“[…] Vincent Pan, the co-head of Chinese for Affirmative Action, told me that when he describes affirmative action in terms of employment opportunities, or hiring more Asian-American judges or college faculty, people overwhelmingly support it. He rued how narrow the discussion had become, confined to a few places at the nation’s élite institutions. He pointed out that there are more Asian-Americans in San Francisco’s community colleges than in all the Ivy League schools combined.
While the Harvard admissions process sucks up the headlines, Asian-Americans have benefitted as much as anyone else from increased opportunities in education, employment, and government service. And the current terms of debate don’t capture the full complexity of the Asian-American community. Researchers believe that efforts toward ‘data disaggregation,’ or the breaking down of large categories, like Asian-American, into smaller, more descriptive subgroups, could bring increased focus to poor, underserved populations, like Southeast Asians.”
