Why don't more Asian-Americans publicly/vocally call for Affirmative Action in high school and college admissions to end?

Here's my response to your question edit, the last paragraph: Parental education level and income level are both good metrics. I agree that those are good things to take into account in college admissions. We can't completely remove race, though, because racism still exists. People of underrepresented minorities have to deal with segregation in their everyday lives. If you have had to overcome that, then that is not something that should be ignored when you are applying to college. It doesn't need to be the primary factor in affirmative action (income level seems to be the best choice for this, but race is correlative to income, anyways), but it can't be removed entirely. From your description, it looks like you are just trying to highlight the injustices Asian-Americans are facing with respect to college admittance, so I'll respond to that. It's a really common question, though, so you don't have to take my word for it. Yes, affirmative action should not be a thing. Affirmative action is not a bad thing. Yes, an Asian-American will generally have more trouble attending the college of their choice than an African American or other disadvantaged group, but this is not without reason. The Asian-American has simply had more opportunity than these other students. African American students tend to have lower quality schools and fewer extracurriculars available. Your violin and piano? None of that. Your AP classes? None of those. If admission was race-blind, then, looks like that college is going to be awfully homogeneous. And then we don't see change because people that get college degrees go into the middle class and have kids with college degrees and people without college degrees because they had no opportunities to get into college end up poor, and have kids that go to poor schools, who end up not going to college. So what do we do about this? Affirmative action is what! And Asian-Americans with tons of extracurriculars and 4.5 GPAs get angry because a Native American kid with no outstanding qualifications is at the same school as them. But that Native American kid has a chance to have kids who grow up going to a good school and going to college themselves. And I'm okay with that. But now we come to my answer: "affirmative action should not be a thing". No, it shouldn't. The African American kid should be no more disadvantaged than the Asian American kid, and everyone should have equal opportunities. But that isn't happening any time soon. So while affirmative action should not be a thing, it is, and we shouldn't get angry at affirmative action when the real thing to be angry at is inequality. So instead of learning the violin (or in addition to - overachievers are an interesting bunch), set yourself apart and become an advocate for equality, or just deal with it. It doesn't look to be going anywhere any time soon. Sorry if this sounded like a personal attack at any point. While it was meant to rustle feathers, it wasn't supposed to be anything more.

The leadership of the Asian American community is largely in support of Affirmative action. With the exception of the 80-20 Initiative, pretty much every major Asian American Policy group is in favor of affirmative action. This also reflects the majority opinion of Asian Americans. According to the Pilot National Asian American Political Survey 63.1% of Asian Ameicans think that affirmative action is a good idea vs. 5.7% who think that it's a bad idea. This is also reflected in voting patterns of Asian Americans. Despite the arguments that race-blind admissions policies seem to help Asian Americans, 61% of Asian Americans voted against Prop 209 in California, 75% of Asian Americans voted against Prop 2 in Michigan. The very policies that most anti-affirmative action advocates say that Asian Americans are in support of were actually voted against by Asian Americans. The conversations that Asian Americans are against affirmative action are largely being made by white policy makers who are using Asian Americans as a political wedge in what is largely a White vs. Black affirmative action battle. The reality is that the conversation is very different from what actually is the true belief but most of the key policy makers have ignored what Asian American groups are telling them. Asian Americans are not vocal against affirmative action because the most vocal Asian Americans are in support of it. Including myself. https://twitter.com/hashtag/IAmNotYourWedge?src=hash https://care.gseis.ucla.edu/assets/care-affirmative_action_polling-1v2.pdf

Just to add to Christopher VanLang's wonderful answer: Again this is what I have noticed for decades. White policy makers using Asian Americans (and China) as a pawn in their game that they think nobody else notices. Black people problem? Asians peaceful model minority. Gun control? Mao confiscated guns and personally killed 60 million. America not founded on Christianity? China atheist totalitarian police state, cultural revolution Abortion? China kill girls. EPA (this one from the libs)? China no EPA big pollution But when you ask them about American Exceptionalism, they all agree. Affirmative Action solves very little problem because the root of racial disparity starts much earlier (black infants die at the highest rate in America, dies twice the rate than white infants http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2007/ColorDivideinInfantMortality.aspx, http://www.scpr.org/news/2014/03/03/42483/why-do-black-infants-die-so-much-more-often-than-w/) and reaches a peak in american high school with African American drop out rate being the highest among all minorities groups, if not wind up incarcerated or die due to violence or drugs. This is to say there are many road blocks starting from the moment a minority in America comes out her/his mother womb reaching the point when white people screams "reverse racism" when he/she receives affirmative action. There are also a lot of racism in college and in academia, so it is not all flowers and sunshines once you actually get to college. Try join certain frat in certain states as an African American - good luck to you "there will never be a n*gger in SAE, there will never be a n*gger in SAE, you can hang him from a tree but he will never sign with me...". Try publish a certain paper that doesn't sit tight with "reviewers", don't get your degree. Further more, most recipients of affirmative action are white women. http://ideas.time.com/2013/06/17/affirmative-action-has-helped-white-women-more-than-anyone/ Which shows the effectiveness of affirmative action but also the need for intensification of affirmative action to produce the intended results: diversity in classrooms, at school, in the lunch room, in the CEO conference meeting, in the media, in parties, in life. *Collectively Shudders* But why not? You let white women in your parties... Plus we are quick to forget the innumerable racist laws preventing any entrance to any organization by a minority. Even seemingly harmless organizations such as the boy scouts were straight, white, men only until July 26, 2015 (with the first gay leader). In fact, white people have been recipients of various forms of "affirmative action" for decades, sorry, centuries: personal relationships, family inheritances, like that 10 million dollar ranch some "distant ancestor" occupied on native land, family connections, such as becoming the President of the United States when you have straight Cs in college, this is known as the GB-GWB-JB phenomenon, or from the right wing the Clinton-Clinton/Kennedy-Kennedy hypothesis, or from the left wing the Palin syndrome, Rob Ford syndrome or the Trudeau-Trudeau hypothesis for Canadians! being white thus not assumed to have given a leg up, guaranteed white history and white literature lessons, guaranteed full racial representation in all areas of arts and sciences, immigration policies, from the immigration officer who is most likely white and white still, being on welfare (white people occupy biggest slice of pie when it comes to social welfare) and not called a leech, not being prejudiced on his skill level or literacy, having more money to play with more money, the Romney-Trump equation in freshman calculus, more likely to gain experience from family business therefore making a better candidate, more likely to hired by family business straight out of school, no resume needed, not being called a racial slur when he tries to volunteer or do community service, not being lynched upside down a tree, not having the military to escort you to your classes.... (These black student are what I call Affirmative Action freeloaders! Them black girls hate asians!) Even prestigious universities such as Harvard had set up Jewish-quota - which is NOT the same as affirmative action - to limit number of Jewish candidates. The reason why they are not the same is because one explicitly sought out to bar minorities (in this case the Jews), where affirmative action explicit goal is to increase diversity and to revert effects of racism. Affirmative action is a small pebble making a tiny splash in the sea of white privilege (white affirmative action). Lastly, progress in calls for civil rights by blacks, latinos, women, muslims, asians, gays benefit each other. History has proved this countless times and existing laws on civil rights are used to promote LGBT rights as did the effect of women's right on civil rights and LGBT rights on religious bigotry. So the net benefit is huge not only for Asian Americans but for all Americans (including white americans!). It is true freedom!

You assume that the Private Elite colleges (Ivy, MIT, Stanford, Seven Sisters, Cal Tech, etc) only are interested in the formal education process. They are Not. The majority of the students who apply to those colleges Could study there and graduate.  So there is Much more. A college is a Community.   The Community is looking to see what You can Provide and Add to that community.   Therefore, there is Much more than grades and SAT scores.  Much more.