Dismantling Legacy

By Kristin Lee

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etween the two of us, my husband and I have four degrees from Harvard. We are Asian American. Thus, when the Supreme Court recently heard a case brought against Harvard purportedly on behalf of Asian American students, we took a natural interest.

The plaintiffs of Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard argued that Asian American college applicants are hurt by affirmative action. Yet the admissions bias that does the most to perpetuate inequality is not affirmative action, but legacy preferences, in which the children of alumni are given a leg up in college admissions. Although our three kids would benefit significantly from legacy status, from the perspective of Biblical justice, I believe the Supreme Court targeted the wrong system in overturning affirmative action. Rather, it is the unfair system of legacy admissions that should be dismantled. 

Although being admitted to Harvard and other prestigious institutions is not intrinsically good, it is a door of opportunity that is most beneficial to those who start with the least by the world’s metrics. Throughout Scripture, God’s people are called to flatten inequalities and redistribute accumulated resources, from the Year of Jubilee to the early church’s pooling of assets. Since college admissions is an important mechanism for rebalancing educational advantages and working towards flourishing for all, Christians must speak up to bring down legacy systems that serve as opportunity hoarding for the privileged.

It grieves me that the media photos of protestors outside of the Supreme Court depicted Blacks and Asians, screaming at one another. Our fight is not with each other. As an Asian American Christian, I’m compelled to delineate what Harvard and my faith have taught me about how the world works versus how God’s divine economy works.

My Harvard education taught me to value history, but it didn’t teach me my own people’s history. Discrimination against Asian Americans runs deep in this country, from the lynching of eighteen Chinese Americans in Los Angeles in 1871, to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, to Japanese internment during World War II, to current-day hate crimes. 

White supremacy is responsible for these wrongs. This is the same posture and power differential that enforced slavery, implemented Jim Crow, and supports mass incarceration.

White supremacy deliberately pits minoritized groups against one another. As Julia Lee writes in Biting the Hand, “Whiteness cast Asians as perpetual foreigners and the model minority, cast Black people as perpetual criminals and the problem minority, then sat on the sidelines to watch what happened.”  

In the case of Edward Blum and Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard, white supremacy actively stirred the pot, using Asian Americans as strategic tools. To this, we say: Not in our name.

One error underpinning this case is ignoring the reality that Asian America is not monolithic. There are socioeconomically disadvantaged Asian students who benefit from a holistic approach to college admissions rather than one that is hyper-focused on test results and GPA. Lumping Asian Americans together as the model minority creates a false narrative that erases the experiences of Southeast Asian refugees and other Asian American communities that are underrepresented in higher education.  

While my Harvard education taught me the importance of math, it didn’t teach me to scrutinize the institution's own policies. A whopping 43% of white students admitted to Harvard are recruited athletes, legacy students, children of faculty, or students related to donors or high-profile figures (ALDCs). Without the ALDC admissions boost, only 25% of those white students would have been admitted, thus freeing up over 1,600 spots over six years. In contrast, only 16% of Black, Hispanic, and Asian American students are ALDCs. If legacy preferences were eliminated, the percentage of white admits would go down, while the percentage of Asian, Black, and Hispanic admits would all rise.

My education likewise did not address why this system is so deeply entrenched despite being unpopular among the general public. The answer is that it works for selective universities, and it works for alumni, who are often big donors to the universities. This system continues because those of us with power and privilege rarely speak out in ways that will disadvantage our own children.

My Harvard education taught me to grind myself to the bone in order to collect accolades with which to adorn my ever-voracious CV. It taught me to look out for myself rather than to extend the hand of generosity. It taught me how the moneyed classes network, but it didn’t teach me true community and solidarity.

In contrast, my faith taught me to overcome the scarcity mindset by bathing myself in God’s abundance; in this spiritual economy, what we have multiplies when shared. My faith taught me that lifting others up is more soul-satisfying than elbowing my way to the front. My faith taught me that the first will be last, and the last will be first. My faith taught me to shed the anxiety of the college admissions rat race when it comes to my children (I succeed 50% of the time).

The educated elite, myself included, must give up our unfair advantages for the world to become a more just place. Inherent in the existence of privilege is inequality. In a completely equitable world, there is no position of privilege. We have to make individual decisions and support systemic policies that cost us—and more importantly, our children—in significant ways.

Solidarity requires sacrifice. By surrendering the unmerited benefits of ALDC status, we make room for more first-generation college students as well as for increased racial and class diversity in elite institutions of higher education. A recent study by Georgetown University found that eliminating ALDC preferences is imperative in achieving racial, class, and ethnic diversity in a post-affirmative action world. In a world that eschews sacrifice, our faith is built on a God who exemplifies it in his very life. Thus, Christians must lead the way in calling for the upheaval of entrenched privilege.

Write to your alma maters. Tell them that legacy systems must go. Withhold donations until they do. Now that the Supreme Court has overturned race-based affirmative action, we must fight back by demolishing unjust systems that favor ALDCs, systems that fly in the face of Scripture’s call to lift up the poor and oppressed. We must call them by their rightful name: affirmative action for the wealthy.

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

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Kristin Lee is a reader, writer, and book reviewer living in Cambridge, MA. She amplifies diverse voices in literary fiction and non-fiction by championing and highlighting authors of color on her Instagram book review site, @ktlee.writes. As the creator and host of the #20BooksByAsianAuthors reading challenge as well as the #AsianClassicsReadAlong, Lee challenges generally-held paradigms of classics as exclusively Western by promoting classic literature from Asia and from the Asian diaspora. She tells personal stories from the stage on The Moth and is working on her first book, titled FAMILY MEETING: AN ASIAN AMERICAN SPIRITUAL MEMOIR AND MANIFESTO.