The University of Michigan’s Plan to Increase Diversity

[OHMomof2]

@exlibris97

Short answer is because we didn’t want to count Mexicans as white (immigration blocked on that basis in 1940) and the rest of Latin America got wrapped up into that. We’ve gone through some crazy contortions to define Hispanics as not-really-white over time.

And yeah, it’s a lot more than this thread can include. Colleges follow the census, the government sets the census policy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/03/22/sorry-but-the-irish-were-always-white-and-so-were-the-italians-jews-and-so-on/

[cobrat]

@marvin100 Yes, that’s true but universities artificially break out Hispanic students from other white students. That’s a bit odd. Why not Italians?

Also, some universities not only classify Italian-Americans as a separate group, but also count them as URMs for the purposes of AA:

https://www.baruch.cuny.edu/president/affirmativeaction.html

Chancellor Robert E. Kibbee expanded the protected race and ethnic class for CUNY on December 9, 1976 to include Italian-Americans.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/nyregion/15italians.html