By Kai Curry
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
“The complex stories of Asian Americans…can’t be separated from the impacts of race in this country.”
Those remarks from Yukong Zhao, an activist with Chinese for Affirmative Action, anchored an MSNBC Films documentary “Admissions Granted,” which aired on June 30. “Jointly directed by Miao Wang and Hao Wu, “Admissions Granted” explores the reverberations of the 2023 United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS)’s decision which struck down affirmative action in higher education.
Wang and Wu started on the project because they were “genuinely confused,” they told the Asian Weekly, by social media allegations in late 2019 about discrimination against Asian American applicants to Harvard. “Admissions Granted” unpacks Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) vs. Harvard University, a long running case led by American conservative litigator Edward Blum, which sought to end affirmative action in higher education, claiming it discriminated against Asian Americans.
Everything was coming to a head right in the middle of the pandemic, as it turned out, when Americans were even more divided than usual, and just in time for a conservative SCOTUS. The documentary follows Blum’s efforts (he’s made a career out of it) to end the consideration of race as a factor in selection for pretty much anything and everything, although he used higher education as a starting point in this most recent case. Prior, affirmative action at Harvard and other universities had been upheld, but in 2023, Blum and SFFA got what they were seeking.
“Colleges should look at the entire individual,” says Blum in the documentary, which gives him a large chunk of screen time. To him, it’s not “fair” or “constitutional” to “treat students differently because of their skin color and their ethnic heritage.” He goes so far as to relate his case to ending segregation during the Civil Rights era. “Race shouldn’t be a factor,” he…
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