Student Gives Impassioned Defense of Affirmative Action Decision on ABC News, Says Asian Students Rejected Over ‘Bland’ Perceptions

An incoming freshman at Brown University delivered an impassioned defense of the Supreme Court’s decision to stop colleges from using race in admissions decisions on ABC Thursday, citing their dismissal of Asians as “bland” to make his argument.

“This whole business, when we’re deciding based on race at least as a factor, that sort of assumes that all people of a certain race are sort of monolithic, that minorities are monolithic. And I know at least for Asian-Americans, sort of the way we’re perceived is hard-working, no charisma, no character,” explained Alex Shieh to ABC’s David Muir.

“You see that in those, in the Harvard case, you’ll see that that’s how they view Asian-American students,” he said, referencing the specific matter in Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard.

Shieh said that there are many factors which have an impact on opportunities and need.

“So by looking at what opportunities they had available and how they were able to make the most of that is not something that requires you to look at race, when you can actually pinpoint that the experience that a student might have had through other factors that don’t involve race,” he said.

SHIEH: Well, I think that this whole business, when we’re deciding based on race, at least as a factor, that sort of assumes that all people of a certain race are sort of monolithic, that minorities are monolithic. And I know at least four Asian-Americans, sort of the way that we’re perceived is hard working, no charisma, no character.

And you see that in those, in the Harvard case, you’ll see that that’s how they view Asian-American students. They see us sort of as bland and sort of lacking character. And I think that that’s sort of what happens to all minority groups when you view us first and foremost as a certain race and then just look at individual characteristics that we have later. I think we should flip that around and view our individual characteristics regardless of what race we are, first and foremost. I think that that’s the most appropriate way to do this. Because there, again, you can look at recommendation letters, you can look at — there’s so many other things that you can look at.

And I know that Bunmi [Omisore] was mentioning sort of this holistic admissions process. In that process, you have so much data, you have access to your parents income, for instance, if you might need financial aid, you have access to information about the school district that you grew up in. And I think that information actually gives you knowledge of the student’s situation and, sort of, what advantages and disadvantages that you might have in life. Because any student of any race at an under-funded school district won’t necessarily have the same opportunities that somebody at a very highly-funded school district.

And so by looking at what opportunities they had available and how they were able to make the most of that is not something that requires you to look at race when you can actually pinpoint that the experience that a student might have had through other factors that don’t involve race.

An analysis of more than 160,000 applicants to Harvard found that the university habitually gave Asian-American applicants poor personality scores, finding them less “likable,” “helpful,” and courageous than peers of other races.

Watch above via ABC News.