Most Asian Americans favor affirmative action, new Pew study shows
A new Pew Research Center study on affirmative action released Thursday, as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on the matter later this month, shows that more than half of Asian American adults who have heard of affirmative action say it’s a positive thing.
However, when asked whether race or ethnicity should factor into college admissions, roughly three-quarters of respondents said it should not.
Janelle Wong, director of Asian American studies at the University of Maryland and senior researcher at AAPI Data, explained that wording can significantly impact the way respondents perceive the role of race in admissions, particularly when the phrase “affirmative action” isn’t used.
“It’s not attached to a policy. It’s just saying, ‘Should race be considered?’ The way the law works, race can only be considered as one of many, many, many other factors and it can never be the primary factor, but the question wording makes it sound like it could be the primary factor,” Wong said. “There’s lots of different ways it could be interpreted and so that’s why we see that difference.”
While 54% of Asian Americans who have heard of the policy say it’s a good thing, 19% say it’s a negative thing. Another 27% said they didn’t know, according to the survey.
By contrast, only 21% of Asian American adults said colleges should consider race and ethnicity in the admissions process. The overwhelming majority said that high school grades, community service and standardized test scores should be factors considered in college admissions.
But the concept of affirmative action was interpreted favorably across most Asian demographic subgroups by those who have heard of it, researchers found. Roughly 60% of Indian adults, 50% of Korean adults, and 48% of Vietnamese adults said affirmative action is a good thing.
Chinese adults were among the most likely to say the policy was a bad thing at 27%, However, far more still said it was a good thing at 45%.
When compared to other Americans, Asian Americans are more likely to have a favorable view of affirmative action compared to the overall U.S. adult population, Pew said. A December 2022 survey revealed that 36% of American adults overall said it was a good thing, compared to 29% who said it was bad.
Other surveys that asked Asian American participants about their stance on affirmative action similarly showed support for the policy. One 2022 survey, released in part by AAPI Data, looked at Asian American registered voters and showed that 69% favored affirmative action programs “designed to help Black people, women, and other minorities get better access to higher education.”
The Pew survey coincides with the upcoming affirmative action cases involving University of North Carolina and Harvard University. When similar cases have been brought to the high court in the past, the policy has been upheld. Both Harvard and UNC cases serve as the first meaningful challenges to the policy in decades, and will be decided by a court that has shifted significantly after President Donald Trump appointed three conservative justices. The minority of liberal justices have defended affirmative action, citing the importance of diversity on campus.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
