That is true its more about economic status now. We have made some considerable progress in opening up the middle class to immigrants.
To paraphrase MLK "judged not on the colour of their skin but on the size of their parents' bank accounts".
So many doors magically open to you when your parents have money.
That's part of what makes "Asian schools" interesting. Many Asian American students at high-performing US public schools come from solidly middle and working-class backgrounds. Their parents simply chose to invest every cent in their child's education, sometimes at great personal financial risk. Anecdotally, I know one Korean American couple of extremely modest means who took out a second mortage just to get their oldest through undergrad.
To a significant extent, Asian American parents and students have shown that merit-based admissions _do_ work as a socioeconomic equalizer (see above Atlantic article). The problem as I see it is how to replicate this success among other demographics, including white Americans of middle and working-class backgrounds. Another part of the solution in my view is just making more magnet schools.
It’s not about economic status. At TJ, where I went, the Asian majority is comfortably middle class, but less so than the white kids there. Stuyvesant, despite being 75% Asian, is 50% low income, and eligible for Title I funding a result: https://nypost.com/2014/07/19/why-nycs-push-to-change-school...
To paraphrase MLK "judged not on the colour of their skin but on the size of their parents' bank accounts". So many doors magically open to you when your parents have money.