<p>You think that your children are 1/4 Hispanic by virtue of the fact that their father can trace his roots back to Mexico from ages and ages ago?</p>
<p>Is this correct? </p>
<p>I have never heard of that which you are trying to claim at all, but that might have something to do because of the overall manner in which you are claiming things to be. </p>
<p>For example. There was a PBS special quite some time ago. And, Eva Longoria was on it. It was called “Faces of America” and Dr. Henry Lewis Gates traced back her family tree to the time frame you are making reference to. However, she has scads of Mexican American ladies and gentlemen over on the most recent branches of her family tree (for lack of a better way of phrasing things). Does your husband? </p>
<p>There is something about what you are claiming which is just downright beyond my ability to understand as of right now. I really wish you would pop back in this thread and elucidate on things further.</p>
<p>I DON’T ASSOCIATE WITH ANY OF THEM BUT I COULDN’T COMPLETE THE APPLICATION WITHOUT CHECKING A BOX.</p>
<p>Sorry.</p>
<p>I swear to God in heaven if they’d have had, “Brotherhood of Man” or any fill-in-the box, I’d have checked that.</p>
<p>As for Native American, you have to put your number. That is why Mestizos aren’t Native American even if they keep some of their native traditions. Because many are not members of the tribe, having no papers before around 1930 or so.</p>
<p>My first application was in 1995. My recent application to graduate school was not using the Common Application but the University of Washington application and believe me, I tried to skip it but I couldn’t submit the application without it. If you can do it, great. This time they said it was for statistical purposes only, and that the admissions committee would not see it. I haven’t received anything from the Hispanic or whatever clubs so I suppose not.</p>
<p>How about someone who is 1/4 Cuban, through a grandfather who was born in / grew up in Cuba (Cuban relatives are still there), though the grandfather emigrated to the US as an adult, became a physician and married an American woman? Last name is clearly Spanish. The father was born here, but did live in Cuba as a young boy – but has led an upper middle class lifestyle here in the US his whole life. “Legit” or not? Does it matter that the last name is Hispanic, does it matter that the grandfather had a privileged life in Cuba and then here, that he did take his son (the father in this example) back to Cuba for a few years when he was a young boy?</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I think that people need to be honest with themselves. Anyone who is a quarter Cuban is technically part Hispanic. However, I am 1/2 Hispanic (Mestizo, so probably some Native American though impossible to tell) and I don’t feel I was discriminated against because where we were, and because I look <em>so</em> Asian, I don’t think I felt the discrimination. Plus my last name means that people usually assumed I was anything but Hispanic.</p>
<p>If that young man felt that people judged him by his last name, then by all means, he should check the box. Black sons and daughters of rich black professionals, as Barack Obama noted, still can’t get a taxi on a Friday night. Sometimes it really is the last name. Sometimes it’s the skin color. Sometimes you get lucky.</p>
<p>What a shame we can’t rely on people’s sense of justice and personal responsibility.</p>
<p>seriously is it an Orthodox school? are they trying to decide what food is kosher for the kid? The general rule of course is that you can’t pick and choose your minhag, and you are supposed to follow your father’s minhag (see status DOES pass via the father, where the mother and father are in a valid Jewish kiddushin). I once heard a conservative rabbi say that it was okay for a vegetarian ashkenazic Jew to adopt sephardic rules for Pesach, cause being vegetarian on pesach was such a burden (and is going above and beyond in terms of kashrut, ethics, whatever). Also Rabbi David Golinkin in Israel has said its okay for an ashkenizic Jew to eat at a sephardic jewish household that eats kitniyot, cause unity of sephardim and Ashkenazim is a pressing issue overriding traditional minhag differences. </p>
<p>And of course I think most C Rabbis (and quite a few O rabbis) would be happy at family keep kosher for pesach that didnt used to, however much lenience they allowed themselves.</p>
<p>Happydad is Cuban/Venezuelan, and he would be one of the first to say that anyone who has a bunch of Cubans in their family should get extra bonus points just for surviving the experience.</p>
<p>It’s interesting that you say that, because then it comes down to …
Should it make a difference that this young man doesn’t particularly look Hispanic - that it so happened that he inherited his looks from the non-Hispanic sides?
Should it make a difference that his last name is Hispanic … after all, he’d be equally 1/4 Hispanic if it had been his mother’s father from Cuba, not his father’s father.</p>
<p>This thread is amusing. Good points have been made, among them;</p>
<p>–in many ways South America and the Caribbean Islands are little different from North America, historically speaking. Those territories also attracted immigrants from various places. Ever heard of Bernardo O’Farrell, a revered 19th Century Latin American freedom fighter? The substantial Japanese population in Brazil has been mentioned. Ever meet a Chinese person whose roots in Trinidad, the Dominican Republic or Jamaica go back more than 100 years? I have. You get the point.</p>
<p>The U.S. government created the term ‘hispanic’ in the mid-20th Century and the term has been misused ever since. Juan Sequi was an American hero at the Alamo. I guess that being a Texan made him ‘hispanic.’ But are the Native American residents of El Paso hispanic and do they share anything in common besides a surname with neighbors who insist that their own group has more in common with the Bourbon dynasty in Spain than with American Indians?</p>
<p>And how are we going to characterize Mexican immigrants from Vera Cruz? Talk about a melting pot!!!</p>
<p>Thankfully, someone said that not every person with black skin in the U.S. is an African-American (a descendant of enslaved Africans brought to the U.S. from roughly 1619 to 1830).</p>
<p>I agree that we’re sort of on the Honor System with this set up in the U.S. But we know a cheat when we see one.</p>
<p>The part that I always have trouble wrapping my head arouns is why does this question only seem to come when it is time to apply for college and grad school? </p>
<p>My question is when you first registered your child for school, what ethnicity did you put down (yes, it is one of the many forms in which you fillout, especially if you attend public school)? Did you check hispanic then?</p>
<p>If there were no “benefit” perceived or otherwise from checking the box, would you still be asking the question or would you be checking the same boxes that you have for years before it was time to apply for college?</p>
<p>I suppose you could turn it around - if there were no benefit to the colleges from asking the question in such a way as to get the highest possible URM statistics, would they make the definition so inclusive?</p>
<p>I don’t care about the boxes when there is no possible benefit. I’m happy to check all the boxes for statistical purposes. I think that if there’s going to be biased towards URMs, I have to think about whether I need that extra help, or indeed, want it.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I think that if he believes that he has experienced discrimination–e.g. his ethnicity has been mentioned by teachers, he believes that he has been turned down for after-school jobs that white kids got though they seemed less qualified, he found it hard to fit in at clubs or get elected as an officer, he experienced name-calling at school–then someone with his (or my) background should check it. Because ultimately those places are for people that have been discriminated against in some way, to make up for that institutional acceptance of racism.</p>
<p>But if he thinks, nah, there were plenty of Gonzales’ at his school, he knew lots of brown teachers or his white teachers were great and appeared not to discriminate, and he got a job at his dad’s business, well no, he shouldn’t check it. He should know how lucky he is and save that URM spot for someone that truly suffered at the hands of the system.</p>
<p>That’s just my personal opinion about the ethics of it, as a part-Hispanic. Obviously. I think the schools would say that if you’re Hispanic, if you identify as such, you should check the box. I think there are two reasons for that. First, they want to fill their URM spots with the most qualified applicants, so they can have the best stats overall. But also, the question of an individual avoiding institutional discrimination kind of calls into question the whole program of affirmative action, so I really doubt they’d want to acknowledge that in a very public way. At most they would say, perhaps overall a brown candidate was not as discriminated against as others and therefore suffered fewer disadvantages than a very poor white candidate, HOWEVER, it is impossible for that candidate to judge, or for us to judge, so s/he should mark the box anyway.</p>
<p>I don’t think a person should check a box or not based on perceived prejudices.</p>
<p>If a person asks if my D is 1/4 Hispanic the answer is yes! She has a grandmother who was born in Argentina. I am not saying yes because saying Hispanic means that my D has been a victim of discrimination. To that question my answer would be “no!”. But that is not the question asked.</p>
<p>If someone asks if a child is 1/4 Scottish and a grandparent was from Scotland, then the child would check the box saying Scottish. Perhaps they would hesitate to identify themselves as only Scottish by checking only one box when their background may also be German and French. But if it were explained that they should check the box to show their Scottish heritage even if they are only 1/4 Scottish, then I believe few people would question their action. </p>
<p>Let’s say there were scholarships involved. Should the 1/4 Scottish child worry that they are not 100% Scottish or that they do not speak with a brogue or that no one in their family owns a kilt? Should they worry that they have not been called “cheap” all their lives? (I apologize to all Scotts in advance for referencing that stereotype.)</p>
<p>The point being, why are we putting such value judgements on the use of Hispanic? Why do Hispanics have to have Spanish surnames, speak perfect Spanish and be of a low socioeconomic status because they have been victimized?</p>
<p>Even if there is scholarship money involved, if the donors want it to be available to children who have need, it is up to them to make that a requirement. Children should not deny their background because the reality of who they are does not match someone’s pre-conceived notion of what a Hispanic person is.</p>
<p>If my DD had to fill out such an app, and spent hours spinning definitions and what if scenarios like this I know what I would do</p>
<p>First I would smile, at the way a gifted and slightly obsessive young person likes to think things through. THEN I would suggest “honey, you know if its not clear in your case, you really should call the admissions office and ask them to clarify the definition”.</p>
<p>Of course she’s 19 and a little phone shy (or at least she was last time I saw her). </p>
<p>For adults here, spinning scenarios, I get the impression folks are either trying to justify checking boxes they know they arent really entitled to check, or, OTOH, trying to deconstruct the whole thing. Otherwise I can’t for the life of my come up with a good answer to the question “If your situation is so complex, why dont you call the admissions office to clarify their definition?”</p>
<p>Oh. The question isn’t “do you look darker than white people” or “have you encountered discrimination from others” or “is your last name Hispanic sounding” or “are you poor / not poor.” Those are different questions. The question at hand is “are you 1/4 or more Hispanic.” </p>
<p>I’m going to be old-school and assume most people take a father’s name for the sake of argument. With that stipulation, it makes no sense to me that Juan Gonzalez’ son’s children should be “allowed” to claim Hispanic because they inherited the Gonzalez name, but his daughter’s children shouldn’t since they don’t have an Hispanic last name. It makes no sense to me that the grandchild who inherited Grandpa Juan’s dark coloring gets to claim Hispanic since he’s brown, but the grandchild who inherited Grandpa Juan’s artistic ability but Grandma Betty’s fair skin and freckles doesn’t. And, I think it’s irrelevant if the ancestor or the student at home was economically privileged in the old country and / or economically privileged here. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t think twice about checking the Hispanic box if my kids had one grandparent who was legitimately Hispanic. I think you play the hand you’re dealt, and I don’t see what’s unethical about that at all.</p>
<p>Is George Prescott Bush, son of Jeb and Columba Bush, nephew of President G.W. Bush hispanic? Or is he a New England Yankee like his gradad G.H.W. Bush? LOL.</p>
<p>We had absolute no qualms about checking the box and will do it again with S2 next year. My husband was born in Cuba and raised in inner city Chicago. My kids look white as can be and have led a very upper middle class lifestyle.</p>
<p>They are aware of and proud of their Cuban roots. It’s up to the colleges to determine whether or not their “story” warrants any special treatment in admissions. They consider themselves Hispanic. Case closed for us.</p>