Investments in Whiteness: Asian American Affirmative Action Opponents and Racial Politics in College Admissions

• In Event: 69.057 - Roundtable Session 32
  In Roundtable Session: 69.057-5 - Interests, Desires, and Identities: Understanding Educational Policy and Practices Through Ideologies of Race and Racism

Abstract

This paper explores the opposition to affirmative action in college admissions among some Asian Americans, a racialized minority group that has greatly benefited from policies for racial equity in higher education. The presented study seeks to understand how and why some Asian American immigrants have developed a fervent opposition to affirmative action, become politically mobilized, and how structural conditions of selective immigration policies and this group’s relative economic privilege may contribute toward their perspectives and forms of political advocacy. Based on an analysis of interview data, and guided by critical theories of whiteness, we argue that the intense opposition to affirmative action policies by some Asian Americans may be explained by underlying desires for the socio-political rewards of whiteness.

Authors

• OiYan A. Poon, Colorado State University

• Megan Segoshi, Loyola University Chicago