II. Eliminating the Consideration of Race Will Not Address the Needs of Underrepresented Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders
SFFA contends that UNC's admission system treats Asian Americans as a monolithic block of similar applicants. In fact, it is SFFA's position that would elide the important distinctions among AAPIs. As Amici well know, AAPIs are a uniquely heterogeneous racial group. Contrary to the popular and insidious misconception that AAPIs are universally successful in the education context, many Southeast Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander subgroups suffer from school segregation, inadequate preparation for college, standardized test score gaps, and other barriers to higher education. When AAPIs are viewed as a homogeneous group, the needs of the most underserved AAPIs are obscured.
SFFA misses this important detail. Its proposed remedy of eliminating race from the admissions process would only further disadvantage the most marginalized AAPIs in UNC's admissions process. The most underserved AAPIs need race-conscious admissions policies and disaggregated data to achieve educational equity for all AAPIs in North Carolina and across the United States.
A. Aggregated Data Obscures the Needs of Underrepresented Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in North Carolina
Asians and Asian Americans do not qualify as underrepresented minorities because they represent eighteen percent of the undergraduate student body at UNC, even though Asians only represent 3.1 percent of the population in North Carolina. However, this aggregated data very likely obscures underrepresentation of particular AAPI subgroups.
AAPI communities in North Carolina are extremely diverse. The largest AAPI ethnic group is the Asian Indian community, followed by the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Filipino communities. North Carolina is also home to significant ethnic minority communities from Southeast Asia, such as the Montagnard community from Vietnam and the Hmong community, many of whom settled in North Carolina as refugees. As of the last census, more than 6,600 Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders lived in North Carolina. The most commonly spoken Asian languages in North Carolina are Chinese (including Mandarin, Cantonese, and other varieties of Chinese language), Vietnamese, and Arabic. Thirty percent of Asian Americans in North Carolina report speaking English less than ôvery well,ö with some subgroups reporting much lower levels of English proficiency, such as the Vietnamese community, fifty percent of whom report speaking English less than ôvery well.ö AAPIs in the state also practice a range of religions including Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, and Christianity.
These diverse AAPI communities in North Carolina experience varying economic and educational barriers. For example, according to the 2011-2015 American Community Survey, Hmong, Korean, Pakistani, and Cambodian Americans had a higher rate of poverty than an average of 13.5 percent for Asian Americans overall, with Pakistani Americans experiencing a 27 percent rate of poverty. Additionally, only between 58 and 75 percent of Cambodian, Laotian, Vietnamese, and Hmong Americans in North Carolina have a high school diploma, compared to over 85 percent of North Carolinians overall who have a high school diploma. Only about 7.8 percent of Cambodian Americans, 14.3 percent of Hmong Americans, 9.2 percent of Laotian Americans, and eighteen percent of Vietnamese Americans have a bachelor's degree or higher in North Carolina, compared to 28.4 percent for the state overall.
Although disaggregated admissions data for North Carolina is not available, studies from other regions have found substantial disparities in representation in admissions as well. For example, a 2015 study of California's AAPI population revealed underrepresentation of Filipinos, Native Hawaiians, Samoans, Guamanians, and Fijians in the University of California system compared to their percentage of California's AAPI population. A 2013 study of UCLA admission rates found that some AAPI subgroups, such as Hmong, Bangladeshi, Filipino, Thai, Cambodian, Indonesian, and Pakistani, have significantly lower admit rates than the average for all AAPIs. The same study similarly showed significant disparities in the representation of AAPI subgroups at UC Berkeley relative to their proportional representation in the state. For example, Southeast Asians (Laotians, Cambodians, Hmong, and Vietnamese), Filipinos, Pacific Islanders (Samoans, Guamanians, Tongans, and Native Hawaiians) are all underrepresented in UC Berkeley's applicant pool.
B. Eliminating the Consideration of Race Will Disadvantage the Most Marginalized Asian American and Pacific Islander Applicants
SFFA tries to paint Asian Americans as victims of UNC's race-conscious admissions policy, but its requested remedy of eliminating race completely from the admissions process--to make it impossible to discern the race or ethnicity of any applicant be extraordinarily detrimental for AAPIs, particularly the most marginalized AAPIs in North Carolina. Eliminating the consideration of race would not make UNC's admissions process race-neutral; it would only serve to reinforce racial segregation and widen the existing racial disparities in educational opportunity for students of color, including many AAPIs.
Nor would a strictly class-conscious admissions system be an adequate alternative, because class is not a sufficient proxy for race to understand ôeach person as a unique and complex human beingö or to achieve comparable levels of racial diversity. SFFA's proposal--ôa multi-faceted socioeconomic preferenceö reduce Asian American representation at UNC, increase racial disparities, and result in a more racially hostile campus for all students of color, including AAPIs. Against the backdrop of biased test scores and unequal distribution of prior educational opportunities, this alternative is neither race-neutral nor workable.
First, UNC cannot possibly accomplish its goal ôto understand [each] candidate individually, comprehensively, and holistically,ö without the consideration of race. Race is a unique and inextricable aspect of a person's identity for which there is no substitute. As one student testified in SFFA v. Harvard: Race-blind admissions is active erasure. To try to not see my race is to try to not see me simply because there is no part of my experience, no part of my journey, no part of my life that has been untouched by my race. And because of that, it would be nearly impossible for me to try to explain my academic journey to try to explain my triumphs without implicating my race.
The same is true for Asian American students, like Sally Chen, a Chinese-American Harvard student who testified, ôBeing Chinese-American, being the daughter of Chinese immigrants ... [and] how I navigated being a translator and advocate. That was so fundamental to my background and my story, my identity, that I don't think I could have left it out.ö Thang Diep, a Harvard senior who immigrated to the United States from Vietnam when he was eight years old wrote his college essay about rejecting his Vietnamese identity after being bullied as a child and then learning to embrace his ethnic identity as he began to understand institutionalized racism in high school. He testified: ô[T]o portray my growth authentically and really show ... the admission officer [who] I really am ... [was] crucial for me to ... share this journey of not just learning English, but this journey of rejecting and erasing my own identity [that is] ... such a huge part of who I was when applying and still who I am now.ö
Second, the educational benefits of diversity cannot be achieved when socioeconomic diversity is substituted for racial diversity. Models that rely exclusively on class-based affirmative action perform poorly in terms of ensuring racial diversity, such that ôeven relatively aggressive [socioeconomic status]-based affirmative action policies do not mimic the effects of race-based policies on racial diversity.ö This is evident in SFFA's preferred model, which reduces Asian American representation in favor of greater white representation in SFFA's simulation. This is not an adequate alternative because it fails to ôpromote [the university's] interest in the educational benefits of diversityö as effectively as UNC's current race-conscious admissions policy. In fact, a 2015 study of multiple colleges revealed that an admissions scheme that gives significant weight to both race and class--as UNC's policy does--results in more class diversity than one that relies on class alone. The authors write that, ôIn tandem, race and [socioeconomic status]-based policies seem to improve both race and [socioeconomic] diversity beyond what is achieved using either plan in isolation.ö Although these results are perhaps initially surprising, they underscore the fact that students cannot be reduced to simply race or class. Considering both in relation to one another most closely resembles the actual lived experience of students and better informs their likely enrollment decisions.
Third, some race-neutral alternatives--like those proposed by SFFA--rely on standardized tests, such as the SAT and ACT, which are known to be racially biased. As discussed in detail above, while standardized admissions tests may appear race-neutral on their face, they are not. For reasons related to sampling, testing, and design, standardized tests ôguarantee[] the lower performance of African Americans and Chicanos on the SAT.ö Therefore, racial disparities in admissions at UNC would increase if UNC did not consider race. Although AAPIs tend to have high test scores in the aggregate, there are tremendous disparities in SAT scores among AAPI subgroups. For example, a 2013 study of SAT scores in Asian ethnic enclaves showed that test-takers in Chinese ethnic enclaves scored an average of 1656, whereas Hmong and Filipino enclaves averaged 1174 and 1208, respectively. In Alhambra, California, a city that is predominantly Chinese, about seventy percent of test takers scored more than 1500 on their SAT; in contrast, in a predominantly Hmong ethnic enclave in Sacramento and a predominantly Filipino ethnic enclave in Daly City, only 7.6 percent and 12.8 percent of test-takers respectively achieved the same results. Under SFFA's race-blind models, the most marginalized AAPIs will experience even more structural barriers to admission while also losing the tools to demonstrate their unique contributions to diversity.
Fourth, numerous studies have documented the negative impact on campus climate when a race-conscious admissions policy is eliminated. AAPIs are not immune from these impacts. A recent empirical study reported that AAPI students experienced direct racial hostility in the forms of racial bullying, racial slurs, and racial profiling, as well as indirect intimidation as a result of witnessing racist acts directed towards other students of color. Studies show that colleges and universities that reach the highest levels of diversity have fewer incidents of racial hostility. AAPI students also reported experiencing pressure to segregate from or assimilate to the dominant White culture, feeling silenced in academic exchanges and campus spaces, and suffering from stereotyping as a perpetual foreigner or model minority. These experiences are exacerbated when universities do not consider and value race.
In sum, SFFA's effort to dismantle UNC's race-conscious admissions program would destroy racial diversity and exacerbate the disadvantages that the most underserved AAPIs already face in the admissions process. A more nuanced approach to AAPI prospective students, which uses disaggregated data in tandem with UNC's existing race-conscious admissions policy is the best path to serving the diverse AAPIs in North Carolina.
