“Too Asian?” Racism, Privilege and Post-Secondary Education, (2012) R. J. Gilmour, Davina Bhandar, Jeet Heer, and Michael C. K. Ma, editors

This book, an anthology of essays by university faculty, graduate students, cultural critics, and human rights activists, examines issues of race and exclusion in Canadian postsecondary education.It responds to the highly controversial and inflammatory "Too Asian?" article published in Maclean's magazine in November 2010.The article begins with interviews with two white female students from an elite Toronto private secondary school about their university application choices.The interviewees disclose preferences for selecting universities with fewer Asian students based on their assumptions that these universities may be more socially rewarding and less academically competitive.The Maclean's article constructs a profile of Asian students as socially rigid, unassimilated, obsessed with academic performance, and under intense parental pressure.The composite emerges in comparison with their Canadian counterparts, assumed to be white, non-immigrant, middle-class, upwardly socially mobile and fun-loving.While the article acknowledges Asian students' experiences of discrimination, it reinforces predominantly the problematic stereotypes of socially disengaged Asian students who perform well in academics despite perceived poor English skills.According to the article, Asian students socialize only with other Asians.By raising the question about whether or not Canadian university campuses have become too Asian, Maclean's posits that the once admirable Canadian meritocratic approach to admissions, intended to be fair and neutral, may be allowing for an unintended racialization of the university campus.Furthermore, Maclean's suggests that the Canadian university may be suffering a deterioration of a culturally, socially, and academically rich campus life that has long been held in the Canadian imagination and portrayed in university admission brochures.I begin this book review with a synopsis of the controversial Maclean's article to provide a context for the multiple perspectives that contributors bring to this anthology.Using the Maclean's article as a catalyst for scholarly and provocative discussion, the book calls into question common assumptions made about Canadian postsecondary education as merit-based and race-neutral (often held in stark contrast to postsecondary education in the United States and deemed to be rife with racial politics).The book begins with a foreword by Winnie Ng and an introduction by Jeet Heer, followed by 11 chapters, organized in three main sections.The first section explores the mythology of meritocracy surrounding Canadian postsecondary education.It starts with Henry Yu's essay on the inherently exclusionary and hegemonic values embedded within merit-based selections which, as he creatively argues, all too often privilege attributes 698

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