Do Americans Worry About Schools Becoming Too White? Too Asian?

Debates over the racial consequences of merit-based admissions are back in the news. But unlike the conversations about specialized and gifted-and-talented high schools in New York City and elsewhere, these concerns aren’t coming from the political left — and the worry isn’t about Black and Latino students losing out.

Instead, Bo French, a Republican candidate for statewide office in Texas, ignited a national firestorm after sharing a photograph on social media depicting a large group of South Asian students celebrating a big football victory at the University of Texas at Austin, bemoaning that they were crowding out what were implied to be more “deserving” white non-immigrant applicants.

The irony is that UT-Austin relies on precisely the sort of colorblind meritocratic academic-based criteria that Republicans and conservatives have long championed. Automatic admission based on high school class rank fills most of the spaces available to Texas residents. Yet Asian students make up nearly a quarter of UT undergraduates despite being just 7% of the Texas population.

In the weeks since French’s post sparked outrage, editorials and op-eds have rushed to draw broader conclusions about what his comments say about the political right — whether conservatives still believe in meritocracy, or whether some are growing uneasy about Asian academic competition.