Why are Asian students being punished for the school system's failings? Credit: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
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After the tragic killing of George Floyd in 2020, much of the virtue-signalling that followed focused on an unexpected target: admissions processes. Activists claimed children “of colour” weren’t getting their fair share of places at good schools — or, to be precise, black and Hispanic children weren’t. The same couldn’t be said of Asian children. And so Asian students became a convenient scapegoat for “anti-racists”.
At my son’s school, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ), Asian children account for about 70% of the student body. Many have worked incredibly hard to get into the prestigious institute, supported by first generation immigrant parents who, like me, see education as the best route to security and success. But in the months when America was rocked by race riots, self-described “equity warriors” described the Asian, mostly immigrant families of TJ as “white-adjacent” and “resource hoarders”. The white principal, Ann Bonitatibus, told us to check our “privileges”, while one teacher called on her to push through a “Diversity Initiative” while “The Iron is hot!”
In the months that followed, the local school board — all 12 members endorsed by the Democratic Party — voted to remove the school’s merit-based, race-blind admissions process, and replace it with one that was race-based. Along with other parents I was horrified by the school’s readiness to use identity, rather than achievement, as the basis of admissions. But when we objected, the Virginia education secretary, a Democrat, told our families that preparing for tests was like using illegal “performance enhancement drugs”. A black father, Harry Jackson, who spoke up for our cause was called a “motherfucker” selling “segregationist bullshit” — by a white activist who uses the Twitter handle @Antiracist14. These “anti-racists” have worked day and night to try to silence us, using pressure and insults, instead of debating us.
And our story is far from unusual: racist admissions processes are being reintroduced across America. Take the case of San Francisco’s elite Lowell High School, which garnered national attention last week: the overwhelmingly progressive city — Republicans account for less than 7% of the electorate — voted to recall three Democratic members of the school board in a landslide. One of those fired was Alison Collins who, in a now infamous tweet, had called Asian Americans “house n****rs”, insinuating that Asian parents who disagreed with her plan to turn an outstanding school into an experiment in racialism are captive to white supremacist forces.
Like at TJ, activists waged a war on merit at Lowell, in the name of “equity”. Asian Americans, through diligence and ambition, had earned an impressive number of slots — so they were disparaged as “privileged” by anti-racist activists, who called on the school to replace merit-based testing with a lottery. The result was striking. Asian freshmen admitted to Lowell in 2021 fell to 42% from 50% the year before. White enrolment also decreased, to 16% from 21%. Black students increased to 5% from 2% and Hispanic students rose to 25% from 14%.
This process doesn’t just harm Asian American students. Despite increasing the enrolment of black and Hispanic students, schools like TJ put little effort into preparing them for their advanced academic classes. In school district enrolment figures made public for the first time, eight freshmen students, admitted through the new race-based admissions process, dropped out of TJ over just five months, between September 2021 and January 2022 (in the entire school year before, just one student dropped out). Changing admissions processes of outstanding schools does nothing to address the systemic failure of the education system to ensure these students are ready for rigorous training in Maths and Science. It also insults and demeans the achievements of black and Hispanic students who get into schools like Lowell and TJ through sacrifice and achievement. The message is clear: stop trying so hard. (The school district claims its new admissions process is “race neutral.”)
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SubscribePlease excuse my light hearted comment to this important issue well articulated.
“a Democrat, told our families that preparing for tests was like using illegal “performance enhancement drugs”. ”
The first England cricket team to play in Australia lost badly. The were most upset because those dastardly Aussies had been practicing.
“After the tragic killing of George Floyd in 2020, much of the virtue-signalling that followed”
The use of ‘Tragic’ in this context is first degree virtue-signalling. Tragic does not cover rough men dieing by rough deeds, it is when the innocent suffer harm. You could say ‘Illegal’, or ‘unlawful’.- but hardly tragic, although using this sort of stilted language is almost required I guess.
“White-adjacent”, what a disgusting, derogatory term!
I’m all for equality of opportunity, but as the author points out, this equity rubbish either fails unprepared minority students, or leads to dragging all down to the lowest common denominator.
check your privilege…
Anyway, the writer talks in the language of Neo-Marxism/Liberal/postmodermism as she mouths the false platitudes of today:
“This process doesn’t just harm Asian American students. Despite increasing the enrolment of black and Hispanic students, schools like TJ put little effort into preparing them for their advanced academic classes.”
The problem is not merely parents and teachers not preparing minorities to super-succeed – it is that not all can. The coaches cannot take extra effort to make average students into NBA basketball players.
Jordon Peterson says it takes a 115 IQ to succeed in University unless the classes standards are lowered, same for the advanced school classes. 120-130 IQ needed for the hard subjects. ‘Asians’, at least the ones we are speaking of (Indian, higher caste) make these levels of ability a lot. The ones they say should get to their positions do not. A quick google of IQ tables will explain the world to the party line sheep. AND so it is not all ‘Merit’, and it is not ‘Fair’, but it is what it is…..;
I’m Jewish. Given we tend to have fairly high IQs, they probably wouldn’t be too keen on my lot either.
When I was just 12 years old a rather precocious friend informed me that political wings curve back, so that the right and left are almost touching. Seems this principle applies here – anti-racism and racism, curiously similar. Depressing that 40 years later so many adults lack the wisdom of a 12 year old.
In effect our schools are being looted and we turn away from it as we turn away from all the other looting going on around us. Those who cannot compete or refuse to work are given free license to steal.
Oh dear I couldn’t get beyond the first line after I read:- “After the tragic killing of George Floyd in 2020”. There was nothing tragic about it! A six foot six, two hundred and twenty three pound, violent career criminal and habitual drug abuser was inadvertently killed during an authorised arrest. You should be turning your venom on Lt Michael Byrd of the Capitol Police who shot and killed Ms Ashli Babbitt, and yet has yet to be prosecuted, tried and if necessary executed in the proscribed manner.
You’re too precious and close minded. Get past the first para and you may find nuggets of wisdom, but if you prefer to remain uninformed then that’s ok too.
I didn’t get past your first line because when people say they didn’t get past the first line I don’t read the comment.
Correction–she was murdered!
Think about this: if this pathetic, incompetent moronic COW copper–a self-described hero, by the way–was justified in shooting this unarmed “trespasser,” why weren’t they all shot? Could it be that the other police exercised more restraint?
This is the same filthy, incompetent piece of rubbish who left his gun in a public restroom in the Capitol, with seemingly no adverse affect on his career. How could there be? He is a COW, untouchable.
There are some new people on Unherd wielding a heavy handed censorship and moderation axe today. I posted what I thought an inoffensive comment on this article in sympathy with so many excellent high performing Asian students who are being discriminated against. It has been removed. No matter, I took a screen shot of it and will enquire why.
Unherd is hiring sensitivity readers
Not just this article either. They’ve gone back and censored comments on older articles too, eg the Giuffre one.
This is not a good look for them.
Leslie – who knows what undercurrents are building under the surface…… Maybe Unherd has been told by the powers that be to STFU or else.
Really? Sounds Sovietski, where certain figures were edited out of pictures.
Is his UnHerd?
WTF?
And a comment I wrote this week observing the increased use of fear as a tool of governance worldwide since the pandemic was apparently also considered too radical for the ears of Unherd readers, and so was removed.
I’m Asian and I’m sick to the death of the liberal left, and especially anti racist types, using us as a tool. They court Asians when we’re convenient and then throw us in with white supremacy we aren’t.
I have always been annoyed by the fact that I can’t afford a top-notch tennis coach to enable me to compete at Wimbledon. I heartly endorse lotteries for participation or membership of everything, I shall enter the one for the Wimbledon final, that way I am guaranteed being the runner-up. The fact that I can’t win a tennis match to save my life should not bar me from this competition. And while we’re at it there shouldn’t be a competition, there should never be winners or losers it will make people feel bad about themselves, I should, therefore, be given the winner’s trophy just like everyone else.
Just a thought, we could choose all our leaders by lottery. It worked for ancient Athens; accept, of course when there was something important, like a war with Sparta, then actually having talent to do the job was considered important.
Before you enter Wimbledon 2022, can I just confirm that you have been vaccinated?
Boosted too, remember, you do not inject this useless poison to protect yourself, you do it to protect everyone else, to paraphrase Fauci.
I love the idea of choosing our leaders by lottery. I have no doubt we would get MUCH better leaders than the ones we’ve had.
That is exactly what happened in Ancient Greece. Public offices were handed out via lotteries within eligible groups. In their view there was nothing arbitrary to it, as the gods decided who had the winning ticket and got the job.
I think famous American conservative William F. Buckley said something to the effect that he would rather be governed by the first 500 names in the Boston phone book than by 500 professors from Harvard….
I think I get it … to be a ‘student of color’ you have to fail your exams.
But, hang on, that’s racist, isn’t it?
Equality of opportunity is justice.
Equality of outcome is tyranny.
Exactly. We should be focused on providing equal opportunity for disadvantaged kids (of all races), not equal outcomes.
I grew up in urban poverty and for several years my father and I were on welfare (then known as AFDC). Although our home lacked a TV, we had books aplenty, and my father insisted that I learn to read and do basic math operations before I started kindergarten, He was a factory worker that rarely slept more than 5 hours a night trying to raise me alone, while taking the time to educate me to the best of his ability. By eight, he had me reading aloud every night from adult books (one example I thought was particularly boring was the American State papers, which I now treasure). My equally poor friends in the neighborhood had TV’s, trashy magazines, and little parental involvement in their education. I now have a PhD in chemistry while the people that I have managed to track from the neighborhood are working poor at best. I am white and the majority from the neighborhood are Black or Latinx. I did not succeed because of the lack of melanin in my skin, and the neighborhood kids that I knew did not fail because of the melanin in their skin. The difference was worldview and individual and group culture. Every time I have a “person of color” jabbing their finger in my face accusing me of succeeding because of privilege all I can think about is going hungry, being a latchkey kid, getting little from public schools, and my exhausted father busting his behind to try and make sure my life was better than his. Oh, and the years of living in poverty while I worked my way through eleven years of college. I’ll try to remember how privileged I’ve been because of my melanin deficiency.
A beautiful and insightful post. Thank you!
“Asians” is a convenient pigeonhole, but that contains 3bn+ people, including everyone from India to China to Indonesia and increment inbetween.
Excelling at education is little to do with IQ and everything to do with culture. For instance, in Chinese culture, education has been revered for more than 3,000 years. Every parent, however poor, wants their child educated as much as possible to elevate them into better lives that can, historically at least, help the parents materially too, as the culture is to care for your parents in later life.
And class, I would suggest. In the UK some South Asian heritage communities do very well academically while others much less so – almost certainly explained by whether their immigrant parents/grandparents came from a professional/business background (such as those expelled by Idi Amin) or from desperately poor Pakistani and Bangladeshi villages.
it is still IQ. Look at the African diaspora, from Uganda – If I remember right they tended to come from Gujarat and Goa, pretty high IQ people, the most successful migrants to UK.
Then take the Mirpur diaspora from Pakistan to UK, not at all the same people, and an extremely different outcome outcome…..
The term “Asians” also includes the eastern half or so of the Middle East, which is west of India. Or at least that area is considered part of the continent of Asia, so I would think it includes “Asians” as well.
“Excelling at education is little to do with IQ”
This is utterly untrue, this is the insane mantra of the postmodern Liberal/Lefty. IQ is the best indicator of success there is. You may say, many people with high IQ are failures at education (I am one). But no people of low IQ are successful at education.
I’ve been thinking the exact same thoughts. Progressives piggy-back off designated victim classes in order to line their own pockets while appearing virtuous.
A lot of censorship going on here today.
yeah it is a little bit cringe, but the general thrust of the article is worth sticking with
Ah, she is the woman who was interviewed by unHerd last November; I thought she was.
Just Google “Asra Nomani Mama bear UnHerd” or similar keywords.
Ah,
Indeed she is.
I saw it, and thought it a fine and very informative interview
Gosh, golly, she also wrote an article published in this organ only two weeks earlier.
That was pretty good too.
Sh was also a former colleague and close friend of Daniel Pearl.
According to her wikipedia page she is;
“in favor of government surveillance programs in the fight against Islamic terrorism, saying that society’s “sense of political correctness has kept us from sensible law-enforcement strategies that look at Muslims, mosques, and Islamic organizations.”
There is more on her wiki page on the topic of her admirable, but somewhat quixotic attempts to reform Islam and she has made quite a lot of enemies among the spittle flecked bearded, bed sheet wearing / bag-headed stripe of Islamist, especially those in CAIR.
God ( or allah) loves a trier.
You go girl / mama bear!
I have a great deal of respect and admiration for this very brave and outspoken woman and I’m getting tired of the baseless and ignorant comments from the usual suspects who lurk in the comments section.
Well said.
She got cancelled pretty sharp for being ‘islamophobic’ (she is muslim herself) and for voting for Trump.
Let me speak out against this AN fandom.
She is not a good woman, not on side except on this one matter where she, as a COW (Citizen of Wakanda, albeit a second class citizen, since skin tone determines outcome) is disfavored. AN plays the race card at every turn and is a champion of identity politics.
I read in a recent post that her family relied on government assistance when she was a child–violating the existing law at the time, though this was not enforced for quite some time (See, “public charge” rule) until Trump brought it back, discontinued under Biden. A shame that she and her family couldn’t have been deported decades ago. Her father eventually became a professor–perhaps the poshest profession, and yet she plays the poor immigrant card. In short, she wants it both ways.
AN is a champion of the multiculturalism that has destroyed America, the UK, and most of the West. If you love her so much, invite her to London, which is no longer an English or even British city anyway.
Oh, wait, she hates the UK because of colonialism….
Yes, there’s quite a few today….
WTF is your problems, downvoters?
I think they thought your comment was somehow a slur? I didn’t see it that way but I have had a glass of wine.
I think they must have had a bottle of wine. I thought I was sharing info people would find interesting.
They also debunk by example the lie that western countries are favourable only for whites. It follows that if Asians are successful and blacks aren’t, probably it is blacks’ fault.
The regressive racists’ solution to this is redefine white to include people who aren’t, such as Asians.
Blacks will be favoured for a long time yet because there is a vocal minority that attributes all their failures to racism instead of to themselves. As a result, they can continue to wallow in an ever-deepening cesspit because it will by definition never be their fault.
This is why there is a such a marked correlation between the loudness of leftist racists accusing whites of racism, and black failure. In the 1960s black teenagers weren’t knifing each other on a regular basis, but now they are, and all that’s changed is the volume of accusations of white racism.
Cave Canem!
Or you will have Linda Hutchison on your back.
“Take ‘em out….”
Ann, the Chinese lady….
Having watched this video a second time, let me offer some points for UnHerd readers:
Finally, I have been called out by some for my colourful language—not the least UnHerd which routinely censors and delays or deletes my posts. To those who call me out, I’d like to address your attention to Ann, the Chinese lady, who said in substance, “I’ve listened, no more listening. Take ‘em out!’
Along those lines, Shiva dropped the f-bomb and so far no one has criticised him in the posts for his shocking and vituperative language, no one has suggested that he not use “foul language” but talk and listen respectfully.
Gentle Readers, this is a war. As Ann said Take ‘em out!
Lock and load!
I can see why this has gotten hypersensitive. But from the outside one would say that George Floyd was in fact killed, and that it was tragic (never mind unnecessary). Out of honest curiosity: what would you say happened?
He died of a self-administered fentanyl overdose.
So, are you saying that a policeman kneeling on his neck was 1) a normal and acceptable part of policing, 2) had no part in causing his death? And 3) Derek Chauvin should do the same thing again, next time if he got the chance? Or just that this was unacceptable police brutality but that the death was an unforeseeable risk?
Rasmus are you in fact Cathy Newman?