The lawsuit against Harvard and their alleged, prejudiced submission policies is casting a spotlight on many prestigious college practices, namely affirmative action: an admissions process that seeks to favor the minority groups who suffered from discrimination and an unequal playing field during their previous years of education.

It sounds simple—favor the low-income students of color as a means of offering an opportunity and diversity on campus. What appears to be a good and necessary process resulted in a raging fight against Harvard’s admission policies.

The poster boy of this fight? Asian-American students.

In 2014, a federal lawsuit was filed by an anti-affirmative action group, Students For Fair Admissions, who claimed that Harvard University employed certain admission policies that were racially discriminative. SFFA argued that Harvard’s use of these “racial” and “ethical” policies for means of “racial balancing” resulted in foul play for many Asian applicants, and cites the relatively constant acceptance rate of Asian students as evidence.

Yet, the forefront of the group arguing and fighting for Asian students is not an Asian representative, but rather a white, conservative male with his own agenda—Edward Blum.

Many Asian-American students recognize that affirmative action is a necessary policy to remedy the long-lasting inequality made by systematic oppression. Blum speaks to a very narrow audience: he tells Asian-American students that this fight is for them, that this fight is between Asians and college admissions, and that any other way penalizes Asian-American students yet again.

So what is the truth?

The truth is that this is not Blum’s first run in with admission policies. The truth is that Blum did not fight for Asian-American students in his previous cases at all; in fact, he was the representative for Abigail Fisher, a white student who felt as though her application to the University of Texas was denied because of her race. Fisher lost the case, but even within her case to the Supreme Court was something compelling and strange: Justice Alito never once focused on Fisher’s white identity, but referenced countless times UT’s “racist” admission policies against Asians, who were not involved in the Fisher case at all.

It is not surprising that Blum turns his attention towards Asian-American students once the Fisher case failed in the Supreme Court. Blum, as well as many conservative politicians, has centered around Asians in their minority-victim narrative. We have been made a minority mascot in a conservative agenda. We have been cast as the victim in a process that allegedly only lifted up Hispanic and African-American students, but that could not be further from the truth.

The SFFA cites the Espenshade data that shows Asians are at a disheartening disadvantage compared to Hispanic and black applicants for admissions; however, that data had been collected prior to the Court’s establishment of race being a “factor of a factor of a factor” and determined only for diversification. The uncomfortable truth is that 81% of Asian-American students have access to standardized testing material, whereas only 57% black community has access. This is where affirmative action comes into play, to remedy the inequality that a black student has a lower chance of access to prep material in comparison to other groups. Of course, this creates pressure on Asian-American students who do not fare as well to their Asians; however, this stems less from the issue with affirmative action and more so on the ongoing, toxic narrative of the “model minority.”

As Asian-Americans, our fight is not with affirmative action. Our fight is with the “model minority” narrative written by others. The uncomfortable truth is that affirmative action does not hurt us as the conservative agenda wants us to think. The uncomfortable truth is that the “model minority” narrative written by the same people is what hurts us. We are not the minority mascot.

The issue is complex and extends decades back—but as complex as it is, it should not be widening the already existing gap between Asians and other minority groups. There is toxicity veiling the idea of the Asian “model minority,” and this case only further contributes to that toxicity.

Affirmative action is not a necessary evil. It is not an evil at all.