100+ Asian American Organizations Urge Supreme Court to Ban Racial Discrimination in College Admissions

SHORT HILLS, N.J., Sept. 11, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Asian American Coalition for Education ("AACE"), representing 117 Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Korean, Vietnamese and other Asian American community and education organizations, and the Asian American Legal Foundation ("AALF") jointly filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court to urge a total ban on racial discrimination in college admissions. This document was filed in support of the plaintiff, Abigail Fisher, in the Fisher v. University of Texas lawsuit.

For much of America's history, race-based governmental policies and programs have been used to oppress and disadvantage Asian Americans, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII and various segregation and racial quota systems in school admissions. Unfortunately today, Asian Americans are the most disadvantaged group by race-based admission programs such as those of University of Texas. Asian Americans are consistently discriminated against through the illegal use of de facto racial quota, racially-differentiated standards and racial stereotypes in many colleges' admission practices throughout United States. It is worth pointing out that while the Supreme Court is gradually limiting the use of race in college admissions, Asian Americans have experienced ever worsening discrimination because those proclaimed benign racial balancing are, as Judge O'Connor forthrightly pointed out, "simply too amorphous, too insubstantial, and too unrelated to any legitimate basis for employing racial classifications." Asian American organizations request that the Court should find the UT's race-based admission program to be unconstitutional.

Asian Americans care deeply about the educational quality in lower income communities of all racial proportions. We believe the most effective approach to address the issue is to implement meaningful and truly beneficial changes, such as improving K-12 education in disadvantaged communities, supplemented with reasonable Affirmative Action programs that use race-neutral criteria such as socio-economic factors and other constitutionally-permissible means. Yukong Zhao, the Chair of the Organizing Committee of AACE, stated, "We should treat all students the same based on merit, and jointly help the poor, regardless of their racial background. Only in this way, can we build a racially harmonized society and advance American education."

Media Contacts: Yukong Zhao, Chair of Organizing Committee, Phone: 407-921-8452, Email: [email protected]; or Swann Lee, Phone: 617-906-6380, Email: [email protected]

SOURCE The Asian American Coalition for Education