“TOO MANY ASIANS”: University of Pennsylvania Law School professor Amy Wax is being threatened with sanction by her school for expressing opposition to immigration to the US from Asia. Wax did not suggest she has anything against Asians as such; she just does not want any more Democratic voters, and Asian Americans mostly vote for Democrats. I have a variety of objections to her argument, but that’s neither here nor there.

As Glenn pointed out, the irony here is that progressives are so up in arms about Wax’s remarks, which have no actual effect on public policy, but are silent or even supportive as top universities impose implicit quotas on Asians. The universities try to disguise this bias, but progressives have been explicit about their hostility to Asian American success for a long time. Consider this interview with Bill Clinton from 1995:

“Our diversity is our great strength,” [President Clinton] declared. “If a university says, ‘Look, we’re only going to let in qualified people, but we think that the life of the university will be strengthened if we had different kinds of people,’ then I think that’s a legitimate thing.” Otherwise, he added, “there are universities in California that could fill their entire freshman classes with nothing but Asian Americans.”

There is a right answer to that, and it’s “so what?” People don’t come stamped as “Asians” or “whites” or “Hispanics.” These are labels we impose on them. In the case of “Asians” we impose on people with ancestry in places as varied as India, Mongolia, and Indonesia. If people from these backgrounds excel academically, and collectively take up even the whole freshman class at Berkeley, *so what*?

But we know, “so what?” It’s a way of trying to rally whites to be for racial preferences by suggesting that otherwise their children will be displaced by “Asians.” (I can’t find a link, but I remember a Congresswoman making this argument explicitly back in the 90s.) In other words, “diversity” concerns become an excuse for quotas against Asians. It’s gross and it’s racist, and unlike what Wax said, it does suggest hostility to Asians, as such. And it’s high time someone called progressives on this sort of thing.