Last Spring I posted this diary about a debate over a legislative effort to reinstate affirmative programs for California State universities and colleges.
From that diary:
California is probably one of the most richly diverse societies on the globe. That is one of several reasons that I enjoy living here. The population reflects ancestry with all corners of the earth. It has reached the point where no single population group holds a clear majority. This is producing a complex shifting of political alliances that likely provide a glimpse of things to come in other places as the tides of global population create demographic change. Presently there is a boiling controversy over a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would reinstate affirmative action in college admissions. Various groups that are typically considered to be minorities on a national level are finding themselves in opposition to each other. Voters passed proposition 209 in 1996 which banned the affirmative action admission programs.
Affirmative action debate create rifts in ethnic communities
The backlash by Chinese-American activists against a measure aimed at restoring affirmative action in the admissions process at California's public universities has set off political fisticuffs between ethnic groups accustomed to battling side-by-side.
In a state where Latinos -- most of whom support SCA5, the proposed constitutional amendment -- are about to become the largest ethnic group but where Asian-Americans take up nearly 40 percent of all University of California slots, the clash puts a spotlight on an evolving political landscape in which members of minority groups now overwhelmingly make up the majority of the state's population.
One thing that is revealed by this controversy is the problems that arise from using broad geographical designations like Asian American and African American to lump together populations of diverse cultural backgrounds and economic interests. This difficulty results from the fact that the notion of dividing humanity into racial groups is entirely a social construct based on prejudice rather than scientifically definable biology. However, the historical prejudice and discrimination that has attempted to create and enforce such groupings makes it compellingly necessary to address the disabilities that continue to be imposed on certain minorities.
In California there are multiple cultural groups lumped together under the category of Asian. The typical designation of these groups include: Chinese, Korean, Indian/Pakistani, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipino and Pacific Islanders. Of course these groupings break down on particular issues. It turns out that the Filipinos have a good bit more in common with the Latinos than they do with the Chinese.
There are even schisms within the Asian-American community, where anger is directed at Chinese-Americans who say they support affirmative action in hiring, but fear its application at elite UC schools such as UC Berkeley and UCLA, which now admit fewer than one in five in-state freshman applicants. They say the policy will take precious university spots from their children and give them to Latinos, blacks and students from other Asian and Pacific Islander groups who currently have difficulty gaining access to state schools.
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Today the Field Poll, which is a long established and well regarded poll of public opinion within California is out with a report about present public views of affirmative action that sheds a different light on the debate of last Spring.
The data collected by the Field Poll was analyzed by the National Asian American Survey and produced a clear indication of a significant shift in public opinion on affirmative action between 1996 and 2014 as presented in this graph.
Asian Americans in California as a group are not opposed to affirmative action. In an article in the LA Times Karthick Ramakrishnan, who is the director of the NAAS analyses the politics that were at play in what was perceived as an Asian American revolt against affirmative action.
California needs to look again at Asian stance on affirmative action
Given the way the issue played out, it was understandable that most observers viewed Asian American opposition as crucial to the demise of SCA-5. Beyond the views of activists, however, we did not know where Asian American voters stood on the issue.
Some key, thorny questions remained: Was the opposition to SCA-5 a sign that Asian American voters had shifted en masse in their opinions on affirmative action? Or was this shift primarily among Chinese Americans, while the rest of the Asian American population remained supportive?
Or, perhaps there was an altogether different explanation: that opposition was primarily concentrated among a small group of Asian American activists, with the more numerous silent majority still supportive of affirmative action. And where did whites and other minorities stand on the issue of affirmative action?
The Field Poll's most recent survey of registered voters in California, released this week, helps shed light on some of these questions, and where all Asian Americans, along with whites, Latinos and African Americans stand on affirmative action.
The NAAS broke down the category of Asian Americans into specific ethnic groups and found that even among Chinese Americans 60% of them were still in favor of affirmative action in college admissions. The conclusion of the article is that the political mobilization that played a role in putting SCA-5 on the back burner came not from a broad segment of the Chinese community but from a small group of well organized activists in that community.
Ramakrishnan is quoted in this article as indicating that most of those activists are located in the Los Angeles suburbs and in Sillicon Valley. To the extent that these may be people associated with the tech industry, there may be an influence of the dominant libertarian culture that exist there.