For Immediate Release
June 23, 2016
Livingston, New Jersey: Today is a dark day for the hard-working children of Asian Americans and other Americans who are discriminated against by the race-based college admissions policies. Today’s Supreme Court’s ruling means that in the foreseeable future, they will continue to be treated as second-class citizens in college admissions.
Historically, Asian Americans have been victimized by many race-based policies such as 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and various school segregation programs. Today, many colleges, including Ivy League schools, still use race as a factor to discriminate against Asian American applicants on a systematic and continuing basis. It is worth pointing out that Asian Americans have suffered similar pain as other minority groups in the past. But today, they are not favored by affirmative action, but penalized because of their outstanding qualifications attained through hard work. Unfortunately, a plurality of the justices of the Supreme Court ignore the injustice suffered by Asian American children, allow race to be continually considered in college admissions. It could lead to continuous abuse by Ivy League schools and other colleges as applied to Asian American children.
Asian American communities support advancement of education in America’s disadvantaged communities. We believe the fundamental way to improve diversity in colleges is through improvement of K-12 education in America’s poor communities, not by allocating college admission slots based on skin color. The Supreme Court’s ruling will just serve s a bandage to cover the failing schools in many minority communities, which were largely caused by the ineffective policies of many proponents of race-based college admissions. Unfortunately, Asian American children will continue become the scapegoat for these failing policies. Many African and Hispanic American children will continue receiving inadequate educations because politicians can use this bandage to avoid solving the true problem: poor K-12 education in so many of America’s Black and Hispanic communities.
Mr. YuKong Zhao, the President of Asian American Coalition for Education (AACE) said, “Asian American communities are extremely disappointed by today’s Supreme Court ruling because it fails to reflect the equal protection and color-blind spirit of the U.S. Constitution. However, I would like to point out today’s ruling is not a green-light for Ivy League schools and other colleges to use racial quotas, racial stereotypes, just-for-Asian higher-standards and other unlawful practices to blatantly discriminate against Asian American children in the college admissions process. Such discrimination is clearly illegal, as AACE’s complaints make clear. AACE will continue our fight against such discrimination until our children are no longer judged by their skin-color, as Dr. Martin Luther King once dreamed.”