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Notes -
It is only incredibly child-sacrificial if one believes that your child will be terribly disadvantaged in life if he or she does not get into a specific university, which is quite unlikely given how many elite universities exist in the US.
Anyhow, the broader point is that people often sacrifice raw self-interest in the name of principle, and if all we are trying to explain is a slight tendency of Asian Americans to be somewhat more supportive of affirmative action than whites (or, really, to be some less opposed), I don’t see what the mystery is. Asian Americans tend to be more liberal than whites, after all, so why be flummoxed when they are more supportive of practices which accord with liberal principles?
Perhaps, but very, very few Asian American kids actually attend those universities, because they are so small. And most Asian American parents are not tiger parent stereotypes, nor do they have unrealistic expectations. I taught high school for years at a majority Asian American high school and had many conversations with students on the topic. Those parents were generally perfectly happy with kids going to UC Davis.
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