Abstract

Excerpted From: Vinay Harpalani, The Racial Triangulation of Asian American Achievement, 75 UC Law Journal 1625 (August 2024) (148 Footnotes) (Full Document)

About ten years ago, I was speaking with a respected colleague--a progressive white American racial justice advocate who had worked for years to promote racial equity in education. My colleague lamented the well-known racial and socioeconomic disparities in average SAT scores. He had long advocated for the elimination of the SAT in college admissions, arguing that it was a barrier to college access for Black, Latina/o, and Native American applicants. This had been to no avail. But now, my colleague had a new idea. Rather than focusing on the groups that score lower on average than white Americans, he wanted to focus instead on the one group that scores higher: Asian Americans. He wanted to argue that the high performance of Asian American on the test was a problem. My colleague believed that the SAT would more likely be discarded, not due to its adverse effect on the admission of underrepresented groups, but rather because many white Americans resented the success of Asian Americans on the exam.

Needless to say, I objected. Not simply because I am Asian American, but because it is never good to promote animus against one group to advance the cause of another--even a noble cause. Eventually, I got my colleague to discard the idea. But this episode underscored for me the need for a more sophisticated and nuanced conversation about the racial positioning of Asian Americans-- particularly in controversies around elite admissions and education. And as an Asian American who has long been a progressive advocate for racial equity in education, it is in this vein that I write about the racial triangulation of Asian American achievement.

In her racial triangulation framework, Professor Claire Jean Kim notes how Asian Americans are simultaneously valorized and ostracized within the realm of U.S. racial dynamics. Through a process of “relative valorization,” we are exalted over more marginalized groups, such as Black Americans, and framed as superior to those groups. The well-known “model minority” stereotype--the view of Asian Americans as high achievers because of our work ethic and cultural values--is a hallmark example of relative valorization. However, through “civic ostracism,” we are portrayed as “immutably foreign and unassimilable”--a characterization that justifies our own marginalization and exclusion. Additionally, because of our educational success, Asian Americans can also be viewed as a threat to white dominance--a “peril of the mind.” Drawing from Professor Kim, I refer to this duality as the racial triangulation of Asian American achievement.

The racial triangulation of Asian American achievement has two components: model minority and peril of the mind. In this Essay, I focus mostly on the latter because it is underrecognized and undertheorized. But the model minority is an important starting point to understand the racial positioning of Asian Americans, and I cover that first.

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It should be clear that addressing racial animus is not a zero-sum game. Progressives should actively disavow comments that reflect the backlash to Asian American achievement. We should do so with the same force as we would for racist sentiments targeting any group. Additionally, we should always make sure that Asian Americans are included in the process of choosing education reforms which may affect them. Even if they might disagree with progressive positions, the exclusion of Asian Americans from decision making is not defensible. The failure to repudiate the backlash against Asian American achievement will further pit different groups of people of color against each other and will likely push more Asian Americans in a rightward direction.

I began this Essay with the story of my progressive white colleague who wanted to use anti-Asian animus to get rid of the SAT. In his relatively privileged and insular world, he had not thought about how Asian Americans might react to this idea. I had to get him to see that animus against Asian American achievement is itself an instance of white supremacy. I have noted before that it is very difficult to get people who are not Asian American to try and see the world as we see it. But conservatives have come to understand Asian Americans' racial positioning better than most progressives, and they have successfully employed this knowledge to attack racial diversity. If progressive racial equity advocates want to build the people of color coalitions we always talk about, we will have to do a much better job at engaging the complexity of Asian American experiences. And in elite educational spaces, this includes the model minority and peril of the mind stereotypes, which together constitute the racial triangulation of Asian American achievement.

Don L. & Mabel F. Dickason Endowed Chair in Law and Professor of Law, University of New Mexico School of Law. J.D., New York University School of Law, 2009; Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2005.