Asian Americans and the Affirmative Action Debate in the United States 76 Mitchell James Chang Contents Introduction ..................................................................................... 1484 Admissions Discrimination Charges ........................................................... 1485 Guarding White Privilege ...................................................................... 1488 The Persistent Bond Between Whiteness and Privilege ....................................... 1490 Pursuing Whiteness ............................................................................. 1493 Discussion ...................................................................................... 1496 Conclusion ...................................................................................... 1497 References ...................................................................................... 1499 Abstract The controversy over the discrimination of Asian American applicants in college admissions in the United States has returned with even higher stakes. Unlike the complaints filed in the 1980s, the current set also targets the elimination of race- conscious admissions practices that were implemented to increase enrollment of underrepresented students at elite institutions, including those from African American and Latino populations. The purpose of this chapter is to make sense of this recurring admissions controversy by applying a critical race analysis toward interpreting the sociohistorical roots that animate this controversy. The results of this analysis undermine the characterization of those institutions as color-blind engines of upward mobility and instead portray them as guardians of dispensing and protecting the privileges accompanying whiteness. Broader impli- cations of those findings for achieving greater racial equity and justice are discussed. M. J. Chang (*) University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA e-mail: mjchang@gseis.ucla.edu © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 S. Ratuva (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Ethnicity , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2898-5_140 1483