Habitus

by Habitus · 02/25/10

Perhaps inspired by recent neoconservative angst over the WASP aristocracy’s waning grip on the levers of political power, SFGate’s Jeff Yang excavates an old meme, wondering whether Asians are indeed the “new Jews”, and investigating whether—as Daniel Golden claimed in his 2006 book on Ivy League admissions policies:

Asian Americans are disproportionately harmed by current admissions standards, to the point where an effective quota system exists, capping the number of Asians admitted at a virtually fixed level — for private colleges, generally well south of 20 percent of the student body — and forcing Asian applicants to compete for slots against other Asians. In short, the environment Asian American candidates face is remarkably similar to that of Jewish applicants in the Fifties and Sixties, when Ivy League colleges had a policy of preventing an “excess” of Jews in their student body.

Yang looks into the apparent contradiction of Asian American support for affirmative action, and finds inspiration in the integral role Jews played during the civil rights era. His sources seem a bit out of date, but the piece is worth a look, if only for the attention it calls to a series of programs and exhibits on the experience of Jews in China, taking place around San Francisco this Spring