Asian-American groups are saying that affirmative action hurts their chances to get into Ivy League schools

The Asian-American Coalition for Education is arguing that affirmative action hurts Asian students' chance at getting into Ivy League schools. We spoke with the head of that coalition, a student who feels being Asian hurt his college application, and an NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyer to try and settle the debate. Following is a transcript of the video.

Rachel Kleinman: So, affirmative action has a really long history.

Kleinman: I think the term was probably first coined by President Kennedy and that was with respect to employment programs, federal employment programs, but then really expanded upon and put into place by President Johnson. And the idea was really to put some teeth into some civil rights laws and say “Okay the idea here isn’t just to say there is equal opportunity but to find ways to actually level the playing field.”

Michael Wang: I think I had a 4.6 GPA, something around a 4.7. I had a perfect ACT score.

Wang: I definitely felt like, really disappointed. A little bit angry at that point as well. You’re not sure why you got in or why you didn’t get in. And I think that’s what made it really hopeless for me because if I had to go through this again, what could I do to maybe improve my chances? I don’t have the answer to that, I guess that’s what the hopeless part is.

Yukong Zhao: That is out of 1600 points. So that is really unduly harm. Creates so much burden on Asian-American children.

Zhao: That is illegal.Most Asian-American children want to have a big dream. In order to achieve that, they have to study with double efforts.

Wang: If race is used as a positive factor meaning that it helps an application, that’s good. When it harms an application, I feel like that’s not fair.

Rachel Kleinman: Affirmative action is not what’s causing Asian-American students not to get into college. Racial quotas are not allowed and universities, as far as I know, are not using racial quotas. What they are using are holistic admissions. Policies which do allow for some consideration of race as one among many factors.

Why is it that it's affirmative action that they say is causing this when in fact, in most of these institutions, they are majority white. You don’t go to these institutions and feel overwhelmed by the number of black and brown students you see there and say “oh, they’re taking Asian-American spots.” It’s actually still a majority white school. So, this argument that affirmative action somehow is causing it doesn’t really seem to have much of a logical basis.

Kleinman: Yeah, I think there can be no question that we still need affirmative action. Both to provide opportunities and pathways to opportunities for people of all races but also to create diverse campuses. Without affirmative action, we wouldn't be creating this diverse group of graduates that we need in order to lead this country, to create business, to compete in the global economy.