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终于，亚裔美国人受够了 -- 他们厌倦了越来越努力的工作，实现越来越多的学术成就，然后在试图在进入这个国家最优秀的大学以达成他们对教育的梦想时受到越来越多的反对与阻碍。 从要进入顶级私人学校如哈佛，或最好的公立学校如北卡罗莱纳州教堂山大学的角度来看，谁也没有做到比华裔，日裔或韩裔美国人做的更好。但为了给非裔，拉丁裔，以及。。。是的， 白人学生腾出空间，优秀的亚裔美国人被推到一边。而现在他们已经厌倦了这个情况。

因此，亚裔团体联盟向美国司法部和教育部提出了申诉，指控美国高等教育录取中系统性的种族歧视。这是他们理所应当的自然权利。因为美国大学的确对亚洲学生进行了系统性打压，而且问题比他们想象的其实更糟糕。因为我曾亲眼所见。
几年前，在成为一个全职的宪法律师前，我曾任教于康奈尔大学法学院 -- 常春藤盟校和这个国家的顶级法学院之一。在任教职的第二年，我担任招生委员会委员，并亲眼目睹了意识形态，而不是良性竞争扭曲了整个录取的过程。可以说，常春藤联盟招生中一部分的确是精英 – 他们的学生的确十分优秀 – 而另一部分则是一个意识形态塑造产物。如果美国大众充分的理解这个流程如何运作，对所谓“平权运动”的支持肯定将进一步减弱。
首先，很少有人知道他们（招生委员会）如何戏剧性的对其看好的少数族裔群体进行拔高。如果一个学生是非裔或“正确种类”的拉丁裔，即使他们提供的资料与考试成绩比白人或亚裔学生低20或30个百分点，他们仍会常态性的收到录取。当我对招生组拒绝了98%成绩比例的白人及亚裔学生（这是远高于我们平均录取线的）的申请后却对一名70%成绩比例的非裔学生发出录取通知表达忧虑时，有人告诉我，我们必须提供录取，否则其他常青藤联盟的对手肯定会先于我们录取他。
其次，这些戏剧性的打破常规很少给那些实际克服贫民窟学校的挑战脱颖而出的穷困学生们。许多美国人，包括我自己在内，都理解“克服极端贫困和美国的最糟糕的公立学校并与更为富裕背景的学生们进行竞争” 才是一个真正的和实质性的成就。 而且这是 一个不能被测量的测试成绩 。 而这个道理并不适用于医生和律师的孩子。但是，后者却得到显着的扶持。事实上，除非招生委员给予这些富裕的非裔和拉丁裔孩子以打破常规的优势，他们将无法完成其多样性的目标。也就是说，在常青藤联盟水平，所谓“平权行动”其实是一个对某些族裔富家子弟加强机会的程序性青睐而已。
第三，所谓的“平权行动”并不一定是每一个非裔或拉丁裔申请人都能享受的。古巴裔美国人经常会得到较少的帮助（O 编辑注释，因为美国古巴裔通常是共和党的铁杆支持者，而其他拉美裔及美国大学通常是民主党的支持者）。而且真正的非洲学生也通常得到较少的帮助。最糟糕的是，有些时候招生委员会进行意识形态清洗，即真正从思想上符合他们观点并对他们认为是“缺少多样化”专业感兴趣的少数族裔进行拔高或打压。比方说，一个对投资银行（一个传统白人占主导的职业）表示有兴趣的少数族裔申请者常被视为缺乏多样化。 如果你是一个墨西哥裔美国孩子，写了一篇维护移民农民工权利的申请作文，那恭喜，你将是一个梦想候选人。但如果你是一位非裔候选人在申请作文里写了毕业后渴望在高盛的工作，拿你将被归类于“缺少多样化”（作者注：顺便说一句，这些都是现实生活中的例子）。
意识形态清洗也适用于白人申请学生们。最令我难忘的事件之一，就是我所在的招生委员会拒绝了一名差不多是完美的申请人，仅因为他在申请写作表现出了明显的基督教信仰（他曾就读于教会大学和一个保守神学院，并为维护保守宗教信仰进行工作）。招生委员们明确质疑他们是否希望自己的校园里出现一个“布道者”或“神棍”。我明确反对并指出我自己的背景就是宗教保守派出身。为了他们自身的名誉，该委员会的成员后来进行了道歉，并最终给了这名学生录取通知。
只要我们没喝醉，就应该能看到大多常青藤校非裔和拉丁裔申请人与他们的白人--尤其是亚洲同学的巨大成就之间的差距。但我无法去弥补这个差距因为众所周知的一些人和组织对所谓“受喜好群体”的刻意降低标准。 如果以成绩/成就为导向的学生倾向于够努力实现自己的目标 并能够完成他们。那么为什么我们要告诉那些最优秀的非裔和拉丁裔学生你们不需要如此努力，你们可以把自己的脚离开别人给的加速器，仍然可以通过竞争参加最好的学校？
可以说美国的大学招生委员会就是一群臭味相投的招生委员招收符合他们口味的学生并在腌制一道“低期望，软偏见”的菜。我在招生委员会的那年做了我所能的一切，并尝试引入不同的观点。 但我觉得我是一个面对着猛烈火灾的花园小水管。现实是如此的无奈。
最后我披露一下我自己的私心：我最小的养女是来自于埃塞俄比亚的非裔。 我最不希望看到的就是她被安置在一所她并不具备竞争能力但能取得不劳而获成功的学校。 我是如此的爱她，并希望她这个独立的人不会被一个号称“多么用心良苦”的“学术自由派”用来满足种族配额的牺牲掉。
作者简介：
笔者毕业于哈佛法学院，康奈尔大学法学院的录取委员会前委员。纽约时报排名第一畅销书作者，美国陆军预备役团长，2007年，他部署到伊拉克，在迪亚拉省第3装甲骑兵团，在那里他被授予铜星勋章。现居于田纳西州。
原文：
What Ivy League Affirmative Action Really Looks Like — from the Inside


Asian Americans have finally had enough. They’re tired of working harder, achieving more academically, then having that held against them as they try to fulfill their educational dreams in our nation’s most elite universities. To gain entry into top private schools such as Harvard or the best public schools such as the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, no one has to do better than Americans of Chinese or Japanese or Korean descent. To make room for black, Latino, and — yes — white students, deserving Asian Americans are pushed aside. And they’re tired of it.
So last week a coalition of more than 60 Asian-American groups filed complaints with the Department of Justice and Department of Education, alleging systematic racial discrimination in college admissions. They’re right, of course. Colleges do systematically disadvantage Asian students, and the problem is worse than they imagine. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
Years ago, before I became a full-time constitutional lawyer, I taught at Cornell Law School — an Ivy League school and one of the top law schools in the country. My second year on the faculty, I served on the admissions committee, and I saw firsthand how not just race but ideology distorts the admissions process. Ivy League admissions are one part meritocracy — the students are quite bright — and one part ideological engineering. And if Americans broadly understood how the process works, support for affirmative action would diminish even further.
First, few people understand how dramatic the boost is for favored minority groups. If students were black or the “right” kind of Latino, they would often receive admissions offers with test scores 20 or 30 percentile points lower than those of white or Asian students. When I expressed concern about an admissions offer to a black student with test scores in the 70th percentile — after we’d passed over white and Asian students with scores in the 98th percentile and far higher grades — I was told that we had to offer admission or we’d surely lose him to our Ivy League rivals.
Second, these dramatic breaks rarely go to poor kids who are overcoming the challenges of ghetto schools. Many Americans, myself included, understand it is a real and substantial achievement — one that can’t be measured in test scores — to overcome extreme poverty and America’s worst public schools to compete with students from far more prosperous backgrounds. But the same reasoning doesn’t apply to the children of doctors and lawyers. Yet they get dramatic advantages as well. In fact, unless admissions committees gave rich black and Latino kids dramatic advantages, they wouldn’t be able to hit their diversity targets. At the Ivy League level, affirmative action is an enhanced-opportunity program for favored rich kids.
Third, affirmative action isn’t necessarily for every black or Latino applicant. Cuban Americans often get less help. African students get less help. And, worst of all, there are times when admissions committees will actually ideologically cleanse the minority applicant pool of minorities who are seen as “less diverse” because of expressed interest in “white” professions such as, say, investment banking. If you’re a Mexican American who writes an admissions essay about defending the rights of migrant farm workers, you’re a dream candidate. If you’re a black candidate who aspires to work for Goldman Sachs, you’re “less diverse” (these are real-life examples, by the way).
The ideological cleansing also happens to white candidates. In one of the most memorable incidents, the committee almost rejected an extraordinarily qualified applicant because of his obvious Christian faith (he’d attended a Christian college, a conservative seminary, and worked for religious conservative causes). In writing, committee members questioned whether they wanted his “Bible-thumping” or “God-squadding” on campus. I objected, noting that my own background was even more conservative. To their credit, the committee members apologized and offered him admission.
It was sobering to see the immense achievement gap between most of the black and Latino applicants and their white and especially Asian counterparts. But I couldn’t help but think that part of that gap was due to the well-known lowered expectations for favored minorities. Even achievement-oriented students tend to work hard enough to accomplish their goals — and no harder. Why tell the best and brightest black and Latino students that they don’t have to do as well, that they can take their foot off the accelerator and still attend the best schools?
Like-minded admissions committees admit like-minded students while marinating in the “soft bigotry of lower expectations.” During my one year on the committee, I did what I could to try to introduce a different perspective, but I felt as if I were fighting a raging fire with a garden hose.
In the interests of full disclosure: My youngest daughter is black, adopted from Ethiopia. The last thing I want to see is her placed in a school where she’s not equipped to compete and succeed. I love her too much to see her well-being sacrificed so an academic liberal — no matter how well-intentioned — can meet a quota.
译者 : 刘翔熙
作者：David French
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