Asian Americans And the Fight for Educational Rights (4 of 6)

As part of the overall shift to the right, educational rights for minorities and working people have suffered a severe attack. In just six years since Reagan took office, he has cut federal spending for education by 25% and student aid programs by 21%. While one third of the federal budget is spent on more bombs and military buildup, our children get a mere 1.5% of the overall budget.

Educational reforms won in the 60s and early 70s are being under mined. Affirmative action for minorities was attacked in the courts as "reverse discrimination" against whites in the 1977 Bakke decision. Over half of the Afro-American Studies programs won in the 60s have been eliminated. Financial aid has been cut back as tuition costs have more than tripled in some cases, and many educational support programs in the community and on campus have been gutted.

On the ideological front, outright racist theories are being revived to "prove" the "inferiority" of Black and Chicano children and to shift the blame for the failings of the educational system onto them. Along with this has been a host of new studies on education to justify the drastic cutbacks and the practical exclusion of the majority of minority and working people from access to a quality education. Curriculum has become increasingly backward with the move by the right wing to restore prayers in the schools and use textbooks which openly promote chauvinism and racism.

Asian Americans have felt the impact of these attacks on educational rights. Community schools have closed. Children are forced to attend schools in deteriorating buildings with inadequate teaching staffs and counselors. Bilingual education and ethnic studies courses have been eliminated. At the college level, the lack of financial aid and support services has made it harder for working class Asian Americans to attend and graduate from college.

The most insidious attack on the educational rights of Asian Americans, however, has been the Model Minority Myth. Using distorted and selective statistics, the Model Minority Myth has been used to cover over the continuing discrimination against Asian Americans, fan up increased racial hatred against our people, and divide us from Blacks, Chicanos and other minorities who are our best allies in fighting for our rights.

Citing statistics such as a 25% Asian student enrollment at UC Berkeley or a 10% Asian student enrollment at Harvard, the Model Minority Myth presents a picture of Asian Americans as the single nonwhite minority which has won the race for equal education and is in fact 'overrepresented".

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