Downward Mobility for the Model Minority
Downward Mobility for the Model Minority
An excerpt from the former Massachusetts’ Department of Higher Education (DHE) commissioner’s top secret diary
Dear Diary,
I am proud of myself. I think I finally wrote my masterpiece and I can step down happy, knowing that I have finally made a difference.
Yes, I’m talking about my strategic plan for racial equity for 2023-2033, a fine document that will shape the landscape of higher education in Massachusetts for the foreseeable future. Since I’m stepping down, I left my good friends – the rich elites, a little parting gift. You’re welcome, everyone.
My declared goal was:
… to significantly raise the enrollment, attainment, and long-term success outcomes among underrepresented student populations.
I did that alright, but not for the underrepresented student populations you all have in mind, but for the underrepresented group that suffers the most – rich, elite (mostly white) kids who forgot how to compete. More about it later.
I think I did a pretty good job disguising my main objective. I filled the document with pretty but meaningless phrases like:
we must dismantle the many subtle and overt educational structures that inhibit the success of Students of Color. It requires more than simply leveling the playing field; it requires a rewriting of the rules in recognition that the game was never designed to be fair to begin with. The Strategic Plan for Racial Equity represents a collective vision on what the new higher education playbook should look like for Students of Color.
The document is also full of ideas, procedures and suggestions. The most important one, the one I’m most proud of, the one that will earn me the eternal love and admiration of the people in power, is well hidden in pages 32 and 41:
Explore or expand holistic admissions practices and policies that broaden the focus beyond GPA and standardized test scores (e.g., essays) (p.32).
Eliminate the use of standardized tests for admissions, assessment, and placement. (p.41)
We all know standardized tests are biased against minoritized students, right? So, my idea is to eliminate all standardized tests and placement tests and replace them with essays.
Now, you may think that replacing a quantitative standardized test with an essay is the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard. After all, how can an essay be used to assess quantitative abilities? Moreover, who says essays are not just as biased?
You see? That’s where my genius comes in. I always think four steps ahead of everyone - I didn’t become the DHE’s commissioner for nothing.
Of course essays are biased, you fool! I mean, it’s easy to see that the racial and economic disparities in math extend to ELA as well. Poor students who went to a shitty school that didn’t teach math well probably didn’t learn to write well either, and their parents probably couldn’t afford enrichment or tutoring to help them with their writing. However, you are wrong about one important thing: Essays are not “just as” biased as quantitative standardized tests.
They are WAY more biased.
How so? Well, my amazing masterpiece of a document contains a whooping 227 instances of “students of color” or “people of color” (spread over 63 pages of text!) but as we all know, not all colors are the same. There is one population that makes all of our beautiful theories of marginalization and oppression collapse.
Yes. Them Asians. The inconvenient model minority. Marginalized, oppressed, racialized, and still doing better than all of us on standardized tests. Except for the Jews, maybe, but we whitewashed them 100 years ago. We can’t whitewash the Asians so easily, so we have to get creative.
Abolishing standardized tests and relying on high school GPA is only half the solution - this part eliminates the competition from talented black and LatinX students with low high-school GPA but high SAT potential, but not from talented Asian students with high GPA and high SAT potential! My friends in private elite universities solved part of the problem by keeping legacy admission alive and well, but I’m in charge of the public education system, so I had to think of something else.
This is where the essays come in. You see, math is a universal language but English isn’t. Many Asian students are immigrants or first generation, so writing an English essay that fits well within the American cultural standards is not their strongest suit. Many of them are poor, so they can’t hire a disillusioned PhD graduate to write them an inspiring essay about helping tsunami victims in Berlin. So their essays are going to suck and this is how we can prevent them from taking over the spaces reserved for the rich, elite (mostly white) kids who forgot how to compete. By striking the Asians at their weak point we keep the rich elites happy, we provide jobs to hoards of unemployed English PhD graduates who would otherwise work at Applebee’s, we avoid the use of intricate interesectionality matrices and we don’t make white kids make up a Cherokee princess great-grandma to qualify as minorities.
Who’s the genius?! I’m the genius!
As a Puerto-Rican I’m not exactly white elite, but don’t worry about me or my kids. We are not going to be affected. Pale faced LatinX like myself enjoy both white privilege and lower admission standards. But my rich, lazy friends and their rich lazy kids will thank me.
If you have any problem with it, don’t look for me. I’m out. Adiós!