Eli Steele: De Blasio's shameful racial profiling of Asian students

Rather than pursue true education fixes, de Blasio and his education administration racially profiled and scapegoated Asian students for their success.

Why had de Blasio and his education administration racially profiled Asian children? Was it because these youths took the American dream seriously and burned the midnight oil? Was it because their parents — many of them immigrants and impoverished — squeezed every penny to see that their children were prepared to take the test? Or was it simply that they were different, Asian and an unpreferred minority? If 54 percent of the 4,262 eighth graders that passed the SHSAT had been black instead of Asian, there is very little doubt that de Blasio would not have charged the test as "structurally racist." In fact, he likely would have praised the test. Wai Wah, the charter president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance Greater New York, and her friend, George Lee, showed me the tweet sent by de Blasio’s education chancellor, Meisha Potter, after the students received their test results. Potter found it "unacceptable" that so few blacks were admitted to specialized high schools and said that it was "past time for our students to be fairly represented." The implication was the test was racist.