An inconvenient minority The attack on Asian American excellence and the fight for meritocracy

How Asian Americans have been ill-served by policies of diversity and inclusion. Journalist Xu, who writes for the Federalist, Washington Examiner, and other publications, offers a strident critique of Critical Race Theory, which, as James Lindsay writes in the foreword, "openly denigrates a key American virtue--merit, that combination of talent and hard work that makes for genuine, well-earned success," and in consequence has had "a disproportionate impact on one racial minority group in the United States more than any other: Asian Americans." CRT posits that systemic racism victimizes people of color. According to Xu, it focuses on Black and Latinx groups--people considered "minorities" by liberals and the left--while excluding Asian Americans, who, despite being non-White, have achieved upward social mobility because they prize education and aspire to excellence. Xu shares anecdotes of Asian immigrants and Asian Americans who, despite stellar academic performance, especially in math and science, were rejected by elite colleges--as he was, by Princeton; he took a scholarship at Davidson--or even less prestigious schools, in favor of Black or Latinx students who were not as well prepared but were recruited for the "cosmetic additions they make to the university aesthetic." Even in the tech world, Xu has found, Asians are not considered "diverse" but instead are exploited and underpaid relative to Whites and kept out of leadership roles. Mandates for diversity and inclusion, he argues, are "anti-meritocratic" and undermine "the very principle of objective meritocracy on which this country became a global powerhouse of excellence." Writing as a warning "about what happens when elite discrimination is legitimized and abetted by the world's most powerful institutions," Xu contributes to the ongoing debate about inequality, injustice, and racism that informs recent books such as Daniel Markovits' The Meritocracy Trap and Michael Sandel's The Tyranny of Merit. An ardent defense of meritocracy. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.