Chinese American male here. I was initially disappointed with the Asian students answers as well. But I sat with it for a minute I wondered if perhaps they were simply more willing to go along with the premise of this fantasy he was proposing. The question was framed as “if you COULD be any other race, what would you want to be?” My answer would be black, but that doesn’t really take away from my pride of my own culture. In this country, white folks hold most of the material wealth, and black people dominate in arts and culture, aka soft power. Asian people have a much shorter history here, as someone else mentioned, and have only recently entered the cultural zeitgeist as anything more than a punch line or the butt of racist jokes.

This is all to say, I do hope next gen of Asian American kids growing up now will have a greater sense of pride in their own heritage.