When Diversity Drops: Race, Religion, and Affirmative Action in Higher Education

When a Minority Is the Majority

112 Numerous works provide insight into what it is like for students of color to be a minority group at traditionally white colleges and universities (see, for example, Feagin, Vera, and Imani ; Fries-Britt and Turner ; Winkle-Wagner ). However, we rarely hear students of color reflect on what it is like to be part of the numerical majority in a traditionally white institution. This issue is particularly complex for Asian Americans, who have a majority/minority status at a growing number of institutions. They may make up a substantial percentage of the student body at some campuses, but they are persistently underserved and marginalized both there and in broader society (Poon ; Teranishi ). As a microcosm of the broader university, IVCF gave me the rare chance to eavesdrop on how a community of Asian American students wrestled with their role as part of the new majority in a post-Prop.  institution; and this chapter chronicles how IVCF students and staff began to address race in an open, intentional manner following a period of public silence around race. Asian Americans: A Racial Wild Card Historically, Asian Americans have held an inconsistent position as a racial group (Inkelas ; Kim ; Park and Teranishi ), leading one scholar to refer them as a “racial wild card” (Takagi , ). Seen as “honorary whites” in certain arenas, they are persistently underserved and misunderstood as a population. Even at institutions with high percentages 7 When a Minority Is the Majority Asian Americans in IVCF WHEN A MINORITY IS THE MAJORITY 113 of Asian Americans, Asian American students, faculty, and administrators have reported feelings of widespread marginalization and invisibility (Campus Advisory Committee for Asian American Affairs ). The large percentage of Asian Americans at certain elite institutions conceals the vast diversity within the population and the persistent underrepresentation of Southeast Asian Americans in higher education. It also obfuscates the wide range of institutions that Asian American college students attend. Beyond Harvard and Berkeley, almost half of Asian American undergraduates attend community colleges (Chronicle of Higher Education ). Asian American intergroup relations are complex. The model-minority myth, which exaggerates Asian Americans’ achievement and attributes it to their status as a quiet, submissive, and hardworking group, has exacerbated stereotypes and increased tensions between Asian Americans and other communities of color (Takaki ). Despite the continuing pervasiveness of the model-minority myth, historians have documented numerous instances of Asian American involvement in interracial coalitions that worked to improve housing conditions, advocate for civil rights, and fight for ethnic studies programs. This history is particularly rich in California , home to CU and to multiple generations of Asian American activists (Kurashige ; Louie and Omatsu ). Given this multifaceted racial landscape, how do Asian Americans fit into the racial reconciliation dialogue? In early years, racial reconciliation was mainly framed around historic tensions between white and black Christians, but conversations have expanded over the years to include other racial/ethnic groups. The publication of books such as The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb: A Spirituality for Leadership in a Multicultural Community (Law ), Racial Conflict and Healing: An Asian American Theological Perspective (Park ), and others has fostered a space for Asian American voices in the racial reconciliation dialogue, with some authors arguing that Asian Americans offer unique perspectives and experiences that can inform discussions of race, racism, and Christianity (Rah ). Still, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to addressing race in Asian American Christian communities. In his analysis of Asian American congregations in northern California, Russell Jeung () captured the diverse approaches that Asian American churches take to addressing race: some dealing with it explicitly; others rarely, if ever, discussing it 114 WHEN DIVERSITY DROPS head on. In some contexts, Asian American Christians argue that their racial/ethnic identity is essential to their understanding of what it means to be a follower of Christ in a multiethnic, multiracial world; one does not supersede the other (Jeung ). However, researchers have also observed that some Asian Americans make little connection between their racial and religious identities, resorting to hierarchical rankings such as “my identity in Christ supercedes my identity as an Asian” (quoted in Alumkal , ; see also Park ). For many Asian Americans who are religious, both before and in some cases during college, their identity is not ethnic or religious, but ethnoreligious , with church being a site to be among co-ethnics and also to be socialized into a set of norms and expectations concerning what it means to be...