"Recently I was looking at an education report, pretty standard stuff – charts on graduation rates, kindergarten readiness, etc. Where it got interesting was the chart labeled “opportunity gap.” I paused and started reading more carefully, but couldn’t make sense of the chart or the table. My colleague and I puzzled over it until we read the footnote and it became real. In the chart Asians were grouped with Whites in order to present their opportunity gap data. We went from “no way, they didn’t do that…” to “oh, shit they did…”...
Data is an important way to demonstrate the disparities that continue to exist for Asians. Data can either be used for good or as my colleague Dr. Jondou Chen describes as ‘weaponizing’ data against communities of color. Grouping Asians with Whites plays into the myth of the ‘model minority.’ While many Asians are doing well, many others still struggle or have to work twice as hard to find the same gains as our White counterparts...
Grouping Asian with White people shifts the burden of closing gaps to Asians rather than identifying factors that continue to marginalize Asian communities."
Related: White people don't want "merit-based" with Asians; the essay by the Indian med student; the essay about how the Hulk shoudl be Asian
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