Asian Pacific Americans, Affirmative Action, and Michigan’s Proposal 2

Editorial

By Frances Kai-Hwa Wang, IMDiversity.com Asian American Village Acting Editor

ANN ARBOR - October 24, 2006 - In the upcoming Michigan election on November 7, Proposal 2 seeks to ban all Affirmative Action programs for public employment, education, and contracting purposes. If passed, it will seriously roll back progress for all women and people of color. A broad coalition of Republicans, Democrats, business, labor, social and religious organizations have come together to defend Affirmative Action programs that provide opportunities for women and minorities for better jobs and education. Vote No on Proposal 2!

When my oldest daughter started attending our local public elementary school six years ago, most Parent-Teacher Organization-sponsored school events were held on Friday nights, which meant that she and the other Chinese and Taiwanese students who attended the Ann Arbor Chinese School on Friday nights (about 12 percent of the student body then) were not able to attend. However, since the PTO was mostly, if not all, white at the time, they did not know this. So after every school event for about two years, I told the PTO, “We would have loved to attend, but we have Chinese School on Friday nights. Could you make it another night some time?” The worst was when International Night was held on a Friday night and the organizer of that event could not find anyone to perform, and suggested that our children skip Chinese School to attend.

Then we got a new PTO president who said that the PTO needed to better reflect the diversity of the student body, which is now about 35 percent Asian American, plus many Arab American, African American, Hispanic American, and international families. The difficulty was that the PTO people did not know many parents of color, and the parents of color did not know about the PTO. The PTO president started by inviting all the Asian American parents whose children had played soccer with the PTO president’s child—classic old boys networking, except that none of us were old boys. It took another two years of friends reaching out to other friends to get involved, and now we have a very integrated, representative, large, and active PTO.

Now our International Night is held on the only day of the week there are no language classes in our town (Italian School is Monday, Greek School is Tuesday, Hebrew School is Wednesday, Chinese School is Friday and Sunday, Farsi School is Saturday)—but it took someone who understood the international community to realize that you cannot have International Night on the same night as language school. We also have a morning breakfast social event once a month called “Bagels and Buns” where both bagels and Chinese cha shao bao buns are served.

This is a very simple example of how Affirmative Action works in microcosm. It is not enough to sit around wishing that more people of color would get involved; you have to actively go out and get them. No one is going to come if they do not know about it (through language barriers, practical exclusion) or if they cannot come (like Chinese School on Friday nights). It takes a lot more work to include everybody rather than just your friends, so Affirmative Action is needed to constantly say, “Hello, excuse me, don’t forget that I am here, too.” (Think how many times you have said, “I should invite so-and-so to dinner,” and then never gotten around to it. Imagine how much more quickly you would get around to it if that person were waiting outside your door every day.) At minimum, Affirmative Action is a constant reminder to society that the old way of doing things is not the only way, and that it is important to reach out to everybody. If certain people are missing, that is a sign that something is wrong with the system, not the people.

For Asian Pacific Americans (APAs), Affirmative Action is often seen as revolving around two issues— university admissions and glass ceiling in the workplace. This is complicated, because we cannot be both for Affirmative Action in the workplace and against it in university admissions. We cannot have it both ways.

But Affirmative Action is also much more than these two issues.

What is Affirmative Action?

First, what is Affirmative Action? Unlike what many people think, Affirmative Action is not about quotas, which are already illegal in Michigan. Despite its deceptive name (Michigan Initiative on Civil Rights), Proposal 2 is also not about civil rights. Michigan’s constitution already says that no person should be discriminated against “because of religion, race, color or national origin.” It is also not about making university admissions completely objective and merit-based, as the universities will still be able to give preferences—to athletes and children of alumni (who are historically mostly white), for just a couple of examples.

Rather, Affirmative Action is about making sure that all people have equal opportunities to learn and to succeed. It is about doing outreach to encourage women and minorities to enter key fields. It is about special programs to help girls stay interested in math and science so that they will be prepared for science and engineering careers, which our country direly needs them to fill. It is about making sure that people are treated fairly when buying homes or renting apartments. It is about considering minority-owned businesses for government contracts. It is about developing and utilizing all the human capital and potential that we have so that we can effectively compete in the world market.

Frank Wu, Dean of Wayne State University Law School, writes, “Affirmative Action is merely a means to an end. It is an attempt to give all people a chance to achieve the great American dream. Asian Americans, especially those of us who are close to our immigrant origins, (must) understand that ideal.”

Glass Ceiling

My father was an electrical engineer at IBM, and for years, he was told that they could not promote him because he was so good that they could not afford to lose him, that he had to find his own replacement before he could be promoted, that his English was not good enough to be a manager, and that he had to hire and train his own bosses since APAs were not good managers. Finally, he left IBM and joined several startups that gave him more leadership roles, but he still never made it to VP level of any company.

Most APAs know someone—a parent, a spouse, a cousin, an uncle, an aunt, a friend—who has hit the glass ceiling and been denied promotions, pay increases, and leadership opportunities because of the false model minority stereotype. As my dad bluntly explained to me, “China has 4000 years of history—who do you think was leading it?”

Without getting too much into the numbers (resource links are below), we know from experience that there is discrimination in the workplace. Analyses by the 80-20 Initiative showed that APAs have 1/3 the chance to rise to management as Caucasian Americans, a figure that the U.S. Department of Labor did not refute, but also did not work to correct. College-educated Caucasian Americans earn almost 11% more and white high school graduates earn 26% more than their APA counterparts. (Studies that claim otherwise usually look at household income, not worker compensation, and fail to take into account more wage-earners, larger households, and higher educational degrees among Asian American families, as shown by the National APA Legal Consortium [Fact Sheet: Affirmative Action and Employment].) According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 31 percent of the APA workforce has faced employment discrimination, the largest of any racial or ethnic group (U.S. EEOC, 2005).

Without Affirmative Action, we not only are not allowed to collect this data, we are not allowed to do anything to correct it. No outreach. No special management training programs. No reconsiderations of what it means to be a good manager or leader. To get rid of Affirmative Action now, we are saying, “Everything is ok now.” Is it really?

University Admissions

A more difficult issue for APAs is university admissions.

APAs used to be considered for Affirmative Action, but partly because of the model minority myth, partly because politicians have positioned APAs as a wedge between Caucasian and African Americans, and partly because many of us now come from privileged and educated backgrounds, many APAs are now considered to not need that extra help.

However, “Asian Pacific American” is a large and diverse designation that encompasses about 44 different ethnic groups, not all of whom are faring so well.  Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians mostly came as refugees; the Hmong did not have a written language before they came. Among Cambodian, Hmong, and Laotian Americans, 52.7% of have not finished high school and only 9.2% have a college degree (CN Le, Socioeconomics Statistics & Demographics). Even if some Asian Pacific American groups or individuals do not benefit from Affirmative Action, others do. Even though we know that all Asians are not “the same,” we do face many of the same hurdles in the larger American society. We know what it is like to struggle. We have to look out for one another.

Further, getting rid of Affirmative Action does not get rid of preferences. Universities basically accept the top people, reject the bottom people, then they try to figure out what to do with the middle people, prioritizing on many factors such as children of alumni (overwhelmingly Caucasian American), big donors’ kids, gifted athletes, talented musicians, state residents, leadership, holders of certain socioeconomic status, beneficiaries of Provost’s discretion, etc. Race is only one of these many factors and the only one being challenged. (In 1988, Harvard enrolled more children of alumni than African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Native Americans combined.) [Frank Wu, Yellow, 2002.]

Some APAs think that Affirmative Action hurts them or their children by giving preference to African Americans and Hispanic Americans and other under-represented groups, and that without it, their own children will have a better chance at being admitted to the top universities. This is simply not true. Statistically, the numbers of African American and Hispanic American and Native American students applying are so small that their spots do not significantly impact the chances of admission for Caucasian and APA students. Since Caucasian Americans are still the majority population, without Affirmative Action, most of those spots tend to go to Caucasian students, not APAs. After Proposition 209 passed in California, APA enrollment at University of California law schools dropped from 18.3 percent to 17.4 percent, while Caucasian enrollment jumped from 58.8 percent to 71.7 percent. (See AALDEF.org "Affirmative Action")

Affirmative Action may not help our own APA children get into college, but it will not hurt them, either. Most of our kids will be fine because they are bright and hardworking and have educated parents. Chinese philosopher Confucius was revolutionary in teaching anyone who wanted to learn. We should be as generous with equal opportunities to all.

Convergence of Glass Ceiling and University Admissions Issues

These two issues, glass ceiling and university admissions, converge when you start to think past the admissions letter to what kind of university you want your child to attend. Do you want her to have Asian, Asian American, and women professors? Do you want your daughter to be the only girl in an engineering class full of boys? Do you want her to be able to read literature written by APAs and women and other people of color or just literature written by dead white guys? Do you want her to learn about different ways of seeing the world, or be told, like I was, that “Oriental philosophy is all just mysticism”?

After Proposition 209 passed in California, the number of women professors hired by UC Davis dropped 39 percent in four years. Asian Pacific American college faculty have one of the lowest tenure rates of all racial and ethnic groups, while having the highest ratio of non-tenure track appointments—more than 30 percent.  (See AALDEF.org "Affirmative Action")

Getting into college is the easy part.

Affirmative Action Beyond Glass Ceiling and University Admissions

However, Affirmative Action is much more than just glass ceiling and university admissions. I think it is in our interests as a community to give opportunities to more people of color—whatever their color or ethnicity. Consider a few examples.

When my first child was nine months old, our Caucasian pediatrician was alarmed at how skinny she was—only 25^th percentile—and even though she was healthy and strong in every other way, the doctor made us come in for monthly weight checks and force feed her fatty foods like straight cream cheese and butter. Then one day, we passed a Japanese American doctor—our pediatrician’s advisor—in the hallway as we were leaving our appointment. The Japanese American doctor said, “No, those weight charts are for Caucasian babies. Of course an Asian baby is going to weigh less.” It was obvious as soon as she said it, but it took an Asian American doctor to see it. Now we know, and more importantly, that Caucasian pediatrician also knows, and all the APA babies she will care for in the future will benefit.

In San Jose, police responded to a call about a domestic disturbance. When they arrived, they found a young Vietnamese woman named Cau Thi Tran standing in her kitchen with a Vietnamese vegetable peeler in her hand. They told her to put down the weapon, but she did not understand English. Perhaps with visions of dragon lady kung fu assassins in their heads, they shot and killed her, the 25-year-old mother of two little boys. This probably would not have happened if the police were Asian American or people of color, or even if they had just had some experience with people of color. Even if your particular children might not be interested in a career in law enforcement, you never know when you might need the police, be investigated by social workers, or have to come before a judge. Only 1.1% of Michigan civil servants are APAs (State of Michigan Dept. of Civil Service Annual Workforce Report: Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2004-2005). We need more APAs and people of color so that they will be better able to understand and serve our community.

When scientist Dr. Wen Ho Lee was arrested for espionage, nobody in the FBI, CIA, or the New York Times, which helped sensationalize the case, knew enough about Taiwan/China relations to say, “You know, someone from Taiwan would probably be the last person to spy for China.” Oh, but his wife was born in China. “You know, China wasn’t Communist yet when she was born. That her family fled to Taiwan is probably a good sign they were for the other side.” The people who first realized that Dr. Lee was subjected to unfair treatment because of his race were African Americans. To the others, it was just “common sense” that a Chinese American would spy for China.

Last year in Ann Arbor, two Caucasian American University of Michigan students were charged with standing on a porch balcony and urinating onto an Asian American couple on the sidewalk below. They then hurled racial epithets at them when the couple complained, and when the man returned later that night with a group of his friends, they were branded an “Asian gang.” APA students were not surprised, “Stuff like that happens all the time.” Caucasian students laughed when it later turned out to be “only beer.” The University tried to explain, “Well, a lot of our students come from all-white communities and do not have much experience with people of color.” It could as easily have been our children walking down the street that night. Academic excellence is not going to protect them from racial violence and hate crimes. Rather, we need to educate their peers. We cannot educate everyone single-handedly, so we need more people of color and more diverse APAs to join forces and do this together. Affirmative Action helps give us more numbers and helps us say that diversity is valued.

“Racism—So What?”

At my children’s very diverse public elementary school, our PTO became more integrated and sensitive to its students’ needs, but it was not easy. It took will, effort, leadership, and experience. In contrast, my oldest daughter’s private middle school on the other side of town, which is mostly white, does not feel such pressure to be sensitive to racial issues. That school chose a racist and sexist musical called Little Mary Sunshine that rehashes the worst of old Native American and Asian stereotypes (old to us adults, but new to our children). When I informed the administration that the play was full of harmful racist stereotypes, they genuinely felt bad and looked very pained. Nice white liberals, they want to do the right thing, but do not seem to have the experience to know what to do. They said, “We’ll just tell the kids that all the characters are stereotypes, that none of them—Caucasian, Native American, Asian—are real.” However, if the adults in charge could not recognize the racism and the stereotypes as such, how will the children be able to? When my daughter told her best friend that she was not auditioning for the play because it was racist, her friend responded, “So What?”

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: After this article was finished, but before it was published, the school chose to do a different play. So, it does make a difference to stand up. But it took two months of effort by several families of color to get them to comprehend the seriousness of the racial issues.]

Affirmative Action is a means to an end of racial equality and equal opportunity, so the question to ask yourself is, “Are we there yet?” It is much more than university admissions, and includes glass ceiling issues, pay equity, minority business contracts, outreach to minorities and women, and equal access to job opportunities. Do you trust the mostly white men in charge to do the right thing by us? Even if they mean well, how well do they understand us, really, and do they really know how? Or is Proposal 2 a way of saying, “Racism—So what?” This is why we need to keep Affirmative Action—all is not better yet, and we still have a long way to go.

That’s why I – as a University of Michigan alumna, an Asian American, a Michigan resident, a woman, a mother of daughters – will vote NO on Proposal 2, to keep Affirmative Action and equal opportunity for all.

Resources

• Wu, Frank H., Yellow—Race in American Beyond Black and White, Basic Books, New York, 2002.
• One Michigan United—Strength Through Diversity
• One Michigan United APA brochure (Adobe PDF Format; requires free Reader)
• One Michigan United Facts on Affirmative Action and APAs in Chinese (Adobe PDF Format; requires free Reader)
• Asian American Legal Defense Fund
• Asian Pacific Americans in Michigan and the Anti-Affirmative Action Ballot Proposal, “Proposal 2”--A Toolkit for Grassroots Leaders (includes Michigan United Facts on Affirmative Action and APAs in Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese): http://www.aaldef.org/article.php?article_id=194
• Beyond Self-Interest: APAs Toward a Community of Justice--A Policy Analysis of Affirmative Action, by Professors Gabriel Chin, Sumi Cho, Jerry Kang, Frank Wu: http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/aasc/policy/index.html
• 80-20 Initiative's "Operation Equal Opportunity" section on the Glass Ceiling