Fastest-Growing Ethnic Category at Great Colleges: "Race Unknown"

Applying to College
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What is the evidence for this? It's very troubling to be in a discussion about an important public policy issue when facts are assumed rather than demonstrated.

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<p>I have no more evidence than does Stitch w/his premise that such applicants are "sending a message." If there is evidence, please present it. (Your link doesn't seem to work, btw).</p>

<p>My assumption is based on human nature and familiarity with the college applications process. There is too much at stake for most students to intentionally omit facts that might help in their admissions. If they are trying to send a message that they don't want colleges to consider information about them for which they have no control (i.e. race), then I would assume to be consistent, they must omit gender, disabilities, familial situations, sexual orientation, and geographic and economic demographics, none of which are generally under an applicants control.</p>

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<p>ahhhhh i see what you are saying.</p>

<p>If you are going to force your application to be evaluated solely on "merit" and want to send that message, omit all information outside of your control.</p>

<p>If you aren't willing to do so then you aren't committed to "meritocracy", right?</p>

<p>I'm not saying i support it either way, but i'm just trying to understand your point.</p>

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<p>Yes, Tyler09, that is my point. And while they are at it, those applicants should also omit any legacy connections, the name of their high school, and omit any mention of skills learned through lessons paid for by their parents while they were a minor. I'm sure I've left out other things, but I think you get my point.</p>

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<p>I don't recall there being the option to omit most of those things on a college application. It hardly seems fair to cite them as evidence of "inconsistency".</p>

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<p>I guess choosing 'race unknown' gets rid of AA and the 'it's harder for white/asian ppl.'
Personally, I was stuck with choosing between race unknown or asian. in the end, I checked the 'others' box and wrote that I was American born Chinese-Indonesian. My last name sounds very asian anyway. I also considered that some might think 'is this kid afraid of showing hir heritage?'</p>

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<p>I have heard from posters on CC of a great variety of ethnic backgrounds that "I didn't check any box on the form," in some cases because the applicants would feel better knowing that they got in without consideration of that issue, in other cases because their "multiracial" background doesn't fit the categories well anyway, and in quite a few cases because the students want to emphasize their common humanity with other students. I don't speculate on other people's motives for doing what they do--I certainly don't attribute unseemly motives to people I have never met. The way to find out why a growing number of students don't fill out the ethnic self-identification forms (so much so that some colleges now report 15 percent of their applicants as "race unknown") is to ask a scientifically formed sample of those students in a carefully designed survey. I'm not aware of any researcher who has done that, so I won't speculate further on this issue. </p>

<p>I also don't speculate on whether or not students self-reporting their ethnicity is something "that might help in their admissions." There is MUCH speculation, in dozens of threads on CC, that that is so, and there have been legal findings in particular cases at particular colleges that that was so in previous years, but there is also not good evidence of what impact ethnic self-identification has in the admission process TODAY at many highly desired colleges. Many colleges engage in targeted recruitment of "underrepresented minorities" as best they can, and I strongly support such efforts, and of course the federal government does require colleges to ask, even if students don't tell, about ethnic affiliation of applicants. But some colleges these days are making offers of admission to hundreds of students for whom their best information is "race unknown" and whose motives for leaving the OPTIONAL self-identification form unmarked are completely unknown. Those colleges don't seem to suffer any lack of day in, day out diversity on campus and seem to be highly desirable to students from all over the world of every which kind of ethnic background.</p>

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I don't recall there being the option to omit most of those things on a college application. It hardly seems fair to cite them as evidence of "inconsistency".

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<p>If an applicant truly wants to "send a message," they could certainly mail in their application providing only their social security number and email address (and omitting any of the afore-mentioned facts) with a letter explaining that they wish to be evaluated only on their merits and not on their circumstances. (I also forgot first-gen and bilingual if raised in such a household).</p>

<p>tokenadult, </p>

<p>Again, I admire your idealism. However, I think it is unfair of you to imply that it is "unseemly" for an applicant to not self-identify if it is done in hopes that it might help with their admissions. Perhaps when your children are old enough to begin the college application process, you will understand that applicants are expected and encouraged to take advantage of every honest opportunity to increase their admissions chances.</p>

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<p>Hi, Bay, you seem to be withdrawing your</a> earlier statement describing some possible ways of filling out an application form as derived from "A purely selfish, rather than altruistic motive." And that would be my preference, that we not assume the worst about any other applicant. Rather, let's simply lay out the facts about how college admission works--as best we can ascertain them--for our own children, and let our children decide how to fill out the forms. Applicants will have different reasons for making possibly similar, or possibly different, decisions about how to fill out their application forms. I will not make any invidious inference about why applicants fill out application forms as they decide best.</p>

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<p>There's quite a difference between checking off a provided "race unknown" box and expecting the 17 and 18 year old applicants to jump through hoops to make their statement. In any movement, there are thousands of people who passively harbor opinions for every one activist. This does not mean the former group disagrees with a policy any less. I can't speculate as to what the outcome would be if colleges made it equally easy to leave out all those other details, but I find it unfair that you would uniformly label such people as inconsistent. </p>

<p>It so happens that I know of students who chose to omit race because they wished to be evaluated solely on merit. I know of students who chose to omit gender in situations where it would likely have helped them. I know a student who was even happy to omit a legacy connection (given a situation where he could do so without explicitly circumventing the "parents' educational background" part on the form). But I can't generalize this to the entire applicant pool, and you would no doubt argue that such students must be in the minority.</p>

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<p>No, tokenadult, I still believe that most who choose not to self-report likely do so out of selfish, rather than altruistic motives. But I wholeheartedly defend their right to do so. Nothing I've written contradicts that.</p>

<p>And I wholeheartedly support an applicant's right to fill out a form any way they so choose, but it is no more accurate or righteous to assume that their reasons for doing so are "altruistic" rather than selfish.</p>

<p>I do think its wrong to imply that race is the only factor that negates what would otherwise be admissions based purely on merit. Many other factors that are considered cannot be credited to the applicant's merit. </p>

<p>And finally, I for one, am not comfortable putting higher education admissions policy in the hands of teenagers who do not hold high school diplomas. (Altho I am confident they are capable of many other impressive and worthwhile things).</p>

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[quote]

Dr. King supported affirmative action, so if you are going to use the MLK card as the "Ace of Spades", it means you support affirmative action.</p>

<p>You can't say that someone is the ace of spades and then selectively support half of their opinion.

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<p>Are you saying that in order to quote someone, I need to agree 100% with him?</p>

<p>So, if I say, “All men are created equal,” then I need to believe in slavery because Thomas Jefferson did? If I believe in the ideal of the colorblind Constitution, then I need to believe that Chinese are vastly different from whites because Justice John Marshall Harlan did?</p>

<p>Since when are we required to agree with every position a person espouses before we can quote from them?</p>

<p>I never said that Dr. King was the ace of spades. I said his “I Have a Dream” speech was the ace of spades regarding colorblindness.</p>

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<p>I think it just seems odd to quote Dr. King in an argument against AA when it was something in which he strongly believed.</p>

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<p>Why does it increase your chances of getting accepted into college if you put 'Native American' as your race?</p>

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<p>Because many private colleges want to increase their under-represented minorities as they craft their incoming classes.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
<a href="#201">url=http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1059723658-post201.html&lt;/a> I have no more evidence than does Stitch w/his premise that such applicants are "sending a message." If there is evidence, please present it....</p>

<p>My assumption is based on human nature and familiarity with the college applications process. There is too much at stake for most students to intentionally omit facts that might help in their admissions. If they are trying to send a message that they don't want colleges to consider information about them for which they have no control (i.e. race), then I would assume to be consistent, they must omit gender, disabilities, familial situations, sexual orientation, and geographic and economic demographics, none of which are generally under an applicants control.

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<p>The Common</a> Application specifically asks the question with regard to ethnic group the following way:</p>

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If you wish to be identified with a particular ethnic group, please check all that apply:

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<p>Applicants that don't check an option are, by their action, choosing to not "be identified with a particular ethnic group". The act of not choosing is a message in-and-of-itself. They clearly see the options before them and they choose to exercise one of them. They do so with the full knowledge that the application's reviewer(s) will not have access to 'ethnicity' information on which to make an evaluation on. </p>

<p>The message being sent is then this: "Don't evaluate this application with regard to 'ethnicity' (the 'prism</a>' that segments and classifies...from the original assertion) because I have taken advantage of the option which allows it to be evaluated without it." Nowhere on the application does it say that an applicant will be defaulted to a given ethnicity if they don't choose one. </p>

<p>With regard to the intentional omission of 'facts', one can't be given an option and then be accused of intentionally omitting 'facts' when that option is exercised. This would be a Hobson's</a> choice...no choice/option at all.</p>

<p>As to your assumption of 'facts', when applicants do self-identify they are stating an opinion. Consider the example of Senator Obama: If one accepts the (mis)notion of 'race', an argument (opinion) can be made that his 'race' is 'White' because of his mother. Another argument (opinion) can be made that he's 'African' because of his father. His own opinion is that he's 'African American'. It's just that; an opinion...not a 'fact'. The concept of 'race' is a social construct that is in a state of flux made all the more dynamic by the Barack Obamas and Tiger Woods' of our society. 'Race' is not</a> biologically identifiable.</p>

<p>Finally, applicants have every right to avail themselves of options presented to them and not be accused of inconsistency. This would again be Hobsonian.</p>

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<p>'Race' is not biologically identifiable.</p>

<p>Well, yes and no.</p>

<p>It is possible to predict, given certain [DNA] information, the probability that an individual is white, black, Native American, Asian, or aboriginal Australian. But it is only a probability, never a certainty. While each population is a unique assemblage of equally unique individuals, there appear to be no phenotypic traits, individual genes, or DNA markers, that are unique to any human "race."</p>

<p><a href="http://www.saintmarys.edu/%7Erjensen/race.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.saintmarys.edu/~rjensen/race.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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there appear to be no phenotypic traits, individual genes, or DNA markers, that are unique to any human "race."

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<p>There are better authorities for this true statement, and more recent besides, but the checkboxes on federal forms tempt a lot of people to reify "races" much more than the facts warrant.</p>

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<p>the checkboxes on federal forms tempt a lot of people to reify "races" much more than the facts warrant.</p>

<p>The forms and the college context refer to races as a social construct which are clearly different from biological facts.</p>

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<p>
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<a href="#216">url=http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1059729252-post216.html&lt;/a> Well, yes and no.

[quote]
It is possible to predict, given certain [DNA] information, the probability that an individual is white, black, Native American, Asian, or aboriginal Australian. But it is only a probability, never a certainty. While each population is a unique assemblage of equally unique individuals, there appear to be no phenotypic traits, individual genes, or DNA markers, that are unique to any human "race."</p>

<p>http://www.saintmarys.edu/~rjensen/race.html

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<p>The reference</a> cited supports the</a> assertion that 'race' is a social construct:</p>

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On the other hand, as noted by John Vandermeer in Reconstructing Biology</p>

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"From a biological perspective there are no meaningful races [of humans] in the first place, and what we today recognize as races are entirely social constructs.

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<p>Furthermore, the paper's conclusion supports the</a> advocacy that asks students/applicants to:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Fully participate in a 'biosocial evolution' that denies colleges (and governments) the data that (mis)characterizes us.</p></li>
<li><p>Perpetuate our species without the (mis)notion/social construct of 'race' being an influence. </p></li>
</ol>

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I will close by quoting Jerry Hirsch (Science and the Concept of Race, 1968, page 168):</p>

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I believe that it is very important for us to take an evolutionary point of view - not evolutionary in the sense of hierarchy, either of species or races, but rather to think in terms of both biological and social evolution. However we may wish to categorize the human groups that we see today, we must remember that no matter what the genetic evidence is for difference, there is also a very strong cultural difference; what we have had is a biological evolution,** and what we have to concentrate our attention on today is the direction we wish our biosocial evolution to take in the future.**

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<p>In Calculus, there is the concept of the [url=<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative%5DDerivative%5B/url"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative]Derivative[/url&lt;/a&gt;] which tells us what the instantaneous 'trend' is along a continuum. Perhaps, what we're experiencing as a species is analgous to attempting to 'derive' our current biosocial state, but as soon as we think we have it figured out it has changed. However, we all have it within our control to affect in which direction the change will be made with the decisions we make.</p>

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<p>Thanks for the interesting comments about setting a new direction.</p>