That lawsuit filed by White conservative Ed Blum using Asians as proxies to fight affirmative action may have revealed in discovery a complex and unique admissions process at Harvard. But using race to determine admissions is legal, and the suit doesn’t justify changing current law.
What has been exposed so far in the case is that even our top institution of higher education has struggled to deal with a very specific diversity issue: the explosive growth in Asian immigration since 1965 resulting in an Asian American population of more than 21 million.
Asian Americans have long been one of the most discriminated and misunderstood ethnic groups in U.S. history, starting with the Chinese Exclusion laws in the 1800s, to the subsequent laws that impacted other Asian groups, in particular Filipinos, Japanese and Koreans.
These groups were kept out by biased immigration laws with ridiculous quota restrictions based on race. It wasn’t until 1965, when the immigration law changed, that Asians were finally allowed in greater numbers, around the same time the country was adjusting to the notion of civil rights.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise that Harvard has had difficulty with how to deal with Asian Americans from the start.
“Asians were an overlooked minority despite a long history of discrimination,” an article in last week’s New York Times reported. “As late as 1976, Harvard did not recognize them as a minority group and barred them from a freshman minority orientation banquet.”
I wholeheartedly concur.
