America’s banana epidemic: Asian American conservative thought

On one side of the grassy field of the Capitol Hill, cheers and hollers spring up from the gathered crowd, huge smiles on their faces as they celebrate a major success after years of fighting. Nearby, another crowd comes forth, waves blue placards above their heads, chanting demands for change lined with frustration and gut-wrenching despair.

Both groups have come all the way out to respond to the same court decision. The majority of both groups of people look similar in appearance, but beneath the skin, they bear fruit to two different minds. They look at each other in disdain.

Ironically enough, both say they are fighting for one thing: Asian American rights.

Just before July 2023, the Supreme Court raised the hand of Students for Fair Admissions over the Presidents and Fellows of Harvard. They held that “Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

II)

In middle school Spanish class, the teacher had us form groups of three to do an in-class activity. One person was assigned to be the artist and, as a kid who enjoyed doodling as a hobby, I volunteered to draw for this assignment. A tall white boy with flat brown hair, who was in high school at the time, said matter-of-factly, “Of course she’s good at drawing, she’s Asian.”

A few years later, sitting in our calculus class in the senior year of high school, the topic of college enrollment naturally came up. We were discussing which universities we wanted to attend and how we were studying for the ACT or SAT, and I distinctly remember a friend of mine — a freckled white boy with long, wavy brown hair — letting out a scoff as his lips curled up in annoyance. “I know I probably won’t get into the school I want because I’m white,” he said.

Thirteen-year-old me wasn’t completely ignorant. I had already known that people referred to people who look like me as the “model minority” and had a vague idea of how race-based compliments weren’t good. But I would be lying if I said I wasn’t flattered. After all, I had confidence and pride in my drawing skills. It felt better than when people would call me derogatory, stereotypical nicknames for being Asian, or stare at me with contempt.

The issue of college admissions felt like a whole different subject.

Asian Americans hold a precarious position in the United States. We are certainly not white, nor are we representative of the struggles of many other communities of color, at least on a surface level. The model minority myth asserts that Asians are role-model citizens who were able to find socioeconomic stability despite their skin color.

According to the media and to white people, we are demure, humble, hard-working, intelligent, skilled, polite, quiet, organized, and on and on and on.

We are the supposed proof that racial minorities can climb the ladder in the colorblind American society, as long as we work hard on an individual level. This sentiment derives from the American Dream, defined as the national ethos of the United States that emphasizes opportunities for individuals to prosper and succeed, often characterized by diligence and the upholding of a capitalist society.

However, scholars have recently been criticizing the effects of capitalism rooted in the American Dream as they lead to extreme wealth disparities in the U.S. The increase in deaths in communities caused by “fatal drug and alcohol poisonings, suicide, and deaths resulting from chronic liver disease,” dubbed as “deaths of despair” by economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, were found to be co-occuring with economic insecurity. But for supporters of American capitalism, Asians’ climbing of the socioeconomic hierarchy is seen as something to be praised.

Some even go as far as to claim that Asians are honorary whites.

“The idea would be that, in this case, the population that’s more in control or that sits on the top would be whites on top of a racial hierarchy,” USC Professor of Political Science Jane Junn said. “And they would say, well, okay, we can always keep Asians out by … always creating them as an outsider … But we can say instead, ‘Oh, Asians have rules [and] deny gratification in order to make progress. So you’re a model minority. And if Asians can do it, why can’t Blacks?’ So there’s a story inside of the model minority myth.”

These complexities surrounding the model minority myth and the identity of Asians in the U.S. become the most explicitly noticeable in education. Affirmative action, which is a set of policies meant to increase opportunities in the workforce or education for minorities and women, has been the center of media attention in recent years, quickly fueled by race-related discussions. Some have accused these policies of covertly discriminating against some Asian students who score the best academically, such as in standardized tests.

According to the National Education Association, “Decades of research demonstrate that Black, Latin(o/a/x), and Native students, as well as students from some Asian groups, experience bias from standardized tests administered from early childhood through college.”

As standardized testing persists as a dominant method of judging students’ academic capabilities, the ambiguous narratives around affirmative action are leading to divided opinions among Asian Americans.

According to the Pew Research Center, despite 62% of Asian American registered voters leaning Democrat and 53% of Asian American adults saying affirmative action policies are good, about three in four Asian adults also said college admissions should not rely on the applicants’ racial or ethnic background. Affirmative action broadly refers to the set of policies that intend on providing more academic and labor opportunities for marginalized communities, but it has recently found itself in the center of academic controversy in American higher education.

It brings up an interesting question: Why are Asian Americans, who are mostly left-leaning, having mixed opinions on race-based admissions?

Wai Wah Chin, the conservative founding president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York, has fought against several high schools in New York for discriminating against Asian students in their admission processes. Chin said she believes affirmative action is the biggest example of systemic racism in the U.S. that is targeting Asian Americans.

“I know that a lot of Asian families feel that education is one thing that we have always loved and cherished,” Chin said. “And so it comes with the understanding that that is a part of history. We know it means hard work, it means sacrifice … If this is good for the country, and we believe that education is good, and there are families [and] children who are willing to sacrifice for that, they should not be punished for them.”

Connie Chung Joe, the Chief Executive Officer of Asians Americans Advancing Justice Southern California (AJSOCAL), agreed that education is culturally important to many Asian Americans. However, she warned of the danger that comes from lumping all Asian Americans together under the model minority label.

“There is a group of Asian Americans who really love that we are portrayed as successful and smart and hardworking, and don’t get into trouble, ‘cause those are usually compliments,” Chung Joe said. “When you look at other groups like Southeast Asian groups like the Hmong community, the Vietnamese community, and then when you add in Pacific Islanders, who are not Asian American, but they’re often categorized together with Asian Americans, you see so many challenges and barriers to education.”

And this is true according to research done by the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC). They found that about a quarter of Southeast Asian American adults don’t have a high school diploma and “26 percent of Cambodian, 24 percent of Hmong, 31 percent of Lao, and 20 percent of Vietnamese Americans” have not attended college for any period of time. All of these statistics show that there are more difficulties in pursuing education for these groups when compared to all Asians.

According to its website, AJSOCAL is the largest independent nonprofit organization in the country that works to improve political participation and availability for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, as well as educating themselves and their allies about Asian American civil rights. AAJC has recently denounced the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action.

“In our ever-changing global economy and platform, we must continue to give all students the opportunity to fulfill their potential and shape a future built strong on our biggest asset: our diversity,” Chung Joe said in her statement.

Regardless of what the majority of Asian Americans believe, the narrative against race-conscious admissions has found success through putting Asians forward as the face of the movement. Students for Fair Admissions, the nonprofit group that challenged the admissions procedure at Harvard University, argued that the school was violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment — and ultimately succeeded in getting the Supreme Court to rule the use of affirmative action as being unconstitutional.

The first photo you see when you click on their website is a photo of a male Asian American student, along with the white captions in bold saying, “Help Us Eliminate Race and Ethnicity from College Admissions.”

This tactic is not new. Conservatives have circulated the striking photos capturing “Rooftop Koreans,” the Korean immigrants in Koreatown, Los Angeles who waited on the roof of their businesses with guns during the LA Uprising of 1992, using them to emphasize the apparent importance of the Second Amendment.

“There are two models to which Americans can aspire,” an article on Townhall, a conservative website, argued. “One is to be citizens, armed and sovereign. The other is to be serfs, disarmed and obedient to their liberal elite overlords. Choose wisely. Choose to be a Rooftop Korean.”

III)

In the months that followed after I learned of the results of my college applications to different schools, I thought about my friend’s passive-aggressive jab at affirmative action in high school more than once. Frankly speaking, my brain wandered off into that territory for a few days, considering the possibility of whether I got rejected from my top choices of universities because of my identity as a Korean.

I did get over this notion rather quickly. I focused on maintaining my grades alone over participating in extracurricular activities, as I have always been wary of being around other people. It was no surprise that the more elite schools didn’t appreciate this, regardless of my academic achievements. Ambitious students who graduate summa cum laude, score high on the admissions exams and stay active in several sports and clubs are a dime a dozen. As such, I felt that I had no reason to feel wronged by the system.

But others — certainly the minority, but a loud one — think differently.

“If the halls of our greatest universities and our education and our public schools are saying it’s okay to tell Asians that they are excluded because they’re Asians, what sort of message does that send out?” Chin said. “And from your very top institutions that are saying that it’s okay to exclude Asians, why is it not okay for people to go on the streets and say you don’t belong here?”

Chung Joe said she believes people and groups like Edward Blum or SFFA are using the model minority myth to appeal to the small number of Asian Americans in order to use them as spokespeople for their message.

“I think [Edward Blum and SFFA are] capitalizing that … there is a minority of Asian Americans who really do believe in that,” Chung Joe said. “You really embrace that model minority myth. And they wanna just see Asian Americans or their communities benefit.”

Asian Americans on both sides of the affirmative action debate are, ironically enough, fighting for Asian American rights. Chin was one of the most passionate people I have ever spoken to, and she genuinely believed the battles she fights would improve the lives of Asian students and their families. But these arguments are built on sand castles called resentment, specifically against other minority groups, the stereotypes as building blocks that ultimately frame the oppressed as our enemies.

The conservative reasoning scratches at Asians’ insecurities, all of our desperation for acceptance and assimilation into American identity. But adopting a white mentality by sympathizing with the privileged and demonizing the others will never change how society ultimately views Asian people.