanity Fair cover controversy”

Taken from: http://www.examiner.com/literary-in-national/vanity-fair-cover-controversy

February 2, 2012

Once again the Vanity Fair “Hollywood” issue is causing quite a kerfuffle. The entertainment and fashion magazine’s Marchfront cover features some of film’s forecasted “it” girls of 2012. The likes of Oscar-nominated “Dragon Tattoo” star Rooney Mara and “The Help” starlet Jessica Chastain. “Hunger Games” star Jennifer Lawrence and “Alice in Wonderland” star Mia Wasikowska are also on the front cover. All very talented, beautiful actresses adorned in icy pastels backdropped by an all-white art deco set. Perhaps the only splashes of color are found on the magazine’s second and third foldout panels: women of color, that is.

“Mission Impossible” star Paula Patton and “Pariah” star Adepero Oduye, two women of color, are pictured inside the magazine’s fold – not on the front cover with their white counterparts.

“This has become a tradition at Vanity Fair,” Princeton professor of African American Studies Dr. Daphne A. Brooks recently told Fox News.

Vanity Fair has been tucking talent of color inside the folds of its “Hollywood” issues for years. In 2005 actresses Rosario Dawson and Kerry Washington were pushed to the inside pages. In 2008 it was Zoe Saldana and America Ferrera. In 2009 and 2010 no actors of color were featured at all. In 2011 “Hurt Locker” star Anthony Mackie was scooted to an inside panel.

In the previous eight years only one person of color has appeared on a Vanity Fair “Hollywood” cover: comedian Chris Rock.

In 2010, Access Hollywood’s Shaun Robinson blogged about the issue. She wrote:

If the criteria to be considered for the cover of Vanity Fair is the actresses must have a body of work behind them – then the question is, where are all the mainstream roles for the terrific and qualified young actresses – black, Hispanic, Asian, Indian? Where are they?

Maybe what we want Vanity Fair to do is not to follow Hollywood’s lead but to take the lead in changing attitudes and celebrate the many diverse and talented actresses out there. Because a picture is worth a thousand words.

Asked her opinion about the cover, actress Zoe Saldana told Access Hollywood Wednesday, “I know that it’s just a matter of time until magazines, the media, our art, our culture, our colloquial lifestyle tags along to our reality.”

***

For more pictures on covers from previous editions, as well as a similar article: http://blogs.babble.com/famecrawler/2012/01/31/vanity-fairs-hollywood-issue-pushes-actors-of-color-to-the-side-every-year-photos/

“Some Asians’ college strategy: Don’t check ‘Asian’”

Taken from: http://news.yahoo.com/asians-college-strategy-dont-check-asian-174442977.html

December 3, 2011

Lanya Olmstead was born in Florida to a mother who immigrated from Taiwan and an American father of Norwegian ancestry. Ethnically, she considers herself half Taiwanese and half Norwegian. But when applying to Harvard, Olmstead checked only one box for her race: white. ”I didn’t want to put ‘Asian’ down,” Olmstead says, “because my mom told me there’s discrimination against Asians in the application process.”

For years, many Asian-Americans have been convinced that it’s harder for them to gain admission to the nation’s top colleges.

Studies show that Asian-Americans meet these colleges’ admissions standards far out of proportion to their 6 percent representation in the U.S. population, and that they often need test scores hundreds of points higher than applicants from other ethnic groups to have an equal chance of admission. Critics say these numbers, along with the fact that some top colleges with race-blind admissions have double the Asian percentage of Ivy League schools, prove the existence of discrimination. The way it works, the critics believe, is that Asian-Americans are evaluated not as individuals, but against the thousands of other ultra-achieving Asians who are stereotyped as boring academic robots.

Now, an unknown number of students are responding to this concern by declining to identify themselves as Asian on their applications. For those with only one Asian parent, whose names don’t give away their heritage, that decision can be relatively easy. Harder are the questions that it raises: What’s behind the admissions difficulties? What, exactly, is an Asian-American — and is being one a choice?

Olmstead is a freshman at Harvard and a member of HAPA, the Half-Asian People’s Association. In high school she had a perfect 4.0 grade-point average and scored 2150 out of a possible 2400 on the SAT, which she calls “pretty low.” College applications ask for parent information, so Olmstead knows that admissions officers could figure out a student’s background that way. She did write in the word “multiracial” on her own application. Still, she would advise students with one Asian parent to “check whatever race is not Asian.” ”Not to really generalize, but a lot of Asians, they have perfect SATs, perfect GPAs, … so it’s hard to let them all in,” Olmstead says.

Amalia Halikias is a Yale freshman whose mother was born in America to Chinese immigrants; her father is a Greek immigrant. She also checked only the “white” box on her application. ”As someone who was applying with relatively strong scores, I didn’t want to be grouped into that stereotype,” Halikias says. “I didn’t want to be written off as one of the 1.4 billion Asians that were applying.” Her mother was “extremely encouraging” of that decision, Halikias says, even though she places a high value on preserving their Chinese heritage. ”Asian-American is more a scale or a gradient than a discrete combination . I think it’s a choice,” Halikias says.

But leaving the Asian box blank felt wrong to Jodi Balfe, a Harvard freshman who was born in Korea and came here at age 3 with her Korean mother and white American father. She checked the box against the advice of her high school guidance counselor, teachers and friends. ”I felt very uncomfortable with the idea of trying to hide half of my ethnic background,” Balfe says. “It’s been a major influence on how I developed as a person. It felt like selling out, like selling too much of my soul.” ”I thought admission wouldn’t be worth it. It would be like only half of me was accepted.”

Other students, however, feel no conflict between a strong Asian identity and their response to what they believe is injustice. ”If you know you’re going to be discriminated against, it’s absolutely justifiable to not check the Asian box,” says Halikias.

Immigration from Asian countries was heavily restricted until laws were changed in 1965. When the gates finally opened, many Asian arrivals were well-educated, endured hardships to secure more opportunities for their families, and were determined to seize the American dream through effort and education. These immigrants, and their descendants, often demanded that children work as hard as humanly possible to achieve. Parental respect is paramount in Asian culture, so many children have obeyed — and excelled. ”Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best,” wrote Amy Chua, only half tongue-in-cheek, in her recent best-selling book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.” ”Chinese parents can say, ‘You’re lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you,’” Chua wrote. “By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they’re not disappointed about how their kids turned out.”

Of course, not all Asian-Americans fit this stereotype. They are not always obedient hard workers who get top marks. Some embrace American rather than Asian culture. Their economic status, ancestral countries and customs vary, and their forebears may have been rich or poor. But compared with American society in general, Asian-Americans have developed a much stronger emphasis on intense academic preparation as a path to a handful of the very best schools. ”The whole Tiger Mom stereotype is grounded in truth,” says Tao Tao Holmes, a Yale sophomore with a Chinese-born mother and white American father. She did not check “Asian” on her application. ”My math scores aren’t high enough for the Asian box,” she says. “I say it jokingly, but there is the underlying sentiment of, if I had emphasized myself as Asian, I would have (been expected to) excel more in stereotypically Asian-dominated subjects.” ”I was definitely held to a different standard (by my mom), and to different standards than my friends,” Holmes says. She sees the same rigorous academic focus among many other students with immigrant parents, even non-Asian ones. Does Holmes think children of American parents are generally spoiled and lazy by comparison? “That’s essentially what I’m trying to say.”

Asian students have higher average SAT scores than any other group, including whites. A study by Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade examined applicants to top colleges from 1997, when the maximum SAT score was 1600 (today it’s 2400). Espenshade found that Asian-Americans needed a 1550 SAT to have an equal chance of getting into an elite college as white students with a 1410 or black students with an 1100.

Top schools that don’t ask about race in admissions process have very high percentages of Asian students. The California Institute of Technology, a private school that chooses not to consider race, is about one-third Asian. (Thirteen percent of California residents have Asian heritage.) The University of California-Berkeley, which is forbidden by state law to consider race in admissions, is more than 40 percent Asian — up from about 20 percent before the law was passed.

Steven Hsu, a physics professor at the University of Oregon and a vocal critic of current admissions policies, says there is a clear statistical case that discrimination exists. ”The actual dynamics of how it happens are really quite subtle,” he says, mentioning factors like horse-trading among admissions officers for their favorite candidates. Also, “when Asians are the largest group on campus, I can easily imagine a fund-raiser saying, ‘This is jarring to our alumni,’” Hsu says. Noting that most Ivy League schools have roughly the same percentage of Asians, he wonders if “that’s the maximum number where diversity is still good, and it’s not, ‘we’re being overwhelmed by the yellow horde.’” Yale, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania declined to make admissions officers available for interviews for this story.

Kara Miller helped review applications for Yale as an admissions office reader, and participated in meetings where admissions decisions were made. She says it often felt like Asians were held to a higher standard. ”Asian kids know that when you look at the average SAT for the school, they need to add 50 or 100 to it. If you’re Asian, that’s what you’ll need to get in,” says Miller, now an English professor at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. Highly selective colleges do use much more than SAT scores and grades to evaluate applicants. Other important factors include extracurricular activities, community service, leadership, maturity, engagement in learning, and overcoming adversity.Admissions preferences are sometimes given to the children of alumni, the wealthy and celebrities, which is an overwhelmingly white group. Recruited athletes get breaks. Since the top colleges say diversity is crucial to a world-class education, African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders also may get in despite lower scores than other applicants.

A college like Yale “could fill their entire freshman class twice over with qualified Asian students or white students or valedictorians,” says Rosita Fernandez-Rojo, a former college admissions officer who is now director of college counseling at Rye Country Day School outside of New York City. But applicants are not ranked by results of a qualifications test, she says — “it’s a selection process.” ”People are always looking for reasons they didn’t get in,” she continues. “You can’t always know what those reasons are. Sometimes during the admissions process they say, ‘There’s nothing wrong with that kid. We just don’t have room.’” In the end, elite colleges often don’t have room for Asian students with outstanding scores and grades.

That’s one reason why Harvard freshman Heather Pickerell, born in Hong Kong to a Taiwanese mother and American father, refused to check any race box on her application. ”I figured it might help my chances of getting in,” she says. “But I figured if Harvard wouldn’t take me for refusing to list my ethnicity, then maybe I shouldn’t go there.” She considers drawing lines between different ethnic groups a form of racism — and says her ethnic identity depends on where she is. ”In America, I identify more as Asian, having grown up there, and actually being Asian, and having grown up in an Asian family,” she says. “But when I’m back in Hong Kong I feel more American, because everyone there is more Asian than I am.”

Holmes, the Yale sophomore with the Chinese-born mother, also has problems fitting herself into the Asian box — “it doesn’t make sense to me.” ”I feel like an American,” she says, “…an Asian person who grew up in America.”

Susanna Koetter, a Yale junior with an American father and Korean mother, was adamant about identifying her Asian side on her application. Yet she calls herself “not fully Asian-American. I’m mixed Asian-American. When I go to Korea, I’m like, blatantly white.” And yet, asked whether she would have considered leaving the Asian box blank, she says: “That would be messed up. I’m not white.”

“Identity is very malleable,” says Jasmine Zhuang, a Yale junior whose parents were both born in Taiwan. She didn’t check the box, even though her last name is a giveaway and her essay was about Asian-American identity. ”Looking back I don’t agree with what I did,” Zhuang says. “It was more like a symbolic action for me, to rebel against the higher standard placed on Asian-American applicants.” ”There’s no way someone’s race can automatically tell you something about them, or represent who they are to an admissions committee,” Zhuang says. “Using race by itself is extremely dangerous.”

Hsu, the physics professor, says that if the current admissions policies continue, it will become more common for Asian students to avoid identifying themselves as such, and schools will have to react. ”They’ll have to decide: A half-Asian kid, what is that? I don’t think they really know.”

The lines are already blurred at Yale, where almost 26,000 students applied for the current freshman class, according to the school’s web site.About 1,300 students were admitted. Twenty percent of them marked the Asian-American box on their applications; 15 percent of freshmen marked two or more ethnicities. Ten percent of Yale’s freshmen class did not check a single box.

Taken from: http://imsoepicdude.tumblr.com/post/11010308798/reality