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5 STEPS INTO THE ASIAN MILENNIUM
PAGE 6 OF 7

What if Asian immigration had not been artificially suppressed for the past 150 years?


STEP 5: Asianization of California

     Anyone who has walked through California's top university campuses will understand the phrase "Asianization of California". At UC Berkely, UCLA and UC Irvine -- the three largest campuses of the elite University of California system -- Asians outnumber Whites 41% to 38%. The situation isn't new. In fact, it goes back to 1981 when an alarmed UC Board of Regents decided something -- anything!-- had to be done to keep the UC system from being overrun by Asians. So they initiated a reverse-discrimination scheme whereby admission criteria were doctored on an ad hoc basis, year-by-year as deemed necessary, to ensure that a higher percentage of white applicants would be admitted over academically better qualified Asian students.
     That wasn't the first time authorities decided artificial barriers were needed to keep Asians from overrunning the state. After Chinese workers proved themselves better able to endure the rigours of blasting railway tunnels through the Rockies and Sierra Nevadas, "Yellow Peril" immigration laws were passed to encourage the influx of more white workers who, ironically, rode out on the transcontinental railroads laid by Chinese workers.
     Long before the start of World War II industrious Japanese Americans had turned the arid lands that make up most of present-day Los Angeles County into lush fruit orchards and truck farms. The city's produce markets were owned by the Japanese who enjoyed cordial relations with white customers and neighbors. In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, a series of L.A. Times editorials, written at the behest of its racist publisher, incited hysteria that ultimately forced 80,000 loyal Japanese Americans to give up their homes, stores and farms on 3-days notice and be shipped off to remote internment camps ringed by barbed wire and guard towers armed with machineguns.
     A long series of laws were passed to suppress California's Asian population. They went beyond restricting immigration and tried to eradicate all traces of the Asian population. The so-called anti-miscegenation laws, calculated to prevent male Asian immigrants from producing heirs in the United States, remained in force in most states until 1967.
     What if Asian immigration had not been artificially suppressed for the past 150 years? Most of Los Angeles, Orange County, San Francisco, Sacramento, San Jose and Stockton would be owned by Chinese and Japanese Americans. Instead of 12% of California's population, Asians would make up 60%. The University of California system might be 85% Asian. It's instructive to return for a moment to the UC's efforts at suppressing Asian enrollment.
     When it came to light in 1984, Asian Americans raised a stink. Even Newweek columnist George Will wrote against the scheme's moral atrocity. It was an embarrassment to the UC system, the state, the Federal Government. A task force was appointed under retired Superior Court Judge Kawaichi. After some investigation, Kawaichi found that the Admissions Committee had decided that the ideal racial mix at the UC system should be 70% White, then had begun systematically accepting smaller and smaller percentages of qualified Asians to try to preserve the "ideal" balance. By 1985, despite the fact that twice the rate of Asian high school graduates qualified for UC admission, only half the rate was being admitted when compared with Whites. That imposed on Asian students what amounted to a horrendous bogey.
     Ultimately, the UC Regents knew they had no choice but to drop the anti-Asian admissions formulas, but they wanted to buy time. So they pulled one of those inspired moves born of desperation and cunning -- hired a Chinese American named Chang Lin Tien to head up the Board of Regents. Tien knew, as did everyone else, what had to be done, but being Asian American he was able to slow the Asian tide for a few more years. PAGE 7

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