How Trump’s latest affirmative action move uses the Asian “model minority” as a prop

I remember sitting in class reciting my GRE score over and over again in my head. Just in case my white classmates needed a reminder that I belonged in that classroom, I would have it.

It was my first year in graduate school at a prestigious program at Duke University. I sat with some classmates waiting for our professor to arrive. Although there were a number of people of color in my cohort, I was the only one in the classroom early. As we waited, my colleagues, all white, joked enthusiastically about how they were unsure how they were even admitted to our program. They almost boasted about their relatively low GRE scores.

I sat there listening, refusing to engage, knowing the conversation wasn’t for me. I could never make those kinds of jokes. I needed to avoid any accusation that I was some sort of affirmative action admit — a term used by white people to discredit the accomplishments of people of color and white women who they feel are unqualified for their positions.

Affirmative action has long been a contentious issue in the United States. Generally, affirmative action is a program designed to increase diversity within an organization by considering a person’s underrepresented status as a small bonus in their application. The typical backlash to these policies involves myriad white urban legends and a number of lawsuits based on the idea that unqualified “minorities” are awarded positions over more qualified white people.

This backlash, even in the form of nationally prominent lawsuits, has generally been initiated by the public. However, the Trump administration may have set out to institutionalize the backlash using Asian Americans and the model minority myth as a prop.

According to the New York Times, the Donald Trump–directed, Jeff Sessions–led Justice Department is set to allocate resources to examining “intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.” In a clever but clichéd turn, a subsequent statement “clarifies” that they are investigating a complaint by a coalition of Asian-American groups that affirmative action policies discriminate against them. This offers a shield for a conservative Justice Department to attack affirmative action — famously critiqued by white people — by claiming that it also disadvantages a minority group.

The Trump administration’s latest move is in line with a long tradition of weaponized conservative outrage toward affirmative action. It promotes the idea that people of color in higher education don’t deserve to be there — that they got there through a government handout, taking spots that are rightfully owed to white people.

It’s the kind of mythmaking that makes former students like me hold tight to our memorized test scores when we walk into the classroom, as if there’s anything we can do to prove our deservedness.

The most classic — and racist — opposition to affirmative action was on display during the most recent formal challenge to the policy, in the Supreme Court case Fisher v. University of Texas — a case that happened at the very university where I now teach sociology. The case was prompted by Abigail Fisher’s belief that she was denied admission to the University of Texas Austin because she was white, while unqualified students of color took her place.

The claim did not hold up. Fisher’s grades and test scores were mediocre compared to those of the incoming class. And while there were five black and Latino students accepted who had lower grades and scores, there were 42 white students with poorer performance who were accepted into the school.

On a larger scale, the idea that there is widespread collusion among liberal university elites to deny white students educational opportunities is laughable. At UT Austin, black and Latino students are still disproportionately underrepresented at the university, comprising 13 percent and 39 percent of the state population respectively but only 4 percent and 20 percent of the student body. Moreover, nationally, although black students have seen gains in college enrollment over the past few decades, a 2015 report by the Brookings Institution reveals that their representation in the nation’s top-ranked universities has remained virtually unchanged.

The Fisher case also reintroduced the idea that students of color — in this case, black students in particular — were actually the victims of affirmative action, as they would be admitted to a university where they would be unprepared for the coursework instead of attending a supposedly less rigorous university. Studies have shown just the opposite. One found that even though black and Latino students at the University of Texas tend to have lower standardized test scores than more affluent white students, their grades, first-year retention rates, and four-year graduation rates are just as good or better. Students of color can thrive if offered the opportunity.

Attacks on affirmative action such as Fisher are based on essentially no real evidence. They reflect white conservative entitlement to resources when shared with people of color. The failure of Fisher has not deterred others, including potentially our current president, from seeking to dismantle affirmative action.

On Wednesday, the Trump administration released a statement that the affirmative action case they were investigating involved 64 Asian-American groups suing for racial discrimination at Harvard admissions, a holdover case from the Obama administration.

It’s exactly the kind of case — where hardworking “model minorities” get screwed over by unfair policies that benefit brown and black people — that conservatives skeptical of affirmative action love to bring up.

The language of the model minority stereotype first appeared in 1966 with two widely read articles: “Success Story of One Minority Group in the U.S.” in the US News & World Report and “Success Story, Japanese-American Style” in the New York Times. This represented a reframing of Asian Americans from the “yellow peril” imagery that had been used to refer to Chinese railroad laborers and increasing numbers of Japanese immigrants. These articles praised Chinese and Japanese Americans for achieving economic success despite being discriminated against, perpetuating the myth that they toiled diligently in silence to overcome oppression.

They were placed as a foil to black and some Latino Americans who marched through the streets demanding to be “given” justice and failing despite specific programs designed to help them. Since then, Asian Americans have consistently been used in a “if they can do it, why can’t you all” fashion that blames black and Latino groups for their own oppression. The Justice Department, backing a complaint made by Asian-American organizations in order to frame possible attacks on affirmative action, is just the latest recycling of an old trope that does a disservice to all people of color —whether black, Latino, or Asian.

Primarily, there is a tendency to lump Asian-American ethnic groups together and use the success of some groups, particularly East and South Asians — Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Indians — to represent the success of all groups. But the data reveals that other Asian groups are less financially successful, such as Laotian Americans and Hmong Americans, who, according the Center for American Progress, have a 39 and 54 percent child poverty rate relative to a national average of about 22 percent.

Homogenizing Asian Americans is a political tactic used to praise them as a way to shame other people of color, and perpetuates the idea that all Asian Americans oppose affirmative action when some also find these attacks troublesome.

It is a relationship of convenience. While the Justice Department may claim to care about fairness in investigating the supposed anti-Asian discrimination of affirmative action programs, white people do not always appreciate the place of Asian Americans in their supposed meritocracy. As their representation in the country’s top colleges increased, supposedly based on merit rather than affirmative action, white people used a variety of racist nicknames to express their displeasure with the possibility of being displaced by Asian Americans. The University of California Irvine became “University of Chinese Immigrants.” The Massachusetts Institute of Technology became “Made in Taiwan.” And the University of California Los Angeles became “University of Caucasians Living Among Asians.”

This reflects a complex web of racism that simultaneously serves to rhetorically lift Asian Americans over black Americans and Latinos while ensuring that they don’t rise too high above their station as minorities. This is evident in their overrepresentation at universities and in lower-level positions in the workplace but their vast underrepresentation in higher-level positions, a phenomenon dubbed the “bamboo ceiling.”

In combination, this history reveals the true disingenuousness of the Justice Department’s implicit claims that Asian Americans bolster the case against affirmative action. Instead, they are likely pawns in a larger agenda.

This potential shift in priorities for the (In)Justice Department and the media spectacle surrounding it is simply the latest in Trump’s “Make America Great Again” strategy. It’s a narrative that tries to turn back the clock of the country to a time that in some ways never existed and in other ways never changed. Like the destructive stereotypes of rapist, job-stealing Mexicans, terrorist Muslims, and gun-toting gangster Chicagoans, white- and Asian-discrimination affirmative action builds on white fears that they are losing control of “their” country to people of color — or at least the wrong people of color.

In the wake of an Obama presidency where many Americans proclaimed that racism was over, Trump and his supporters have become increasingly adept at using social justice language to stoke the flames of white victimhood. According to them, racism ended in 2008 and policies like affirmative action, however limited, now actually discriminate against white people. Now they’re the victims. Now they’re the ones in need of help — or at least they need others to not receive any help.

Fighting affirmative action, even if using the time-tested method of pitting Asian Americans against black Americans and Latinos, serves as a rallying point for the Trump base and the larger conservative movement. It signals to them that despite his blunders, Trump is still ultimately on their side. He will take back their country from the undeserving darkies that are filling up their schools.

Robert L. Reece is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas Austin. He is also an editor at Scalawag magazine and on the advisory board for 500 Pens. He is from Leland, a small town in the heart of the Mississippi Delta.