#overrepresented

Your first statement is somewhat misleading and incorrect. Not all Asians are overrepresented in academia, especially if you recognize the fact that East Asians/South Asians have a very different history from a lot of Vietnamese, Cambodian (Khmer), Lao, Burmese, Hmong, Mienh, Indonesian, and just about any other Southeast Asian you can think of.

Similarly, many groups that are considered White under the census are obviously not treated as such in the US - just look at Arabs and many other Middle Eastern folks, who statistically experience violence and discrimination at a disproportionately larger rate than nearly any other ethnic minority in the US.

The idea of White Privilege is systemic and not held to a single tier or level of society. Just because you see a slightly disproportionate representation of Asians in one field does not make it a universal fact across every field, especially once you take into account average household income, educational attainment beyond a BS/BA, and percentage of people of color in high “positions of power.” Positions of power include areas like politics, tenured positions at research institutions, those in the medical/law field, folks who are the heads of their fields, and so forth. 

I also hope you realize that the number of Asians in California schools do not reflect the number of Asians in schools across the US (there are very few to none throughout most of the midwest/south). For example, at my medical school, over 80% of the incoming class identifies as “Caucasian,” which is close to 150/180 of the TOTAL students starting in the fall. There are a lot of reasons behind this, and a lot of it involves the idea of privilege and indirect exclusion of (a lot of) people, which starts way further down the chain.