Issue 72 • FEBRUARY 21, 2024
👋 Good morning, and welcome back to The Yappie’s AAPI politics briefing—your guide to the policy news and activism affecting Asian Americans + Pacific Islanders.
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— Edited by Shawna Chen
THE BIG STORY
Dartmouth College’s Baker-Berry Library in Hanover, New Hampshire. Photo: Billy Wilson via Flickr
Colleges’ return to standardized testing requirements could hurt AAPI subgroups
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As some colleges bring back pre-pandemic standardized testing requirements for applications, racial equity experts warn that it could negatively impact low-income and under-resourced students who already face additional barriers to applying for college post-Dobbs, which spelled the end of race-conscious admissions policies nationwide.
📃 WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Dartmouth College’s decision to once again require standardized test scores could spur other colleges and universities to soon follow suit.
The president of Dartmouth, Sian Beilock, said test scores can be “helpful in finding students we might otherwise miss” and that Dartmouth considers applicants’ environments and resources when looking at test scores.
“We’re looking for the kids who are excelling in their environment. We know society is unequal,” Beilock told the New York Times’ David Leonhardt. “Kids that are excelling in their environment, we think, are a good bet to excel at Dartmouth and out in the world.”
Yes, but: While some schools may have a holistic approach to admissions, the decision to reimplement standardized testing requirements could hurt Southeast Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander students applying to college. Data that groups AAPIs under one umbrella can mask the socioeconomic and historical barriers different AAPI ethnic groups face.
An analysis of the 2022 admission rates for the University of California schools found that the admission rate for NHPI students (62%) was almost 20 percentage points lower than that for Asian Americans overall (78%). Filipino students, Native Hawaiians, Samoans, Guamanians, and Fijians were also underrepresented in admission rates compared to their population sizes in California.
Why this happens: “Standardized tests like the SAT capture and magnify racial segregation and inequalities in K-12 education,” Aarti Kohli, executive director of Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus (ALC), said in a statement ahead of the Supreme Court ruling that overturned affirmative action last year. “There is also racial bias in how the tests are developed, in access to test prep, and even in the test-taking experience.”
“The result is that Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander, and Native Hawaiian students often score lower on standardized tests than white students. And that gap is widening,” Kohli said.
Fallout continues: The Supreme Court ended affirmative action in June 2023, repealing a longstanding policy that aimed to make college admissions more equitable for students of color nationwide, including Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander, Indigenous, Black, and Latino students.
In the wake of this decision, the reimplementation of standardized testing requirements could further exacerbate existing barriers to higher education for Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander, and low-income AAPIs, community advocates say.
“To say that admissions, or this aspect of admissions, is the only structural barrier that our communities face is also false because it's also SATs and other standardized tests that are used as markers or ways to access post-secondary education,” Empower Pacific Islander Communities Executive Director Estella Owoimaha-Church told The Yappie in June last year.
— By
Katrina Pham
AAPI NATION
The Amache camp, located outside of Granada, Colorado, was constructed to incarcerate Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Photo: Alan Szalwinski via Flickr
👉 Here’s what else is happening across America…
❤️🩹 Colorado’s Amache National Historic Site became the country’s newest national park this week, NBC Asian America’s Emi Tran writes. Camp Amache was a Japanese American incarceration site that was established in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack and imprisoned over 10,000 Japanese Americans.
“Amache’s addition to the National Park System is a reminder that a complete account of the nation’s history must include our dark chapters of injustice,” National Park Service director Chuck Sams said in a statement.
📚 A bipartisan bill to mandate Asian American history in public school curriculum is currently stalled in Wisconsin’s state legislature, Wisconsin State Journal’s Alexander Shur writes.
🚔 Dominic Choi has made history by becoming the first Asian American chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, Stefanie Dazio reports for the Associated Press. Choi will lead a department of nearly 9,000 total officers during his tenure as interim chief.
🏠 The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a final rule to facilitate more affordable housing opportunities and rent relief for Native Hawaiians under the Hawaiian Housing Block Grant Program.
In their words: “We are committed to supporting Hawaiian communities with quality, affordable housing, especially low-income Native Hawaiian families who reside on the Hawaiian Home Lands and often face significant housing challenges,” Secretary Marcia Fudge said in a statement.
🏈 AAPIs in the National Football League are reclaiming their identities in their own ways—from wearing Samoan cultural attire to demanding accurate pronunciations of their names, Terry Tang writes for the Associated Press.
By the numbers: Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders comprise 1.8% of all NFL players, while Asian players make up around 0.1%, according to a 2023 report by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics In Sport.
💼 The White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders will host a federal leadership development conference in March in partnership with the Office of Personnel Management and the Department of Transportation.
The event is designed to address workplace challenges and help foster leadership skills through tailored sessions for federal employees at all stages of their careers.
🎾 Japanese American Naomi Osaka moved more than 400 spots up in the Women's Tennis Association’s rankings, NextShark’s Carl Samson writes. After falling behind for six months due to maternity leave, Osaka advanced to quarterfinals at the Qatar Open and now ranks just below 300. 🥰 Enjoying The Yappie? Make a donation, forward this briefing to a friend or subscribe here. You can also follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
— By
Rachel Lee
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Preston Lieu