Asian-Americans in New York City feel overlooked by Mayor Bill de Blasio's office, especially after his proposal to change how the city's most elite public high schools admit students, The New York Times reports.
De Blasio called last month for the elite eight New York City schools lessen their reliance on a single admittance test and focus more on class rank and state test scores. He made the announcement while surrounded by students, elected officials and union leaders, but Asian-Americans were notably underrepresented.
"This cliché of, 'If you're not at the table, you're on the menu' really felt like it rang true," Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., told the Times. Meng, a graduate of the elite Stuyvesant High School, was not invited to the event. "I don't think with any other community if there was such a large impact or sweeping change, they would not have been consulted or brought into the discussions."
The Times notes that Americans of Asian-descent, including East and South Asians, account for nearly 15 percent of New York City's population, and the number of registered voters of Chinese or Korean descent has doubled since 2000.
"It's not just one thing, and it's not just one time," Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, a Democrat representing Chinatown and Lower Manhattan, told the newspaper. "It shows a huge blind spot for Asian-American communities as a whole."
Asian-American New Yorkers can point to a number of issues where de Blasio has overlooked them: the city's handling of Peter Liang, the Chinese-American police officer convicted of manslaughter, cracking down on electric bicycles that are frequently used by immigrant delivery workers, and not designating the Lunar New Year a school holiday until the state legislature nearly beat him too it.
"We had been pressing him for so long, then all of a sudden he changed his mind, because the state wanted to do something," City Councilman Peter Koo, who represents parts of Queens, told the Times.
"We've been advocating to get these bikes legalized, and suddenly the mayor decided to say, 'Oh, we're going to crack down even more?'" said City Councilwoman Margaret Chin of Lower Manhattan. "Hey, did you talk to us?"
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