For most Asian Americans, diversity is a core value – even if a loud minority contests it

Berkeley students protest in favor of affirmative action in 1997. Photograph: David Butow/Corbis/Getty Images

During last October’s oral arguments in the supreme court’s affirmative action cases, Justice John Roberts interrupted Harvard’s lawyer, Seth Waxman, to ask: “Isn’t that what the case is about, the discrimination against Asian Americans?”

In a word, no.