@twoinanddone Thank You! This is what I was trying to say. Universities are looking for cultural and racial diversity and if you have never lived as a person with that cultural heritage or racial identity, you don’t really meet their diversity needs. You are just gaming the system. I am proud of my NA heritage and that my ancestors survived the trail of tears, but I would never claim to be NA for the purposes of getting an advantage over some other person.
@twoinanddone Native American’s are a special case. I cannot speak for all universities, but the ones I’ve worked for require Tribal Registration Numbers. Native Americans who are accepted as members of tribes are issued these and they are registered with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Federal Government establishes the criteria for being classified as Native American. I think it is 1/64th. This is dictated by treaty law.
@Zekesima The Federal Government does not have a racial category for Jewish, so it isn’t germane to this discussion.
@quietdesperation LOL at your daughter’s first reaction to the picture! But, I still don’t see why you and others conclude that it would be wrong to ID differently after such a revelation. Prediction: at some point, the Supreme Court is going to have to address these new DNA tests as they relate to Affirmative Action admissions cases, and it just might be the death knell that brings the whole thing crashing down.
@exlibris97 It is germane in that we are discussing the ethics of embracing a newly discovered dimension to one’s ethnic identity. By the way, I know a blond, blue eyed man who claimed NA on his college apps (he has papers). Proud Cherokees come in all shades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sC7WAWHorQ Why should it matter if they knew from birth or found out through a DNA test?
“This is what I was trying to say. Universities are looking for cultural and racial diversity and if you have never lived as a person with that cultural heritage or racial identity, you don’t really meet their diversity needs. You are just gaming the system.” What exactly does that mean though? My mother was an immigrant, I’m pretty darn American by comparison. She was proud to be an American when she gained citizenship, yet she still spoke Spanish as a primary language, made her own tortillas… I do not. I speak Spanish when I need it, I buy my tortillas premade at the store. This doesn’t make me or my kids “not” Hispanic. I think it’s a slippery slope trying to quantify one’s adherence to their culture as a means for declaring ethnicity. We are honest on forms. When is says are you Caucasian (not of Hispanic decent) we don’t mark that, when it asks if we have Hispanic decent we mark yes. Honestly I don’t think it’s much of an advantage anyway.
Yes, I think it may come down to a court case if people try to game the system. I guess it’s because I believe in “white privilege” and if you have benefited from those privileges it’s wrong to take some test and then claim the benefits of that ancestry for college admissions. By all means celebrate your ancestry if you discover it, but don’t use it to abuse the system. Just my opinion.
@Zekesima An individual’s appearance has nothing to do with their ethnicity. For a student to be classified as Native America under Federal guidelines for purposes of admissions and financial aid, they must possess a Tribal Registration Number. If they do, they are NA no matter if they have blond or black hair.
So would it be dishonest for my kids check the African American box? They are 3/8 black and, as I said, 3 of them might be able to pass as white, so they also have experienced “white privilege”.
@socalmom007 You have known and experienced your cultural heritage your whole life even if you don’t make your own tortillas! I think that is quite different then saying hmm I going to take a DNA test to see if I can check a box.
And they aren’t NA if they have no DNA, even if they have high cheekbones.
“However, they did an Ancestry.com test that revealed some percentage of African American in one of the parent’s blood. They were positively giddy about this.”
What was the percentage? You can get a coincidental hit on say one Africa-associated DNA SNP just by random chance. I’m an example myself. I had 23&Me done, and it said I was 99.9% British and generic northern European and 0.1% Middle Easter/North African. So 100% of my known ancestry traces back to England for as far as the paper records go, but playing by these new lab-based “rules” I guess I could claim AA status based on 0.1% North African. But l suspect that I don’t have any actual African ancestors this side of the Stone Age. It’s more likely just a random hit on an African-associated SNP.
So if these people are claiming AA status based on some very low percentage of DNA, then I call Bogus on that claim. I’m reminded of the kids we sometime see posting on CC who want to claim AA minority status based on a having a white South African ancestor. Well, I guess if some people want to claim what is essentially a lie, or at least a deception, based on a technicality, who’s going to stop them?
However, on this flip side of the whole racial make-up question, my own kids had some experiences back when they applied. My spouse is 1/2 Japanese and 1/2 white. She has Asian coloring but does not look particularly Asian in her facial features. She often gets mistaken for Hispanic. So our daughters are 1/4 Japanese, but they look completely white. Both have very white skin and light brown hair, and one of them even has blue eyes. Now the local Japanese American club or society offers modest college scholarships to local graduating seniors who are of Japanese ancestry. The eligibility rules state that the student must of at least 1/4 Japanese ancestry - which is exactly what my girls are. So D1 applied and was awarded one of the scholarships. Fine. But when we went to the awards banquet I couldn’t help but feel like total impostors even though we were completely legit under the society’s own rules. They were calling up scholarship recipients with names like Tiffany Takahashi and Benjamin Morimoto (not the real names) - followed by my daughter’s totally Anglo name. So even though they were fully qualified under the rules I still found it embarrassing. So when D2 came up a few years later we did not have her apply. I couldn’t face a repeat of that feeling of being an impostor, even when we weren’t.
So I wonder whether these “African Americans” based on a lab test will feel at least a little bit embarrassed when the AA club at the college comes around to recruit the kid to join the club.
@exlibris97 Well, appearance was part if the reason for the OP’s indignation over her acquaintance’s box-checking.
@socalmom007 Following recent Supreme Court guidance, universities now usually adopt a much broader definition of “diversity”. The Supreme Court has strongly encouraged universities to take socioeconomic factors into consideration. In my experience in admissions, a white student from a deprived background was treated the same as a URM or disadvantaged minority.
When evaluating candidates, a student that stands out in some way stands a far better chance of being admitted. GPAs and test scores rarely are distinguishing since literally thousands of students each year have near perfect SAT scores. What does stand out is the student who has overcome diversity; has unusual talents of some sort; or who has had an unusual background. True brilliance will also stand out; few Intel or Gates Millennium Scholars are not admitted.
There is also a large element of chance involved. At all the highly competitive universities, applications are read by 2 or 3 readers. If you are student who has lived abroad and one of your readers was in Peace Corps, they will subconsciously relate to you more. Similarly a musician whose folder happens to be read by someone who played in band or orchestra. Universities try to compensate for this, but admissions counsellors are human and all bias cannot be eliminated.
Then my assumption that is doesn’t make for much of an advantage is likely correct. My upper middle class kids truthfully calling themselves Hispanic probably had no quantifiable impact on their admissions decisions.
I’m sorry. What is African American blood? Since African Americans are a mix of various ancestries, the test may come back with our African roots as well as whatever European was mixed into us either forcibly or voluntarily later, but there is no place that African American blood comes from. When we test our blood it will tell us where on the continent our ancestors were taken and then what bloodlines have been mixed in over the years.
I don’t think schools are going to go around blood testing students. You can self identify as anything you want and some of us look whiter than Scandinavians. This is why stories like these are suspect. Plus, why are they even sharing this info with other folk anyway?
@Tperry1982 raises an important point. All of these ancestry tests work by comparing your DNA with that of other people from various regions of the world.(For example, people from the Iberian peninsula have this or that sequence.) There is no DNA test for “race.”
@Zekesima @socalmom007 I wouldn’t say it was disingenuous of any of your kids to check a box indicating Hispanic or African American heritage, because they have known about their heritage. 1/4 & 3/8 is a pretty significant amount - regardless of appearance. I look more NA than some people who have a much higher percentage than me. I think it’s only wrong to take a DNA test to discover some small percentage and then suddenly decide to use that for an advantage like the OP said that the family was doing in the first post.
Why do I automatically find myself questioning a lot of these anecdotal stories about how someone knows that someone else is gaming the system?
Experience, I guess. It reminds me about how message boards are always full of anonymous people claiming to regularly see welfare mothers at the supermarket using food stamps to buy filet mignon and champagne and load them into their brand new cadillacs, etc.
(this comment is not directed at the original poster in this thread, who I have no doubt is telling the truth. But a lot of the other me-too stories sound like oft-repeated urban myths)
The use of DNA testing for this purpose is problematic, in my opinion. The percentages of DNA from different countries and/or regions can differ among siblings of the same parents.