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GOP Candidates Find Common Ground With Asian-American Voters: Affirmative Action

November 1, 2018

A story in The Wall Street Journal suggests that, at least in part, a race discrimination lawsuit filed against Harvard University’s admissions policy has perhaps given Republican candidates to higher office “common ground” with Asian-American voters, namely, antipathy to affirmative action.
 
 The Asian-American demographic, on whose behalf the “Students For Fair Admissions” filed the lawsuit, is alleged to be the most affected by Harvard’s alleged discrimination practices. GOP candidates look to gain favor among Asian-American families by calling for the dissolution of affirmative action policies, which schools like Harvard utilize to redress social wrongs and inequities that historically disenfranchise applicants, usually applicants from minority groups.
 
On October 15, the first day of the non-jury trial in federal court in Boston where the lawsuit was filed, CNN reported Harvard’s Dean of Admissions William Fitzsimmons testified that the university holds Asian-American recruits to higher SAT score standards in the admissions recruitment phase than “black, Hispanic, and Native American students.”
 
WSJ reporter Michelle Hackman quotes Chinese immigrant Benjamin Yu of Lake Forest, CA in her report; she writes that “[f]ew issues have swayed [Yu] more than the use of race in college admissions, a practice Mr. Yu finds discriminatory.”

Yu, according to Hackman‘s report, says that affirmative action-type policies, often favored by Democrats, “are ‘benefiting some of the minority people … [b]ut when you look deep into the issue, it’s taking the benefits from one group at the expense of others.”

 
 

 


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