During a Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus press briefing on Thursday, Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) spoke about the Asian-American community being used as a 'pawn' in Affirmative Action lawsuits.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you, Madam Chair. How has the end of affirmative action, along with the Republican Party's broader hostility towards DEI efforts, affected the AANHPI community, particularly in education and workplace diversity? And what has CAPEC done to push back?
00:16I can say a little bit. Affirmative action, Asian Americans, our community, has sort of been used as a pawn in these lawsuits, a lot of these conversations.
00:27We also believe that if you look at the statistics, you know, from this last admissions year, we do not want to be used and put one community against another.
00:40It is unfair. It is cruel. And if you look at the statistics from a lot of the schools in the past year, the end of affirmative action didn't necessarily increase the number of Asian Americans enrolled or accepted into these schools.
00:55Also, some argue it may be or should be part of a larger conversation. It's not just about affirmative action. If you want to look about equity and admissions, it should be about donor preferences, relationships, and legacy.
01:09I'm on the Education and Workforce Committee. The administration in its most recent firings has completely gutted the Office of Civil Rights, whose job it is to make sure that there is non-discrimination of any kind, including religious discrimination.
01:26So anti-Semitism, for example, cannot be fully investigated on a college campus or anywhere else when you gut the Office of Civil Rights. The EEOC has been rendered without a quorum.
01:43I have called upon the current executive director and the current acting chair to resign because they have completely dismissed or refused to pursue cases of egregious sexual harassment, egregious discrimination against people who are trans by their employers.
02:07This is not good for anybody, regardless of whether your grievance is based on race, whether it's based on religious discrimination, whether it's based on sex discrimination, whether you're being harassed in the workplace.
02:20What has happened at the EEOC, based on this very extreme application of this extreme theory that DEI represents a violation of civil rights law, this is Orwellian. It's Orwellian that this is the premise on which diversity, equity, and inclusion is being completely rooted out of the federal mission.
02:46How does that put your communities at risk in particular in these attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion?
03:17So it hurts everybody and it hurts our we know in the past couple of years what has happened to people just walking down the street.
03:24We can assume that this animus could work it will work its way into the public education system, the education system.
03:33We need a federal government that assures every citizen that they will be protected under the law.
03:40Equal protection under law is a principle that is being assaulted and twisted and perverted by this administration.