The Time All San Francisco Fought Over School Fairness and Equality (original) (raw)

Civil rights and Asian Americans

Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 1997

American community composed of no less than 20 different ethnic groups is one of the most diverse and complex minority groups in the nation. This article examines the civil rights perspective on Asian Americans through a historical account of major Asian immigrant groups who have experienced and are confronting institutionalized discrimination and violence; and analyzes contemporary civil rights issues affecting Asian Americans in the areas of public and higher education, the work place, and voting rights.

Asian Americans and the Affirmative Action Debate in the United States

Springer eBooks, 2019

The controversy over the discrimination of Asian American applicants in college admissions in the United States has returned with even higher stakes. Unlike the complaints filed in the 1980s, the current set also targets the elimination of raceconscious admissions practices that were implemented to increase enrollment of underrepresented students at elite institutions, including those from African American and Latino populations. The purpose of this chapter is to make sense of this recurring admissions controversy by applying a critical race analysis toward interpreting the sociohistorical roots that animate this controversy. The results of this analysis undermine the characterization of those institutions as color-blind engines of upward mobility and instead portray them as guardians of dispensing and protecting the privileges accompanying whiteness. Broader implications of those findings for achieving greater racial equity and justice are discussed.

Beyond Self-Interest: Asian Pacific Americans Toward a Community of Justice

UCLA Asian Pacific American …, 1996

I. INTRODUCTION Affirmative action is under severe attack. 1 For example, in 1995, the Regents of the University of California voted to end affirmative action in university admissions, employment, and contracting. 2 In November 1996, the California electorate passed the so-called "California Civil Rights Initiative" (Proposition 209),' which t Gabriel J. Chin, Assistant Professor, Western New England College School of Law. B.A. Wesleyan University; J.D. Michigan Law School; LL.M. Yale Law School. Thanks to Deans Joan Mahoney and Donald J. Dunn for their support of this project.

Asian Americans and racial politics: A postmodern paradox

Social Justice, 1993

The controversy over Asian American admission to universities between 1983 to 1990 has three historical periods with corresponding centers of discourse. From 1983 to 1986 Asian Americans characterized admission problems as racial discrimination. Between 1987 and 1988 university officials countered charges of racism by focusing on the need for diversity. In 1989 to 1990 conservatives and neoconservatives interpreted the controversy as a result of affirmative action.

We Think About Our Children First: Asian Skilled Professionals, Liberal Multiculturalism and the Borders of Educational Inequality in Fremont, California

Amerasia, 2022

This essay examines how the suburban built environment of affluent skilled professionals shaped the political claims that affluent Asian parents made as suburban residents during the 1990 to the early 2000s. In focusing on the school boundary debates and redistribution of educational resources in the Silicon Valley suburb of Fremont, California, I critically unpack how Asian parents advocated for liberal multiculturalism and racial segregation in protecting their access to Fremont's best schools. In contrast to the conception that liberal multiculturalism is a form of resistance to suburban white cultural dominance in school settings, I argue that there are ideological consistencies between suburban homeowner politics of self-interest and Asian parent demands for cultural autonomy. I show how suburban homeowner politics compelled Asian parents to distance themselves from addressing the educational needs of low-income and workingclass whites and people of color in Fremont.

Asian Americans, Affirmative Action, and the Political Economy of Racism: A Multidimensional Model of Raceclass Frames

Harvard Educational Review, 2019

Utilizing a critical raceclass theory of education, OiYan A. Poon and colleagues analyze interviews with Asian Americans who have publicly advocated for or against affirmative action and acknowledged how their understandings of racial capitalism informed their perspectives and actions. Limited research has considered Asian American subjectivity in examining what shapes their diverse perspectives on affirmative action. This study adds to research on the racial politics of the debate, which has increasingly centered Asian Americans and their interests, and introduces a multidimensional model of raceclass frames representing different political perspectives and choices around affirmative action: abstract liberalism, ethnocentric nationalism, conscious compromise, and systemic transformation. The model offers insights on Asian American frames and ideologies of racism, capitalism, and education to account for their divergent political perspectives and choices in the affirmative action de...

The Color Fault Lines: Asian American Justice from 2000

Asian American Law Journal, 2001

This symposium aims to connect those of us here scholars, lawyers, community workers and law students. It also aims to link "us" with our Asian American communities, and then beyond, with African Americans, Native Americans and Hawaiians, Latinas/os and white Americans of good will, and then beyond that, with all people struggling against forms of social discrimination. In doing so, the symposium specifically aims to further a joint project of envisioning Asian American participation in justice struggles from the Year 2000 on. Let's turn to history to my spring semester, second year at Boalt Hall, when I took a two-credit externship at Dale Minami's new law office in Oakland (Dale had just left the Asian Law Caucus). Late every Thursday, Dale would sit and talk about political lawyering about the importance of not only knowing the mechanics of in-the-trenches lawyering practice, but also of having a sophisticated theoretical grasp of how law and the courts really o...

The Color of Success: Asian Americans and The Origins of the Model Minority

2013

"The Color of Success tells of the astonishing transformation of Asians in the United States from the “yellow peril” to “model minorities”—peoples distinct from the white majority but lauded as well-assimilated, upwardly mobile, and exemplars of traditional family values--in the middle decades of the twentieth century. As Ellen Wu shows, liberals argued for the acceptance of these immigrant communities into the national fold, charging that the failure of America to live in accordance with its democratic ideals endangered the country¹s aspirations to world leadership. Weaving together myriad perspectives, Wu provides an unprecedented view of racial reform and the contradictions of national belonging in the Civil Rights era. She highlights the contests for power and authority within Japanese and Chinese America alongside the designs of those external to these populations, including government officials, social scientists, journalists, and others. And she demonstrates that the invention of the model minority took place in multiple arenas, such as battles over zoot suiters leaving wartime internment camps, the juvenile delinquency panic of the 1950s, Hawai‘i statehood, and the African American freedom movement. Together, these illuminate the impact of foreign relations on the domestic racial order and how the nation accepted Asians as legitimate citizens while continuing to perceive them as indelible outsiders. By charting the emergence of the model minority stereotype, The Color of Success reveals that this far-reaching, politically charged process continues to have profound implications for how Americans understand race, opportunity, and nationhood. "

Becoming Asian American and the Magic of Historical Accident, 90 Or. L. Rev. 1203 (2012)

2012

I. Accident by First Job Choices: Starting out at the “U of O” in the Era of Diversity .................................................... 1205 II. Accident by Birth: Growing up Asian American in the Post-War Midwest ..................................................... 1208 III. Accident by Profession: Crossing the Twentieth-Century Color Line in Law Teaching ................................................ 1213