Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA) is a

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

-based advocacy organization. Founded in 1969, its initial goals were equality of access to employment and the creation of job opportunities for

Chinese American Chinese Americans are Americans of Han Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute a subgroup of East Asian Americans which also constitute a subgroup of Asian Americans. Many Chinese Americans along with their ancestors trace lineage from ...

s. The group broadened its mission in the subsequent decades. As of 2007, its stated mission is "to defend and promote the civil and political rights of Chinese and

Asian American Asian Americans are Americans of Asian ancestry (including naturalized Americans who are immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of such immigrants). Although this term had historically been used for all the indigenous people ...

s within the context of, and in the interest of, advancing

multiracial democracy Multiracial democracy is a democratic political system that is multiracial. It is cited as aspiration in South Africa after apartheid and as existing for the United States. See also * Cultural mosaic * Ethnopluralism * Intercultural relations * ...

in the United States".

Major campaigns

CAA represented the plaintiffs in ''

Lau v. Nichols ''Lau v. Nichols'', 414 U.S. 563 (1974), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court unanimously decided that the lack of supplemental language instruction in public school for students with limited English proficiency violated the ...

'', a 1974

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

case expanding access to bilingual education. In 1978, CAA successfully advocated that the United States Census break down the single "Asian" category on the questionnaire into multiple distinct groups, to help better understand the Asian American population. In 1999, CAA helped advocate increased outreach in undercounted communities for the 2000 Census. From 1982 onwards, CAA was involved in the national campaign on behalf of Chinese-American hate crime victim Vincent Chin. In 2000, CAA helped organize a national coalition in support of Taiwanese-American scientist

Wen Ho Lee Wen Ho Lee or Li Wenho (; born December 21, 1939) is a Taiwanese-American scientist who worked for the University of California at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. He created simulations of nuclear explosions for the purposes of ...

. In 2003, Chinese for Affirmative Action, the

Asian Pacific American Legal Center Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California (AJSOCAL) formerly known as Asian Americans Advancing Justice - LA (Advancing Justice - LA), is a non-profit legal aid and civil rights organization dedicated to advocacy, providing legal ...

, and the

Asian Law Caucus Founded in 1972, the Asian Law Caucus (ALC) is the U.S.'s first legal aid and civil rights organization serving the low-income Asian Pacific American communities. The ALC focuses housing rights, immigration and immigrant rights, labor and empl ...

jointly launched

Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality Asian may refer to: * Items from or related to the continent of Asia: ** Asian people, people in or descending from Asia ** Asian culture, the culture of the people from Asia ** Asian cuisine, food based on the style of food of the people from Asi ...

(AACRE), a

Sacramento, California ) , image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 250x200px , map_caption = Location within Sacramento C ...

-based organization doing progressive Asian American state-level political advocacy. In 2014, Chinese for Affirmative Action supported the Senate Constitutional Amendment 5, an initiative would ask voters to consider eliminating

California Proposition 209 Proposition 209 (also known as the California Civil Rights Initiative or CCRI) is a California ballot proposition which, upon approval in November 1996, amended the state constitution to prohibit state governmental institutions from considering r ...

's ban on the use of

race Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to: * Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species * Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...

sex Sex is the trait that determines whether a sexually reproducing animal or plant produces male or female gametes. Male plants and animals produce smaller mobile gametes (spermatozoa, sperm, pollen), while females produce larger ones (ova, oft ...

color Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are associ ...

ethnicity An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...

, or

national origin National origin is the nation where a person was born, or where that person's ancestors came from. It also includes the diaspora of multi-ethnic states and societies that have a shared sense of common identity identical to that of a nation while ...

in recruitment, admissions, and retention programs at

California's public universities This is a list of colleges and universities in California. Federal institutions Graduate institutions * Naval Postgraduate School (Monterey, California, Monterey) Other academic institutions * Defense Language Institute (Monterey, California, ...

and colleges. The debate over race-conscious admissions at public universities sharply divided Chinese American communities. CAA was one of the major organizations hitting back at xenophobia and racism related to the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic in the United States. There were reports of over 1000 xenophobia and racism cases against Asian Americans between January 28 and February 24, 2020, which was during the first COVID-19 cases that were reported in the United States. Within one week after the "

Stop AAPI Hate Stop AAPI Hate is a nonprofit organization that runs the Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center, which tracks incidents of hate and discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) in the United States. The organization was formed i ...

" website was launched, there were over 650 reports of discrimination that were mainly against Asian Americans.

Funding

In 2016, about half CAA's funding came from contracts, and the remainder from gifts and grants.

Controversies

Asian admission quotas

In the 1990s, CAA sided with the

San Francisco Unified School District San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), established in 1851, is the only public school district within the City and County of San Francisco, and the first in the state of California. Under the management of the San Francisco Board of Educa ...

in defending a consent decree that capped attendance at Lowell High School from any given racial group. Per the policy, Chinese-American students had to score higher to attend than other groups. CAA's stance was at odds with that of some Asian parents, who opposed the policy.

References

External links

Chinese for Affirmative Action
{{Authority control 1969 establishments in California Chinese-American organizations Civil liberties advocacy groups in the United States Non-profit organizations based in California Organizations established in 1969