For Chinese American Conservatives, Race Is a Weapon

On September 30, US District Court Judge Allison Burroughs ruled against the plaintiffs who had challenged Harvard University's race-conscious admissions program. It was a vindication of Harvard's effort to admit a diverse student body on all counts—but perhaps a temporary one, as the case will almost certainly make its way to the US Supreme Court, where a conservative majority may be poised to end race-conscious admissions. Much of the coverage of the case notes that this is the first major anti–affirmative action lawsuit featuring plaintiffs who aren't white, but it could otherwise read as another installment in the long-running war between white conservatives such as Ed Blum, who found the plaintiffs and initiated the lawsuit against Harvard in their name, and supposedly liberal university administrators and their black and Latinx constituents. Yet one important aspect of the case has gone unnoticed: Conservative, affluent, mostly first-generation Chinese Americans are now mobilizing and organizing into a formidable anti–affirmative action fighting force on a national scale. Their determination to end race-conscious admissions is creating an unprecedented synergy with the agenda of white conservatives.