<p>My mother’s alma mater. I had to post this as it highlights the difficulties of obtaining higher education for people of color, any color at the turn of the century and beyond.</p>
<p>Passing as White: Anita Hemmings 1897
[Passing</a> as White: Anita Hemmings 1897 | features | Vassar, the Alumnae/i Quarterly -](<a href=“http://vq.vassar.edu/issue/winter_2001/article/anita_hemmings]Passing”>http://vq.vassar.edu/issue/winter_2001/article/anita_hemmings)</p>
<p>Fabrizio wrote:
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<p>From the Bollinger op-ed:
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<p>Was Bollinger mistaken or did he just pull this out of thin air?</p>
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<p>He most certainly was. You can go to [UC</a> StatFinder](<a href=“http://statfinder.ucop.edu/statfinder/]UC”>http://statfinder.ucop.edu/statfinder/) and select the following:</p>
<p>Persistence rate in year 1 and year 2; graduation rate in year 4, year 5, and year 6; elapsed years to degree; first-time freshmen students by ethnicity: fall 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, Universitywide (all campuses combined, unduplicated counts)</p>
<p>There was certainly a drop from 1997 to 1998, but it quickly rebounded after that and kept increasing, eventually exceeding the 1997 enrollment in 2002 (five years) before dipping a bit in 2004 (and rebounding again).</p>
<p>From “Passing”</p>
<p>‘We are aware, and we’ve made sure she’s in a room by herself. We don’t even know if [Ellen] is aware that she’s black.’"</p>
<p>I laughed a little. Made me think of students who come here, asking if they might be black.</p>
<p>^
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<p>Maybe they want to be asked if their bikes theirs (as your brother was once in LA, if my memory serves me well).</p>
<p>Race is not the issue. Prejudgement is.</p>
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<p>I think if you go back and look at the quote, you’ll see that Bollinger was talking about UC public law schools. Do you have any data on that?</p>
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<p>He was talking about the UC law schools and “the state system.” And no, I do not have data for the UC law schools. But I interpret your “snip” as your tacit recognition that Bollinger wasn’t accurate about “the state system.”</p>
<p>Jeezus, where else would a UC public law school be, but, in the state system? Are you always this immature?</p>
<p>You appear to be saying that Bollinger was only talking about law schools. Then why did he say “…and black enrollment declined throughout the state system”? He just wanted to drive home the point of how “bad” it was after Proposition 209 that he said the same thing twice in one sentence?</p>
<p>Aren’t the law schools publishing their data directly year by year?</p>
<p>[Affirmative</a> action suit gets Brown’s support](<a href=“http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/17/BAG01MQ7P3.DTL&feed=rss.bayarea]Affirmative”>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/17/BAG01MQ7P3.DTL&feed=rss.bayarea):</p>
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<p>I admit it’s ambiguous; however, you would have to had completely ignored the first (and principal) clause of the sentence in order to support your conclusion that:<br>
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<p>It’s stuff like that that drives other posters crazy.</p>
<p>Fair enough. One of the beefs I have with Bollinger’s op-ed is the following:</p>
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<p>For that to happen, you should really start a lot earlier than age eighteen, and you have to actually get to know the other person well to truly understand that at the end of the day, we’re all individual human beings, and we have a lot in common because of that.</p>
<p>Otherwise, you might just perpetuate stereotypes. One of the current featured discussions is [urlhttp://talk.collegeconfidential.com/china/1274133-number-chinese-students-u-s-soars.html]Number of Chinese Students in U.S. Soars. In that thread, a self-identified parent unloads stereotype after stereotype about Americans of Chinese ethnicity, all the while claiming that they’re justified because of her alleged close interactions with people from that “group.”</p>
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<p>To me, that’s just another version of the old argument that AA is simply a way of making up for the past sins of American public schools – which is true to a certain extent. However, giving up at the point where someone reaches the age of 18 is not exactly a solution either. An eighteen year-old’s brain has plenty capacity for growth.</p>
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<p>Sure, otherwise college would be pointless. But I stand by my point that if you want people to understand that we are all individual human beings, regardless of our skin color, you need to start way earlier than eighteen. You need to start before people already have a plethora of stereotypes by racial classification. “Understanding” won’t happen just because you can boast that your school is X% “URM.”</p>
<p>To continue with StitchInTime’s post, the Times has an [url=<a href=“Opinion | The Affirmative Action War Goes On - The New York Times”>Opinion | The Affirmative Action War Goes On - The New York Times]editorial[/url</a>] today defending the continued use of racial preferences. What annoys me is how meaningless the word “diversity” has become. Go back to page 35 of this thread, post 511. “Diversity” appears to be defined as “want[ing] representation of a wide variety of highly accomplished students and…from the 4 corners of the globe.”</p>
<p>I stated that I approved of that goal. But that led to confusion, as lookingforward believed that my approval meant that I “accept[ed] the goal of ethnic diversity.” And there’s the rub: to me, “a wide variety of highly accomplished students” means different interests, talents, and ideas; to others, “a wide variety of highly accomplished students” means different skin colors.</p>
<p>Again, I dislike the use of lofty sounding language to conceal a far baser goal: “plurality white, not too Asian, and just enough ‘URM.’”</p>
<p>The intelligence and defensibility of this argument declines precipitously when one assumes and presumes to define what others mean behind their words- and then mocking. </p>
<p>Why not define diversity simply as representation of all sorts of categories- from skin color and ethnic origins to religion, gender, sexual orientation, talents and interests, nationality, political perspective, career goals, and on and on? Why isn’t this thread allowing for that endless list?</p>
<p>Instead of insisting what’s meant (yeah, that you know) is plurality white, not too Asian, just enough URM. I daresay you don’t know as much as you think you do, re: admissions decisions. </p>
<p>And, I’ll add this- as I said many, many posts ago: what they do to get a divese law school freshmen class at a state U does not necessarily relate to what can or should be done at a private, for a freshman UG class. And, law school vs UG, State vs private UG are different matters.</p>
<p>I won’t respond for quite some time because the response tends to include many assumptions, to get my hackles up. But, readers can see if this again happens.</p>
<p>I would caution against any participant here–and I try to caution myself against this–assuming what any other participant here means. What we see here are particular words, and it can definitely be in order to ask, before assuming, “When you wrote ____ , did you mean ____ ?” Sometimes what I think people mean at first glance isn’t what they say on the basis of a follow-up question. </p>
<p>Readers new to this thread are reminded to read the FAQ posts that make up the first dozen or so posts here. I see the number of posts in this thread is getting to be large enough that it will be time to post a new-and-improved version of this thread in a while.</p>
<p>There must be a clear answer to this somewhere, but if a white couple adopted a Korean girl who has a white name, will she be classified as white or Asian on her college application?</p>
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<p>Actually I gave that example case somewhere above in the thread as an actual case (which is pretty common in the state I live in) that doesn’t seem to be well described in the current federal regulations. You can simply suggest that the student apply without checking any of the optional checkboxes on a college application, if you think none of the “race” categories fit correctly. You have and everyone has the legal right to leave the form blank ( [post</a> #1](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13396816-post1.html]post”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13396816-post1.html) ). I think the categories fit my children poorly (hence part of my interest in this issue) and it is encouraging to me that many colleges admit many students each year for whom they do not know of any ethnic affiliation ( [post</a> #4](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13396860-post4.html]post”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13396860-post4.html) ). The recent national trend has been for an increasing number of college applicants to decline to self-identify any ethnic group ( [post</a> #3](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13396833-post3.html]post”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13396833-post3.html) ), and maybe actual cases like this are one reason for that. </p>
<p>Good luck with the applications.</p>