“When people ask if you’ve failed on a test, you know they’re asking if you’ve gotten a B (Asian fail) or a D (white fail),” says Yoona Lee, 17. 

According to the Lynbrook High School senior, there is a double standard that is unfair to all ethnicities.  75 percent of her suburban San Jose high school is Asian, 21 percent is white and 4 percent is other. "Over the past 10 years, the proportion of white students at Lynbrook has fallen by nearly half, to 25% of the student body," The Wall Street Journal wrote in 2005.

“For the Asian students, this double standard is another pressure factor on top of all the other expectations their parents and relatives have for them.  For white and other minority students, the double standard makes them feel inferior, or at best confused about their identity,” Lee writes in an op-ed for the Mosaic.

“As an Asian student, I know this side best.  When the question of failure concerns school life, it is assumed they’re asking whether you’ve taken four AP classes or none, or if you’ve held any leadership positions at school or if your GPA is above a 3.5.”

Lee points out the stereotypes of an Asian student “being a genius in areas of math and science after going to an Ivy League college while majoring in electrical engineering.”

This pressure to develop the left side of the brain dwarfs the Asian student’s self-esteem.  “I have a friend who was accepted into an Ivy League college planning to major in mass communications.  She was not given as much credit as another student going to the same school and planning to major in electrical engineering and computer science,” Lee writes.

And what about the ‘white’ students?  “The double standard discourages achievement.  Even if a white student is a brilliant mathematician, he is inclined to take the easier and less challenging math class, rather than the AP course with all the Asian students. But when a white student is considered less athletic than expectations demand, the student is considered different, an outcast of the group.”

According to blogger Dr. Steve Parker of WebMD, “Differences in others are inherently threatening, mandating excommunication from the tribe of peers, to be avoided at all costs, lest you too be perceived as weird and banished. It is such peer culture (not peer pressure) that rules the world.”

What’s worst, hanging out after school conflicts with extracurriculars and SAT prep on weekends.  This lack of socialization encourages racial clustering and further alienates minorities.

“Because these expectations are so intricately interwoven in our daily lives, it’ll take some un-brainwashing,” Lee says.

“That’s where we should all start.”

*Editor's Note:  Yoona Lee's op-ed, "'Asian Fail' Idea Fails All Students," appears in the July 3, 2008 edition of the Mosaic newspaper. Mosaic is an annual program sponsored by the San Jose Mercury News, San Jose chapter of the California Chicano News Media Association, the Castellano Family Foundation, Dow Jones Newspaper Fund, San Jose State University and other Bay Area media outlets and foundations. A 1994 graduate of the Mosaic (San Jose Urban Journalism Workshop), I have been a member of the faculty for the last six years.