Dumb question but how and where do college applications ask students to identify their race? Can anyone link to a PDF application form that shows this question?
That’s the whole issue with white privilege: I can’t help how others perceive me. All I can do is call people on racism when I see it, not discriminate against anyone myself, and when I have a platform to talk about people (history, culture, whatever), not omit the non-white folks. If enough of us do this for long enough, I hope we’ll end the stupidity.
To answer my own question, I found some university sites provided the PDF version of the Common Application. Racial information is requested under “demographics” and it’s optional. I very much doubt that any college is going to challenge anyone’s self-identification of their race.
It’s on the application, it’s OPTIONAL. (This is for U.S. colleges)
Here’s a link to a page that shows how it appears on the Common App.
Before my school went to the Common App, our in-house application question presented more nuanced options, but then it was always a challenge in reporting, because our categories didn’t match up with what the Department of Education was asking for. It ended up being a mess every year, and then we gave up and went with the broader categories for a few years, and then we switched to the Common App so it wasn’t our problem anymore.
I’m trying to remember how long the question about being Hispanic/Latino has been broken out as a separate question, maybe six years or so?
As delphica’s cite points out, the colleges ask because they are required to do so by federal law.
That was the whole point of my stupid story. It was optional to apply to UCLA, but it was mandatory to register for classes.
Just out of professional curiosity, ballpark when was this?
Is it still mandatory there for class registration?
mid-1990s. It was telephone registration in those days, and I had to press a key to indicate my race before I could move on in the menu. (Frustration was my main motivation for choosing “black,” and I didn’t realize at the time how much of an effect it would have, or how hard it would be to change.)
I remember those days! Registration of the future! OMG, telephone registration was the worst. It was worse than punch cards, which is what we registered with when I was a student.
I am guessing it was a data issue, not a policy issue (as in, they either didn’t think it through, or didn’t have the technology option, to make it an active opt-out), but obviously I don’t know for sure. I remember the phone registration package we used at work at about that time – there were a limited number of options available for each branching point. It’s also possible they were trying to capture that data for a specific reason unrelated to registration, but piggy-backed on registration to collect it.
I have no doubt that that’s correct. Just not thoroughly thought out.
Bumping this thread rather than starting a new one…
One recent survey has shown that up to one-third of white college applicants lie about their race and claim to be of minority-racial heritage, mostly done for the sake of boosting their chance of admission.
I would like to know a LOT more about the methodology of this survey, especially how they recruited participants. I’d be very, very surprised if it reflected a representative sample of white college students. (The majority of students, nationwide, do not attend colleges that have competitive admissions.)
Good on them. If the system is race-neutral (as it should be) then it’ll make no difference. If it weights the application in favour of certain ethnicities then it is a racist system and should be resisted and undermined as much as possible.
Never Mind.
The premise of the OP represents one of the major problems in trying to classify race in the way that it is commonly done in the US. A Caucasian person who was born in South Africa (lots of Dutch and English influence there!), but later moves to the US, can legitimately call himself “African-American.”
.
An example of this is Teresa Heinz Kerry, who was born in Mozambique.
I did not know she was foreign-born, let alone in a place that, for want of a better word, exotic.
I actually came here to tell the story, which was not an urban legend, about a high school that decided to have an “African American Student of the Year” and a recent enrollee who was blond, blue-eyed, and recently emigrated from an African country due to political turmoil tossed his hat into the ring. The school decided to cancel the whole thing.
Someone not from the U.S., and never had it explained to him, would not be expected to comprehend that “African-American” has nothing to do with Africa or being African.
Actually, he knew EXACTLY what he was doing.
Actually, other than native Americans, you self identify.
Anyone can claim any race they want unless they claim to be a member of a tribe.
There are no tests. Race is a social construct, no DNA is exclusive.
You want to claim you are black, their are no legal issues,but you are open to ridicule if not at least part in birth.