Fair enough. What about a white person who faced hardship?
One more hijack. A friend of mine in High School found that he was eligible for all sorts of scholorships based on his Spanish surname, Ginoza. Actually, he was 100% Japanese-American.
Haj
Sorry, I actually meant to answer the OP along with my hijacks…
You probably could lie and you probably could get away with it but it’s not worth it. Things are way too easy to look up these days and it will only get easier. Imagine twenty or thirty years in the future when you are applying for a job or running for office and this sort of shit shows up on a background check.
Haj
I think the thread is referring to race and ethnicity, not nationality.
They bring another kind of diversity, one that many campuses value and will count as a plus factor. This is why I object to assuming that affirmative action is only about helping the downtrodden. I see socioeconomic and educational disadvantages as a different issue, one that, as you point out, if not confined to certain races or ethnic groups.
By the same token, I can claim to be a Native American, since I was born in the United States. :dubious:
I was born in Washington DC. Both my parents were born in the US. My wife was born in China, but our children were born here in the US. Should I or shouldn’t I check the Asian/Pacific Islander box for my kids when school rolls around?
According to the Washington Post several months ago, some colleges/unis today do occasionally commission data miners to dig for background information on applicants. This might mean looking for DUIs (or other criminal convictions), but I’ve got to believe there’s a temptation to spot-validate claims of race.
If American politics teaches us anything, if you’re going to lie, you should be consistent. IOW, start claiming you’re black, Asian, whatever in nursery school on up through the nursing home. Data mining is too powerful these days for amateurs.
Point Two: If the media in 20 years uncovers your “discrepancy,” merely claim it as an act of civil disobedience. By then, the Supreme Court will almost certainly have overturned affirmative action, making your action seem all the more progressive. 
If a U.S. government agency nails you, go on the offensive and sell them on your ability to maintain a double identity.
So do you write in the margin of the application that you are Laotian? My application did not have anything about race on it. 
You kids probably have a better chance of getting into school if they mark that they are good old fashioned white people. Depends on the racial makeup of the school. Its a very strategic decision. I am white and I am Asian depending on how much it helps and what mood I am in.
Just chiming in to appreciate CrankyAsAnOldMan’s intelligent contribution to this thread. I have worked as a graduate student volunteer for admissions a highly selective college, and currently serve as a student rep in graduate admissions at the same institution.
A college attempts to create a class of diverse, engaging, bright, and intelligent students every year. It’s pretty short-sighted to single out race as the turnkey factor, when in fact, as CrankyAsAnOldMan points out, in a particular entering class, a poor White student who works part time and plays violin might be more attractive than a middle class Latino student who doesn’t do much outside of the classroom.
A great book that delves into the admissions process is Jacques Steinberg’s The Gatekeepers, which follows the admissions staff at Wesleyan and several students who applied to the school. There’s an interesting case of an Asian American woman who is not particularly interesting to the Wesleyan admissions staff. She never mentions the fact that she writes letters to prisoners on death row, which actually strikes the admissions officer as being very interesting and the sort of activity that would make her an attractive addition to the freshman class. Sometimes the factors that make students most interesting are simply not addressed in their applications.
Of course, only a small percentage of schools have such a complete admissions process. Most state schools obviously cannot devote the resources to review student portfolios the way Wesleyan and my institution can. The good news is that only a very small percentage of American colleges and universities are highly competitive - there’s a match for virtually every student who wants to attend college. The trick, of course, is to make sure the students and colleges know of each other.
I worked at a Magnolia League institution in the South years ago, and the freshman class was invariably largely composed of students who applied to the school as a “safety” hoping to get into an Ivy League school or the like. Lots of grumbling about being at the school as frosh - but lo and behold, as juniors and seniors, they had gained a great deal of school pride, and could never imagine themselves at any other school.
Bottom line, lying about any aspect of one’s application is a bad idea. Furthermore, if you state that you are Black, but there isn’t any discussion of how living as a person of color has impacted your life (activities, what you write about, interests, etc.) you would trip a trained admission officer’s B.S. detector. (This is particularly true of those who claim Native American heritage.) Not to say you wouldn’t get caught, but you could count on contact from student organizations and support services on campus… and it would likely become evident that something was awry.
Last, I would suggest, as others have noted in this thread, most colleges are not as interested in “race” as they are in ethnicity. That is, not simply skin color, but lived experiences from a certain cultural milieu… your ethnic identity will stand out in a portfolio, where as simply checking a box - and nothing else - won’t necessarily amount to much.
Lying might end up biting someone in the ass. A number of schools interview prospective students. Sure, an interviewer probably will not ask you to draw your family tree or recite your genealogy, but it might make for an awkward situation regardless. Especially if the interviewer belongs to the minority group you’ve lied about being.
I also imagine it might cause a sticky situation later down the line if one were to choose public service as a career. And to cover your bases, you will have to lie on job applications, graduate/professional school applications, and maybe even scholarship stuff. That’s a lot of lying.
Well, as I’ve said, who are they to call me a liar? This is not like “Hair color” on the DMV application where there’s a reasonable definition of what “color” and “hair” are. (And probably hair color is defined legally in the law). Race is not defined anywhere, and if it is, the definition is probably pretty arbitrary. They can’t go by skin color, and going by heritage just complicates the problem(You have to determine race of ancestors, which is even harder). You can go by national origin (or national origin of ancestors), but that would also leave a lot of people out. So the only reasonable definition IS self reporting. That means that if I declare myself as X for the purpose of the college application, I AM X for the purpose of college application - i.e. I am not lying. If the college admission officer places him or herself in a particular minority, great for them. That does not, however, give them the right to not let me identify with that minority. If anything that gives them the right to challenge my understanding of my “ethnic” background or heritage, but not determine my membership.
I originally come from a country that is mostly in Asia by landmass. I come from the european part (Never been to asia). One of my grandfathers was greek, another semitic. If you go back far enough I’m sure I have african ancestors. I am everything, asian, caucasian, greek, american, russian, semitic, african, etc. The only thing I am not is Jewish, since to be Jewish one has to be able to prove lineage through their mother, and I cannot do that. Being Jewish has guidelines as prescribed in the religious law, everything else is pretty arbitrary and vague.
I don’t have an application handy here, but don’t most applications ask for “race/ethnicity” rather than just “race?”
What I find interesting here is why she didn’t put it in her application. It could be that it’s not part of her culture to bring up something that was not specifically asked.
This may be, but I think that they might not understand that some cultures don’t grasp that this is the message which they should be sending. It’s often that the individual has absolutely no role model, and possibly very poor guidance, with regards to how to work the admissions system. I know this was a huge problem for me. My older brother and I were the first two in our direct family line to graduate from college, and only one other person in our line had even attended college. To the best of my knowledge none of my uncles, aunts, grandparents, etc, ever acquired a post-secondary education. My father went to community college then transferred to Cal, but this was not the normal graduate high school and apply to multiple universities process. I had no one to emulate and my guidance counselor was barely able to fog a mirror. Now maybe, I am not certain of this, if I had been named Diego and had darker skin and hair someone might have said, “hey, he needs help to get into a top university”. But there’s a lot of stuff that never got onto my college admissions that would have probably helped tremendously. I certainly hope that it’s improved for folks out there in a similar situation.
You do not need to assign an identifier to every member of the population in order to get the % of a particular group. If you have 25 people, and under “ethnic origin” 10 put down “White-Anglo-Caucasian”, 3 “African American”, 3 “Hispanic”, one “Asian/Pacific Islander”, one “Native American” and 7 wrote “Yes”, you can still report you have 12% Hispanics and 4% Native American in the class. We may have MORE, but we DO have that many. We do not need to assume that because only 32% marked a "minority"group, then the other 68% MUST be WACs.
But how would they even know until the students showed up for orientation? Unless the school requires personal photos with applications or has mandatory interviews.
And even then, it’s not like ethnicity or race are necessarily visible traits. Again it’s not like hair color, you can’t look at a person and say they’re black(african-american, whatever). In 99% of cases you can, but you can’t just discount the other 1%
It seems to me that newer applications do define the race/ethnicity labels they employ, usually in parentheses next to the box. I know the US census has specific definitions for racial categories, as do some job applications.
Why can’t an institution can go by what’s reported on an applicant’s birth certificate or other identifying document? You do have a legal record of your race, you know. What would stop an institution from requesting this info?
Right. But it also doesn’t mean that the college has to give you special consideration because you’re a minority. Simply saying that you’re black (or whatever) does not mean they have to believe you. Just like if I put on my application that I’m a white male and then I show up to the interview with a brown skin and vagina. They have the right to reject my application if they feel I’m being dishonest (or plain nuts). And they don’t even have to tell me that that’s why I’m being rejected.
Actually, in some parts of the US, “blackness” is defined in the law. And I would argue that race within a given context is not arbitrary, but rather is consistently determined by identifiable (albeit strange) rules. In the US, we rarely confuse black people for whites or other groups, and if a person says they’re black–we usually get a picture of what that means. We “allow” white-looking people to claim blackness, but we do not allow for the reverse (without laughing or raise our eyebrows, that is). When we get robbed, we have no problem identifying the race of the perp. And whether we’re a middle schooler choosing which table to sit at, or a person looking to “hook up” at a single’s club, we usually don’t have a problem selecting people who belong to the same racial background as we do. So, race is not arbitrary within a given social context. If it were, then systematic racism still wouldn’t be a problem.
It occurs to me that “male” and “female” probably aren’t defined in the law either, but we still somehow know who’s who. With transgendered people getting more attention as a minority group, will gender labels become as arbitrary and vague as race/ethnicity labels? Should they be seen as such now?
At least as late as 1971 there’s no race on California birth certificates. At least there’s no race on mine.
Tracking a person’s race isn’t that hard for a genealogist. For example, an every-name index exists to the 1930 U.S. census. If all four of your grandparents, or all eight of your great-grandparents, said they were “white” on the U.S. census of 1930, and you say that you are black, you have some explaining to do.
Racial classifications also appear on ship passenger lists, citizenship applications, Social Security number applications, and most states’ marriage licenses before 1967.
That’s where hispanic can become a bit tricky. Lots of people identify as both “hispanic” and “white”. Probably even more so in 1930, when there may not have been an “hispanic” designation. I would guess that any such designation was done in retrospect by review of Spanish surnames.