Alan Zhong, Contributing Photograher
On Saturday, Yale students and New Haven residents gathered to discuss author OiYan Poon’s newest book, “Asian American Is Not a Color.”
Around 30 members of the New Haven community gathered at Possible Futures, which is a reading room and bookstore in New Haven’s Edgewood neighborhood. Over the course of two hours, Poon discussed affirmative action and Asian American identity in a book talk co-sponsored by the Asian American Cultural Center.
“College admissions don’t have to be a zero-sum game. From the way that Dr. Poon was saying, certain bad-faith actors will manipulate emotions in order to pit, in this case, Asian Americans against other racialized minorities,” Peter Tran ’25 told the News. “The message of swimming against the current together will go further in righting historical wrongs and increasing educational outcomes.”
Poon is a race and education scholar, co-director of the College Admissions Futures Co-Laborative — which seeks to “identify ways in which institutions and college admissions can be designed to advance equity” — and author of “Asian American Is Not a Color: Conversations on Race, Affirmative Action, and Family.” She currently acts as Senior Research Fellow for Education Equity at the NAACP LDF Thurgood Marshall Institute, and consultant to the State of Illinois.
At Possible Futures, Poon discussed her book alongside Lauren Anderson, owner of the bookstore, and Jenny Heikkila Diaz, a friend of Anderson and a fellow education and race scholar. At the panel, Poon described her inspirations for “Asian American Is Not a Color,” sharing her thoughts on what it means to be Asian American and what that identity entails for recent developments in affirmative action.
“Asian American Is Not a Color” is structured around a series of questions and conversations that Poon had with her 9-year-old daughter. Poon began the event by talking about the questions her daughter asked that inspired her to write the book: “Are we black? Are we white? What are we?” Her book’s answer: “Asian American is not a color, but it is an identity that centers on community care and uplift across an array of diasporic communities.”
Poon then shifted over to a more specific discussion of college admissions and affirmative action, centering on its 2023 Supreme Court ban and the wave of recent statistics for the class of 2028 released by various universities. She described the culture of college admissions as a place where increasing levels of competition, elitism and selectivity cultivate a cutthroat atmosphere where applicants see each other as enemies, rather than peers.
When asked about the role of misinformation in public perception of affirmative action, Poon mentioned how in her experience, most of the population — even affirmative action activists — commonly misdefined the practice.
“The difference of people, even though they share the same misinformation, was that the policy opponents felt that the problem was not systemic,” Poon said. “On the side of the policy supporters, they defined the problem as systemic.”
Poon also spoke further about her own college search process, and the role that her personal identity plays in her study of race. Growing up in a racially hostile environment, she was motivated to attend an elite institution as a way to prove her worth and decided to pursue race and education studies due to her own experience with racial identity.
Joliana Yee, director of the AACC and assistant dean of Yale College, told the News that the center had previously hosted Poon at Yale in 2019 about her work on affirmative action. Yee shared that the event was made possible when the owner of Possible Futures, Laura Anderson, reached out to her over the summer about co-sponsoring the event.
“I immediately jumped on the opportunity to support an amazing local New Haven bookstore and the opportunity to generate conversation about the Asian American identity between a respected scholar and students as well as New Haveners,” Yee wrote to the News.
Kerri Kelshall-Ward, a local New Haven resident and mother of a Yale student, was drawn to the event because of her personal experience with the college admissions process as an advisor to the College Bound BIPOC Students Alliance, an organization founded by two of her sons, which aims to provide free college resources and programs for middle and high school students identifying with the Black, Indigenous and People of Color community.
“By coming to this event, I had a better understanding of people’s position on how the college admissions process can be very intimidating and overwhelming,” she said. “If we work together to understand the process … we can make sure everyone has an equal opportunity to have access to a higher education that’s affordable.”
Possible Futures is located at 318 Edgewood Ave.