California effort to restore affirmative action divides Asian Americans

Six years ago, a legislative push to restore affirmative action at California’s public universities galvanized a new class of activists in state politics: largely first-generation Chinese Americans who worried the measure would lead to quotas on Asian American students at elite college campuses.

As lawmakers move to place an even more sweeping measure before voters this year to reverse California’s ban on the consideration of race and sex in public education, employment and contracting, the same coalition is once again leading the charge to stop it. Several primarily Chinese American groups are behind the highly visible opposition to ACA5, a constitutional amendment that appears headed for the November ballot.

“I want people to judge me by the content of my character, not the color of my skin,” said Jason Xu, vice president of the Silicon Valley Chinese Association Foundation, one of the groups fighting ACA5. “That’s one of the reasons the United States is the best in the world. Because it’s merit-based.”

Proponents of the measure note that polls indicate most Asian Americans support affirmative action, as do a majority of all voters. But the active, sometimes aggressive, opposition — organizing on social media and online petitions, inundating legislative offices with phone calls — has thrust a vocal rift within the Asian American community into the center of the debate over the bill.

“This absolutely has been the toughest vote that I’ve made in close to 15 years in public office,” said Assemblyman Evan Low, D-Campbell, who voted this month for ACA5. The Assembly overwhelmingly passed the measure and sent it to the state Senate, which must take it up by Thursday.

Low said that his office got more than 3,000 calls opposing the measure, the most he has ever received on a bill, and that some constituents and local leaders accused him of abandoning his race. “This notion in many circles that I still am part of or go to, that my own community would think I betrayed them, of course it hurts. It’s personal,” he said. Read more >>>