“Other” provides confusion
JC
Looks like schools in California may start thinking about allowing students to check more than one box. A study was done by the James Irvine Foundation’s Campus Diversity Initiative and it seems that the little “other” box is starting to cause frustration to schools that can’t gather information on all of the students who decide to use it to identify themselves. The Heights, Boston College’s “Independent Student Newspaper,” takes a look at all of the students who decided to check “other” when answering the race/ethnicity question. Of course, there are the students who choose the “other” category because their true heritage doesn’t exist in the choices. However, this article also sheds light on another reason that students have cited for choosing this neutral/ambiguous box: it allows them to gain acceptance on merit alone and doesn’t allow admissions offices to take their racial identity into account at all. Very interesting.
Some students voiced their thoughts on how application forms usually do not include sufficient or accurate options for racial identification. Also, others want to be accepted through merit alone and not because of affirmative action. Students feel hesitant to answer the question “because they do not know how its answer will be used in the admissions process,” said Lay.
“I decided to pick ‘other,’ mainly to dispel rumors that I just got into a certain school because of my ethnicity,” said Christopher Waltrous, A&S ‘08. “I’m also of Cape Verdean origin and most application forms do not have that option.”
Alan Shih, CSOM ‘08, ticked the “other” box and followed it by specifying that he was Asian-American-Hispanic because “this option was not available on the list given.”
There are some multiracial students who, rather than checking off the “other” box, identify with only one of their ethnicities because they were raised in that environment. Bobby Davies, A&S ‘09, selected Asian/Pacific Islander on his application because “he felt that he was more Filipino than Caucasian due to his Asian upbringing.”
At Boston College, only 1% of admitted students check off “other” — looks like the school is ahead of the curve, though.
The federal government actually does not allow universities to report having students of unknown origins. By looking at the BC AHANA admissions Web site, “you will see that there is no ‘other’ category to be found on the list of ethnicities,” said Lay.
BC is trying to accommodate people of different races by regularly updating their list of ethnicities that can be designated on the admissions application. “We try to revise the list each year since we have so many students from all over the world who sometimes even help suggest new categories to add on to it,” said Lay.
Finally, looks like some students (read: white students) are trying to cash in on the potential benefits of checking “other”:
The campus that provided the most startling case for this study had “an almost 150-percent increase in the number of white-only students after the unknown category [was] analyzed.”
It will be interesting to see how much validity the race question will have moving forward. This story really paints a picture of inaccuracy (schools like BC are not the norm). When the answers to the race question don’t accurately represent the people, it begs the question, where is this going? How will the way we classify people change?
Ben wrote:
I think “the race question” is taken far too seriously by people who have a much more nuanced understanding of race/ethnicity than any institution could possibly accommodate for.
Race data is collected to monitor compliance with civil rights legislation, not to validate people’s identity choices. Multiracially-identifying people might feel they have to choose “other” because their true heritage is not represented, but the “true heritage” of monoracial individuals can also be far more complex than these forms permit. (For instance, there is no separation of Scandinavian from Middle Eastern within the “White/Caucasian” category, or of Indian from Chinese in the “Asian American” category.) The government doesn’t care if you’re from Cape Verde or Cape Cod - if you have “origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa” (however you choose to determine that), you fit with their definition of “Black.” And if you receive their money (Title IV funds: Pell grants, Perkins loans, Federal Work-Study), you have to play by their rules.
However, people don’t generally like being told to take their identity less seriously. So my solution for colleges is to ask the students to write a short paragraph describing their racial/ethnic background. Then students can be as accurate as they want to be, and the college can slice the data any way they want.
The problem, aside from the logistical nightmare of committees having to read yet another section of prose, is that this might overstate the importance colleges place on race/ethnicity in the admissions process… can’t wait to see how the anti-affirmative-action community would react to that.
Posted 24 Jan 2006 at 12:02 pm ¶
Nicky wrote:
I fit into 3 categories,but I choose only one.I don’t have to give more explanation then.
Posted 24 Jan 2006 at 1:22 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:
Nicky: how do you choose or do you alternate deopending on the form and your mood?
Funny - in HS I chose “other” for the PSATs (this was the 90s, before the new census, etc. - have no idea what the SAT and PSAT categores are like now). The PSATs get scored and lead to National Merit competitions - academically based, worth a $1000 scholarship for the first year of college - not the biggest deal, but a nice chunk.
So about 15 students in my HS class get nominated, as do I… but someone I got listed as a Negro Scholar - NEGRO? #1 question: how was it the 1990s and noone had updated the term? #2 question: who in the school notified the program that I was part black? I REALLY wanted this to be based on academics alone, since my scores were from what I could gather the same or better as the academic Merit Scholars. My family called the Princeton Review about whether “Negro” scholars had the exact same requirements (score-wise) as the plain Merit scholars. All we were told was that it was score based, but noone could tell me whether it was the SAME score.
Honestly, I think that since I happened to be the only part-black student in my grade (small school, and the lower classes were more diverse ethnically), the school wanted to show “DIVERSITY” by making sure they had a “NEGRO” scholar.
No, I’m not being paranoid… my school would have done it. When a senior in my class didn’t want to go to college, the high school applied FOR HER to a community college (no essay, no fee, the school had all her info) … just to keep their “100% College Acceptance” cred.
Posted 24 Jan 2006 at 2:21 pm ¶
Ben wrote:
hehe… lyonside, i think they subsequently changed the name of that particular scholarship to the “national achivement scholarship” (only black-identifying students were eligible.)
my principal called me into the hallway from class one morning and said “ben, you’ve been chosen as a national achievement scholar. but are you aware that that scholarship is for… black students?” i stared back in mild disbelief before breaking the news to him. (man, when multiracial people talk about “coming out,” we’re not kidding!) he got very flustered and awkwardly apologized. kudos to him for not pressing the issue, i guess. (turns out there had been no national achievement scholars at my school since he’d been there.)
Posted 24 Jan 2006 at 2:43 pm ¶
Rachel S wrote:
The most interesting finding of that study, from my way of thinking, was the fact that most students who are of unspecified race are whites. Of course, there is a difference between “other” vs. “unspecified,” but there are not uniform standards for measuring race, which was another point the study made.
On the one hand, I am sympathetic to the frustration people with multiracial, biracial, middle Eastern, or international categories have with the data. On the other hand, Univerisities are required by federal law to collect race and gender data, and they cannot sit down and interview every student to understand the complexity of racial identities. There could be some sort of compromise. I wrote about my views on this study a while back….here is the link for anybody interested. http://www.rachelstavern.com/blog_comment.asp?bi=232&m=1&y=2006&d=1&s=search
Posted 24 Jan 2006 at 8:41 pm ¶
Yellow Peril wrote:
As an Asian coming from a working-class family, my high school coounselor told me point-blank near graduation that I was not legally a minority because “Asians test score too high.”
Well, she was right in my case, as I did consistently test over the top 99th percentile in all standardized testing. So, were I an underachieving minority, I would have easily scored a full ride to the brand-name university of my choice (as some of my lower-scoring part-minority colleagues did).
However, it has been well-documented that Asians like me thus did suffer double-discrimination in undergrad college admissions - being excluded by other minority-friendly affirmative action and White-friendly alumni status. Moreso, there’s even been evidence of intentional discrimination against “overqualified” Asian applicants by admission boards attempting to fulfill racial quotas.
http://www.asianamerican.net/bios/Joe-Don.html
The system ain’t racist? Says WHO?
I guess the ultimate loser is the US as a whole though - as other more meritocritous countries surpass us in science and technology. They’ll take all our manufacturing and tech base - that we’ll then have to outsource to. Oh wait, that’s already happening now! Doh! Congrats guilty liberals - your work is done now!
Posted 25 Jan 2006 at 2:03 pm ¶
MMW Troll Detection Team wrote:
Translation of the above post: I am a poor socially disenfranchised loner who compensates for my lack of academic and economic achievements by whinig about libs and minorities.
The person who currently goes by “Yellow Peril” is probably this blog’s single most active poster. His other usernames include David Horowitz, Louis Farrakhan, Hong Kong Phooey, etc, etc.
Posted 25 Jan 2006 at 3:42 pm ¶
Ben wrote:
However, it has been well-documented that Asians like me thus did suffer double-discrimination in undergrad college admissions
Oh gee, I was wondering why Asians were so underrepresented at my college. I guess this explains it.
Either that or they all make up adjectives like “meritocritous.”
Posted 25 Jan 2006 at 3:58 pm ¶
Ben wrote:
@MMWTDT - lol, heartily.
Posted 25 Jan 2006 at 4:39 pm ¶
Leigh-Anne wrote:
in South Africa we don’t have the opportunity to tick multiple boxes, we don’t even have multiracial. And if you do tick “other” they re-assign you where ever they feel you should fit…
Posted 15 Feb 2006 at 5:36 am ¶