Injured Privilege and Misplaced Ressentiment: Unpacking Reactions toward Asian Americans after Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) V. Harvard

Abstract

Asian Americans occupy an ambivalent position in the U.S. racial hierarchy. An organization called Students for Fair Admissions prepared a lawsuit against the admission process in Harvard University. In October 2019, it was concluded that although “not perfect,” Harvard’s policies did not intentionally discriminate against Asian Americans. I analyzed comments about the verdict in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, and found that Asian Americans were afforded low relatability as Americans. I further propose that concepts of “injured privilege” and “misplaced ressentiment” could move conversations about Asian Americans’ experiences beyond the “model minority” discourse.

Keywords:

• Asian American
• Model Minority
• Resentment
• SFFA V. Harvard
• White Privilege

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the editor and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this essay.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in the Regents of University of California v. Bakke that race and ethnicity are to be treated as “plusses” rather than a determining factor in affirmative action programs (Chui, 2019).

2. It is worth noting that the recent lawsuit was supported by several Chinese American and other Asian American activist groups (Hsu, 2018).

3. Research has suggested that White women have been the largest beneficiaries of affirmative action programs. In the case brought by Abigail Fisher against the University of Texas, among those admitted students whose grades were lower than Fisher, five were Black or Latinx while 42 were White (Kohn, 2013).

4. In many Chinese dynasties, educated elites who passed the civil service exam were able to help govern the country. Education became the means for the less fortunate to break through the rigid social structure. The implementation of the SAT was an emulation of such a system (Puett & Gross-Loh, 2016).

5. The Justice Department under the Biden administration dropped this lawsuit in early 2021 while stating that it will continue the investigations on Yale’s admission practices.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hsin-I Cheng

Hsin-I Cheng is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Santa Clara University.